What makes you cry?

 

What makes you cry?

by Adrian Plass

I wept in Winchester Cathedral once

It was a winter afternoon

After speaking at a lunch in town

There was an hour to fill before my train was due to leave

Yet again, the beauty of that ancient building

Drew me like a child into its echoing embrace

I knew it would, I have such scant resistance to cathedrals

Particularly this one

This time I did two things

First of all the lighting of a candle for my father

Just because I wanted to

Theology is very thin sometimes

A candle’s flame is fat and rich with mystery

The second thing was climbing to the balcony

(they let you do that now)

And, as I stood there, leaning on the rail

Feeling warm at last and looking down

My heart went out to this old, slumberous house of worship

Built for God

Its stonework soaked with centuries of prayer

Tears and passions of belief and doubt

Flowing from a million souls

“How can you tolerate these days,” I softly asked

“The whispering obeisance of the secular patrols?” 

And then, quite suddenly, the children came

A hundred juniors or more

They sounded like a flock of seagulls

Looked like litter blown in by an enterprising gust of wind

They flung their coats down anywhere, and then

Armed with crayons, paper, pens and question sheets

They looked and listened, wrote and chattered,

Rubbed and roamed

With no respect at all for silly, solemn things

The place was full of them, their virtues and their sins

The building seemed to wake and blink and shake

Itself and smile

And draw itself to its full height with pleasurable pride

On finding all those children working, laughing, living

Unequivocally being there

And that was when I cried

Because I saw, and felt inside, the truth we once

Received

Long ago, before there were cathedrals

That such as these – these unreligious children

With their earnestness, their busy-ness

Their unselfconscious cries

Form the best of congregations

For they simply are beloved

(much against the will of serious disciples)

By the only one who ever recognised

Like photographs of home

The Kingdom in their eyes”.

Adrian Plass – ‘Learning to Fly – a shared journey’.