Where I've worshipped - St. James West Hampstead

Hi everyone!  I thought you'd like to get a look at the places where I have worshipped.  This is the first in, I hope, a series of posts about those places.

The nice folks who are housing me during my stay in London are members of St. Mary's with All Souls, Kilburn.  St. Mary's is yoked with another congregation, St. James West Hampstead.  I have worshipped with both congregations, though I sadly have no pictures (yet!) of St. Mary's with All Souls.  They share a vicar, Fr. Andrew Cain, who invited me to dinner at his house on my second day in London.  He is a wonderful fellow!  Unfortunately I have not had the privilege of being at one of his services as he has been out since my arrival for various reasons.  While they share the same vicar, St. Mary's with All Souls and St. James consider themselves very different, with St. James being the "higher" of the two.  The words of the services were the same, however, the delivery and overall ambiance at St. James is a little more Catholic, and I liked it!

So here's the website for St. James and St. Mary's with All Souls: http://churchnw6.co.uk.

And here are some pics of the outside of St. James:

I'll get some pics of the inside soon, I didn't want to take pics during worship and had to leave pretty quickly after the service.  More soon....

Salisbury Cathedral

Tuesday, June 12 I was invited to attend a conference at Salisbury Cathedral, called Sudan 40, celebrating the 40 year relationship between the Anglican Diocese of Salisbury and the Episcopal Church of the Sudan.  The conference was amazingly interesting.  I heard the stories of several Sudanese bishops who had undergone immense hardshipa and persecution.  One of the bishops had lived away from his wife and children for more than 7 years while he persued his theological education.  At one point, for 2+ years during the time when fighting was harshest during their civil war, he was unable to communicate with his family in any way and was left to wonder if they had been killed in the fighting.  Theirs is a testimony of deep faith, making me think often of the martyrs of the early Christian centuries.  Their stories also highlighted for me the safe and secure position of Christians in the United States-our struggles hardly seem like struggles in their light.

The Cathedral is an amazing 13th century structure and I was amazed by its beauty.  The craftsmanship that went into its years long construction and decoration is astounding.  Why don't we do this any more?  Maybe I'm prejudiced by a love of history and all things Gothic and high-church, but I was struck by how often Salisbury Cathedral made me think of the glory of God.

Here are some photos of its exterior:

It's hard to believe that these marvelous statues on the outside of the Cathedral were painstakingly carved by human hands.  Wow!

Here are my photos of the interior.  Often the photo of a particular statue or effigy is followed by the corresponding plaque.

After the conference ended I was priviledged to participate in choral Evensong in the choir stalls of the Cathedral.  Here are some pics of the stall I sat in and the surrounds:

My stall for Evensong

 A little dog-like carving that stared at me all through Evensong

One of the angels in the stalls.

If you look at the photo of my stall during Evensong, just to left and over the back of the stall is where the Bishop of Salisbury sat for the service.

That's all my pics from Salisbury Cathedral.  It was an amazing experience and I hope to return some day and spend more time getting to know all about the building and its history.  If you'd like to find out more about Salisbury Cathedral follow this link:  Salisbury Cathedral.

Adventures on the South Bank

My apologies to everyone, I have been remiss.  I'm not updating this blog as often as I promised, but I'm going to make up for that.  Here goes:

On Saturday June 8 I decided to visit the South Bank area that is downtown.  It's a pretty trendy area along the south bank of the Thames. It's where the London Eye can be found, that gigantic Ferris wheel that has become almost as synonomous with London as Big Ben.  So here are some views across the Thames:

Across the Thames from the South Bank - no idea who the nice tourists are.

And here's St Paul's Cathedral off in the distance-

Did you notice the crane on the left-hand side of the shot.  It seems the entire city of London (including the City of London-there's a difference) is under construction.  I've been told all new projects stopped for several years when the economy went south, but they have started up again...with a vengence.

There are all sorts of interesting things to see as you walk east along the South Bank.  There are various street performers

And the coolest lampposts

As I was walking down the South Bank walk, all of a sudden I began to hear very loud music.  I wondered to myself, "What could that possibly be?"  As I continued walking I saw a very large crowd gathered along the right-hand side of the walk. Then I realized, there's a really big skate park built into the South Bank walk.  Here are some photos of it empty, so you can get an idea of what it looks like.

There were 10-15 kids, both boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 18, skating around on skateboards, bouncig off of the walls and pillars, up and down the stairs, doing all kinds of tricks in there.  It was pretty cool, though I have to admit that I kept imagining the awful injuries that could happen in there.

So I kept walking down away from the Eye and toward the Tower of London.  I passed all kinds of shops and restaurants both fastfood types and more expensive up-scale restaurants.  I walked under some scaffolding erected to do some kind of construction and then rounded a corner and, much to my surprise, I came face to face with this

The Golden Hind, the ship captained by Sir Francis Drake.  I have to admit, I had always imagined these ships as much bigger than this.   This is the ship, however, that Sir Francis Drake captained when he took the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (Colloquially known by her crew as the Cagafuego or "Fire-shitter," Ha!).  So, it's just there, floating in a little specially-made pond, next to a lovely little pub.  In the bottom photo you can see folks sitting near the rail.  Lots of people had bought food from various and sundry places around and were sitting there having a nosh.

Up from Drake's Golden Hind there was a little alley to pass through

where this little museum, (which you can see in the above photo but not clearly)

the site of the actual prison called The Clink, from which comes the colloquialism of calling all prisons or jails "the clink."  I didn't go in.  It looked to be a bit cheesy (I could hear Halloween-like sound effects coming out of the doors), plus I'm not terribly interested in seeing how sixteenth and seventeenth century prisoners were tortured.  However, just as you pass the Clink and turn to the left you come upon this 

Southwark Cathedral (pronounced SUTH-uk, btw).  As you go around Southwark you get to see the remains of Winchester Palace

Remains of a Roman road beneath the Cathedral

plaque describing Winchester Palace

And a view through the glass roof above the ruins of the Palace, you can see the tower of the Cathedral

The Cathedral has a nice little shop and a cafe they call "the Refectory."  

That is pretty much all of the sights of the South Bank I managed to see.  I never did make it to the Tower, it seemed to keep getting farther and farther away.  Plus, once I made it to Southwark Cathedral I seemed to get caught in a loop, constantly going round and round the Cathedral, never finding my way forward to the Tower.  So, I decided, my inablility to move forward must be a sign that it was time to call it quits.  There was one more thing that entranced me though

these seagulls were floating, almost motionless over the Thames, gliding on the wind and occasionally diving down to pluck something (fish maybe?) out of the water.  They just seemed so calm and peaceful gliding through the the air above the river.  I only wish the picture had been able to capture that feeling.

Well, that's all for South Bank.  Next time, Salisbury Cathedral.  TTFN!!