Sunday, October 01, 2006

Coventry Cathedral




For those who do not know, Coventry Cathedral is quite an amazing place. I'd visited there many years ago when I was either 8 or 11, and I still remember it quite vividly. The Cathedral is quite famous because of it's efforts of reconciliation. In 1940 the cathedral was completely demolished by bombing during the World War. The leader of the cathedral at that time quite publicly declared not to seek any revenge but rather reconciliation with Britains enemies at the time. Over the years the cathedral has become home to the International Centre for Reconciliation which has strong links to Wheaton and has been involved in trying to broker many important peace deals around the world, and also to the Community of the Cross of Nails, which is one of many christian communities accross the world trying to actively promote peace and reconciliation in their communitites.

It's powerful to go the the cathedral (pobably only if you're inthe right mood though, which I was) and ponder the history and the power of Christ's work of reconciliation. When you stand there you see so vividly the empty shell that remains of the old church building and the vibrant new building built adjacent to it, with the cross, joining the two buildings together. I stood inside the new building and looked at the stained glass wall, in contemporary style, it was one of the most moving pieces of church art that I've ever seen, displaying the glory of good, the light made it look as if the wall was made of water and was moving in front of you, it was crazy, and drew you to worship.

Anyway, above are a couple pictures I took.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A belated welcome to England!
It sounds like you've had a couple of really cool opportunities already, what with reuniting with the people from Servants, and then getting to revisit the Cathedral. I pray that your beginning to med school will be similarly positive, and that you will be able to make friends even with such a large university population (hopefully having 49 of you in the med program will help) and a good church where you will fellowship and be fed. I'm looking forward to comparing notes once you finally get started, now almost two months later...:)

Mark said...

Wow, sounds pretty amazing. I'd love to visit Coventry when Dana and I come to see you (whenever that is).

Anonymous said...

Michael! We miss you! When, oh when, will we ever see you again?

~Page and Frannie

ps. Nice pictures!

Anonymous said...

Hey Mike...I'm affirming your existence, thought I'll do this every couple weeks you know...I'm so glad that you finally made it...and hey...more people, more girls, more fan club members...haha