Letter from Lincoln

Iestyn Tudor

After a nine-hour coach journey from Aberystwyth to Lincoln, seeing the city’s cathedral lifted my heart. It dominates the skyline. All who come to Lincoln cannot help but gravitate towards the marvel. It was the tallest building in the world for 200 years, and it’s visible for miles around.

At this point, I’ve explored Lincoln for two days with my friend and guide to the city, Charli. We met on the English literature course at Aberystwyth University and worked together on the student newspaper. Charli studies here in Lincoln, now.

We’ve scaled Steep Hill to visit the cathedral. Neither of us are explicitly Christian nor even religious. But you don’t have to be. Not here. Not to appreciate how sublime Lincoln Cathedral is.

Worlds

Some buildings seem so massive that they become worlds in and of themselves. This is the sense I get as I stand awestruck in the nave. It’s a cathedral of warm and faded hues — grey, brown, beige. Stone and wood and candlewax.

The stained glass windows are the only exception. Daylight filters through them to splash the walls and floors in a splendour of colours. Biblical figures and depictions of events from the Gospels are cast into lurid light.

Such great heights loom above us. The ceilings seem unreachable. Yet the walls and pillars are adorned with a dizzying array of carved faces and figures. Among these is an imp whose origins aren’t entirely known. According to legend, Satan sent the creature to damage the cathedral, but was petrified into stone by angels — hence why he now sits high above the north side of the Angel Choir. The imp has become the city’s symbol, its mascot.

Charli and I jest about various things: the surname of Robert Grosseteste (Bishop of Lincoln from 1235-1253), the Lincoln Imp, personal jokes. We’re not reverent here.

Illusions

But I’m under no illusions: this is how we cope with the weight of our surroundings. The majesty of it all. The darkness inherent in Christianity and its mythology. Without our joking to make light of this, everything around us is utterly oppressive.

She leads me through the nave. Visitors from across the world converge here, whether they’ve purposely travelled to Lincoln Cathedral or they’ve found themselves in the city on other business. I’m hearing English, Scottish, and American accents, spoken French, German, Mandarin, Hindi.

Even as a Welshman in England, I feel welcome.

Echoes ring above the nave and its pews into the vast rafters and curved ceilings. People are bustling here beneath it all. Those who are spiritual but not religious (including Charli and I), Christian, practitioners of other religions, atheists… all of us are here. All of us are curious.

Incense burns in the chapels at each flank of the entrance — glimmers of candlelight near-distant, sweetening the air as the burning wicks melt the wax.

Charli and I soon find ourselves in a cloister. The air seems fresher out here, somehow. The cloister sits in the shadow of one of the cathedral’s immense towers. Tombstones and small headstones protrude from the trimmed grass. We sit upon a bench that faces outwards onto this enclosed quadrangle lawn.

Our conversation quickly turns existential. We owe that to our surroundings. Charli and I discuss our spiritual views and overall life philosophies. I attempt to explain my own: that there is a universal and ageless energy between human beings. It drives us to instinctively do what humans naturally do — move, create, love, cry, eventually die. It goes beyond mere biology and brain chemistry. I explain that I’m inclined to believe there’s a higher order behind all of this.

But even if there isn’t, the energy between human beings on earth is more than enough. It’s the reason we’re alive. To be human and take part in this unfolding.

Whatever that means.

I’m not sure how much of this Charli agrees with. We unpack this for a while before she shares her own similar worldview. We don’t hate religion — we’re just sceptical of its negative effects, the weaponisation of spiritual thinking, its historic use by the Establishment to control society.

Memorials

We sit outside for a little longer before she leads me into the cathedral’s military chapel. There are various memorials from many wars, mainly both World Wars. Charli and I share our surprise at the fact that humanity survived World War I and World War II.

We agree that if World War III breaks out, humanity will not survive.

On our way out of the cathedral, we decide to sit in the Ringers Chapel. Today happens to be Sunday. It’s the Sunday before Easter, in fact. The priests prepare for a mass and the chapels hum with activity. Candles are lit. Visitors chat to one another.

A stranger catches my attention. He walks over to the altar and kneels solemnly in front of the railings. Here, he prays. Something gives me the impression that he has suffered immensely, or is seeking forgiveness. There is immense gravity in his every movement. Longish dark black hair and a thick beard conceals his face, which is shadowed by a solemn expression. He kneels and prays for a minute or so. Afterwards, he lifts his head, crosses himself, stands, and strides out of the chapel. He moves with purpose. It’s as though he’s about to carry out a mission for which he seeks some divine guidance or blessing.

On his way out, he passes an elderly lady who must be in her late eighties or early nineties. She’s in a wheelchair, pushed by someone decades younger than her — a relative or friend or hired carer.

Conclusions

The woman is dying. That’s my immediate thought. Intuition leads me to this conclusion. She’s so frail and thin, so exhausted-looking that it’s as though she’s been awake for years. She doesn’t have long left. Even she seems to know it. It’s such a human tendency to find solace in religion when one is dying. When it comes to anything death-related.

Christianity — religion in general — helps us to make sense of death. This woman in the chapel … perhaps she has been a Christian for many years. Perhaps she is only now coming to it. That’s one of religion’s merits: it responds to questions that we’ll never know the answers to. I absolutely understand why people find religion comforting. This woman certainly does.

She stares out at the altar. There’s softness in her eyes. As the woman pushing her wheelchair chats to two other people, whether they’re strangers or they have accompanied them both, the elderly woman smiles at the altar.

She defies the pain and wear of her age.

There’s something beyond her.

She’s still smiling as Charli and I leave the chapel.