Other Churches, Cathedrals

I knew when I came to DC two weeks ago that I wanted to visit the Washington National Cathedral and maybe one other Episcopal church, much like my walk down the Mall, past the White House and to the theater where Lincoln was shot (it was closed). My company’s headquarters are here, so while I’ve gone out to some nice dinners and shopped at the famous Politics and Prose bookstore on Connecticut Avenue, most of the time I’ve been as usual strapped to my computer.

It was not until yesterday afternoon, in fact, that I finally made it to the National Cathedral. (Last Sunday, I had tried to go to St. Margaret’s, a small 1894 church on Connecticut Avenue that I passed on the way to my office every day. But there was no parking, none.) Anyway, I was at the National Cathedral several years ago for a wedding. It is imposing, the second largest church in the United States, the seat of our Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. Construction started in 1907 and ended in 1990. It is massive. It is impressive. It is overwhelming. And not particularly intimate, given that basic nature. The center west entrance sculpture, I thought was oddly a depiction of hell, not a big theme in the Episcopal Church. I was wrong. It is actually eight men and women struggling “out of nothingness”, the title of the work, which is meant to show God’s creation of humankind.

I’m no critic. But this isn’t a place where the saints are depicted as jolly loving carriers of God’s Word. They are serious, mournful even.

So when I found the (relatively) small building behind the cathedral, which turned out to be the College of Preachers, stone, slate roof. I followed a winding path, my shoulder brushing against very old boxwood bushes, healthy lavender, fig trees, flowers like tiny blue porcelain buttons with rubies set in the center, yellow flowers hydrangeas of every type—beyond the white oak leaf variety or the balls of blue. Dinosaur ferns. There were azaleas and I don’t know what else. Of course, I thought of our Peachy and our gardens and woods. I wondered who the Cathedral’s “Peachy” was and imagined our Peachy in deep garden conversation with that unknown person. And that was my trip.

Then this morning, I decided to make another attempt at St. Margaret’s. On the website I read one thing I already knew—parking is almost impossible. But I learned another thing that I did not know—you can park at the Washington Hilton across the street and walk over. And as I was walking through the cement mausoleum that is the muggy parking garage of that hotel, I felt a little bitter. It seemed to me an awful lot of trouble to visit a church. Seems like (despite being built in 1894) they should have a parking lot where your feet don’t have blisters by the time you get to the red door.

I will say, I enjoyed the service. It was casual though the church was old, traditional, with beautiful stained glass windows, a loving Christ in the one over the altar. I easily fell into the service but sat in my pew quietly before communion as a pre-communion healing service was conducted. I watched as each person asking for healing spoke to the priest, telling the issue and then hands were laid and prayers and blessings said. Being Pentecost Sunday, the color was red but I saw most people simply wearing light colors, loose cotton clothing to combat the terrible heat. I listened about the people in the Bible who spoke all the different languages but they were speaking in tongues through the Holy Ghost. The barriers were taken down. They saw they were alike. They understood one another.

During Peace, the woman in front of me, I think from some African nation, turned around and without hesitation hugged me. Peace. An older lesbian couple two pews back, reached way over to take my hand. Peace. And a quite elderly white couple with snowy white hair, the husband and wife each smiled and passed peace my way. There were children in shorts and a baby crying in back. And I thought, this was certainly a lot of trouble to get here. And worth every bit.

That said, I can’t wait to be home. And I’m hoping that the visitors to St. Dunstan’s this summer find that after they’ve gotten lost a Sunday or two but persisted to find us and joined us for worship, we leave them feeling exactly the same—part of one body.