Cambridge Adventures: Day One - An English Sabbath

It was an interesting Sunday. One that I am not at all accustomed to. In saying this, I don't mean that it was unenjoyable at all. Here's what happened:

In the morning, I skipped breakfast and slept in. Oh, the delight! So, I didn't get up until after ten. Then I went to the market and got myself something to eat and walked/shopped around for a bit. It was a nice relaxing morning.

A little after one, coaches left from Robinson to go to Ely Cathedral for the afternoon and for our worship service. I read the whole way there - I bought the next book in my series... I just couldn't wait til I got home!

Ely Cathedral is the most breath-taking building I've seen yet, and that's saying something, considering the buildings that are in Oxford and Cambridge! Here are some shots:

"Wot's this? I'm in Narnia?!"

I just couldn't keep my eyes off that Cathedral!

Two hallways like this ran down the sides of the main worship area.

The main hall - I'm standing in the middle of it, so this goes about the same distance behind me, too. :O

This was the catachism area - there's built-in desks on both sides that are hard to see.

The dome above where the priests stand and the choir and stuff.

So those pictures don't really show a fraction of the cathedral... there were so many staggering details. If you ever to England, make SURE you take a day trip to go see the Ely Cathedral.

To [unintentionally] enhance the whole experience, there happened to be a chamber choir recording a CD there that day, and they were in some obscure wing, away from the tourist-infested areas, but while we were walking around outside, we could hear it through the walls... it sounded like LOTR music. It was SO beautiful! We went in to the huge room they were recording in and watched for a while.

The worship service was very interesting. I believe a congregation regularly meets there, and so our huge group joined them. It's an Anglican church, so there were lots of ceremonies and formal practices - they were pretty cool though. A boys and mens choir was leading the service - most of which they sang - all these prayers and texts - in beautiful harmony, of course. It was amazing. And we kneeled to pray! That was pretty cool. It was a bit hard to concentrate on the act of worshipping... I was so in awe at everything! But I guess marvelling at beauty is worshipping, in a way.

Anyways, we went back to Cambridge right after the service and had an opening reception (there were lots of new people joining us for the Cambridge week) but I was pretty tired, so I didn't stay too long. I just read and rested until our evening session at the St. Mary's (the University church at Cambridge) which was really cool. Paul Barnes played some more Phillip Glass pieces (this time from his Orphee symphonies) and Kate Butler sang some finally unopera songs! They were just humourous musical-esque pieces that she acted/sang - the first was about a woman who was far too in love with her iPod, and the second was about a couple who's marriage was destroyed because of an unhealthy addiction to Sunday morning crosswords. They were pretty funny.

After the performances, American artist Bruce Herman (http://bruceherman.com/index.htm) gave an informal talk on how our culture views beauty - has lost sight of it, actually - and how art affects/is affected by that. It was a question/answer style lecture, so that was pretty sweet.

An Oxbridge tradition is the Bag-end Cafe. I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but yeah, it was started a few years ago by a regular conferee, Andrew Lazzo, a really funny and energetic guy who teaches mythology at a University in the States somewheres. Anyways, the Bag-end Cafe is just this: everyone is invited to the college bar and we mingle and drink, then every night there's a special guest who answers questions or leads a discussion (always related to the Arts) and it's a really informal and comfortable atmosphere. Also, people can share poetry and prose, and yeah. Basically it's just a gathering of Art lovers who come together to drink and talk. I went for the first time at night and enjoyed it SO thoroughly! Bruce Herman was the guest there, so I was able to ask him all the questions I was too scared to ask at the big lecture. Then some people read some of their poetry and the actor dude, Tony Lawton, sang a song - I think he had consumed a couple pints by this time. It was a beautiful folk song though, and he sung very well.
It was just so much fun; I wish I had started going last week.

By the time I got back to my room, it was almost 12, so I just crashed - hence I am a day behind in blogging, and will probably remain so for the rest of the week. So I'll have to tell you about today, tomorrow, and so on and so forth.

Anyways. Until tomorrow then - I have many exciting events to tell you about!

-CH