Seasons of Durham Life: January

After the excitements of Advent and Christmas, January is quiet, like the frosts and mists that steal up on the peninsula in midwinter. I ought to have had time to write this January blog during the month itself. But it got overtaken by other things: writing that I'd not had time to finish over Christmas, large Cathedral matters I had to give time to. And our minds and prayers have been occupied by what has been happening beyond our shores, terrible events in Iraq, Syria, Nigeria and elsewhere.

Here in Durham, we have had a tragedy. Winter took its toll on a student who fell into the icy black waters of the River Wear in the small hours of a January morning. Durham's river banks are lovely beyond description, but they are a trap for the unwary who don't know the topography. In the dark, they pose hazards that have taken their toll on no fewer than three young student lives in the past 14 months (and nearly took a fourth just last week). The Cathedral owns sections of the river banks, though not where this latest drowning took place. In an intimate city like this, any grave incident makes you stop and think. We have been talking with the University, the Police and the Local Authority to see what needs to be done to make sure no-one else loses their life in a place of exquisite beauty. It was a shocking reminder that even beauty has its dark side.

January feels like 'ordinary time': gentle and steady. No-one affects to like January very much. But in the Cathedral it is still Christmas until the feast of Candlemas on 2 February. So there has been light and colour to enjoy. During these forty days, the crib has been in position, as have the Christmas trees under the Victorian Scott Screen. At Epiphany, we celebrate the revealing of the infant Jesus to the world and develop the rich theme of how something so tiny as an infant can have significance for the entire cosmos. Incarnation makes me think of Hamlet: 'I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space'. It goes on 'were it not that I have bad dreams'. Epiphany feels like a season of good dreams, imagining our world as it would be if this infant King reigned, with all its wrongs righted and tears and pain brought to an end.

Our development project Open Treasure continues through the month. The cloister buildings are enveloped in scaffolding. Behind, mostly invisible, we are treated to bangs and thuds and the whine of machinery as the contractors continue the long and noisy job of preparing these ancient buildings to house our wonderful treasures such as Cuthbert's cross, the Durham Gospels and three copies of Magna Carta. There is mud everywhere, and much of it finds its way into the cloister, the Cathedral and our homes. The chantier (is there an English word for a works site?) has eaten up precious parking space in the College, so visitors' cars get left in front of the Deanery gates, much to the annoyance of its occupants. But these are the trials of progress. Spirits are high as we see this great work move forward. By summer, the fabric conservation will be finished. College Green will return to its verdant normal, in time for the Chorister School to entertain its speech day guests for tea underneath the branches of the spreading beech trees.

Meanwhile, the days get longer, though ever so slowly at first. But there are snowdrops on the river banks and in the Deanery garden. The golden sunlight that illuminates the pillar opposite the Dean's stall at morning prayer around solstice time has gone for another year. It's a welcome sign that the sun is climbing back up the sky towards the zenith, and with it, the sap is rising in the trees. And in our spirits, I trust. Ready for Lent when it comes in February.

Seasons of Durham Life 2: November

'Now is the time for the burning of the leaves' says Lawence Binyon of the late autumn. The trees are stripped bare. It can take you by surprise if there is an overnight storm or a sudden sharp frost. This year, November has brought calm, warm days as if to coax the golden leaves to stay a little longer. But they know it is time. And now the trees in the College and on the river banks are almost bare. The peninsula is bedding down for winter.

November is an up-and-down month in the Cathedral. It begins on an upbeat with All Saints' Day: all light and splendour and warmth. But next day it's All Souls when we remember our dead. So the liturgy takes us from alleluias to 'requiem aeternam' in the space of just a few hours. All Souls sets the tone for so much of the month: elegiac, reflective, sombre. By now it is entirely dark at evensong each day. The Cathedral vaults are lost in the gloom, though they still echo to the singing of choristers. Sometimes there are just a handful of worshippers strung out along the length of the quire, almost lost in the dark 17th century stalls. The nave may be quite empty. 

Regulars in cathedrals wouldn't wish it otherwise. When you have several hundred thousand visitors streaming through the Cathedral, you welcome these weeks marked by a quieter pace between October half term and Advent when it all starts up again. It can feel like a mini-Lent, a chance to breathe and take stock. The Cathedral has its own tranquil beauty in this quiet empty season. 'Ordinary time' is a precious gift in the liturgical calendar, just as it is in human life.

The 2nd or 3rd Sunday of November is Remembrance, with Armistice Day close by. The service that culminates in the two minute silence and act of remembrance echoes the reflective character of the month. In the 12 years I have been Dean, I have been intrigued by how big this service has become. It's interesting how many students and young people come nowadays. Undoubtedly, 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq have a lot to do with it, along with a deeper awareness of what we owe to our armed services, and how fragile peace really is. And perhaps, too, a greater sense of citizenship and how ceremony in public life, whether it is celebration or lament, can bind a society together. 

But November is also marked by a number of celebrations that are special to Durham. There are red-letter days marked by joyful services and processions as we remember those who have played a part in the story of  North East England. St Margaret of Scotland, a great 11th century friend of the Cathedral, and St Hild, the foremost female leader of the Saxon church in the 7th century, are commemorated on successive days when we go in procession to their altars swinging the incense and singing hymns. Other Durham people remembered this month include the much-loved 20th century Archbishop Michael Ramsey in whose memory a new stained-glass window was installed a few years ago, and the 15th century Bishop Thomas Langley, Chancellor of England, whose tomb is in the Galilee Chapel and who founded the two schools associated with the Cathedral.

The litany of famous North East names are gathered up in another November occasion, the annual celebration of Founders and Benefactors (or 'Bounders and Malefactors' as it is affectionately known). This service on the last Sunday of the church year brings people together from across the North East to celebrate the generosity of past ages towards our great public institutions. Civic leaders come to give thanks for the life of Durham City, its University and the Cathedral without which neither would have existed. The service culminates in a procession to St Cuthbert's shrine where posies are laid on his tomb as our tribute to the humble man of Lindisfarne to whom the North of England looks as the fountainhead and inspiration of so much of our past and present. This year we celebrate the centenary of this service in its modern form, though its roots go back to the Middle Ages when a 'Liber Vitae' recording the names of the Priory's benefactors was laid on the altar in their memory each year. We now have a modern Liber Vitae which names all who have supported the Cathedral through generous giving and loyal voluntary service in recent times, and this too is laid on the high altar together with the facsimile of the Lindisfarne Gospels.

After this burst of colourful splendour, it is back to a few more days to reflect as the daylight continues to fade, and the year grows old and prepares to slip gently into its night. By then it will be Advent.