Midsummer. Not that you'd feel it most of the time. The cool grey spring has slid imperceptibly into a cool grey summer. In previous Junes after evensong, we'd sit on the bench outside the Deanery front door drinking tea (or if it was a festival, G&T). Not in 2015. But whatever the hue of the sky you get to love these long northern evenings. Southern guests can't believe that the sky is still light at 11pm. There have been auroras on rare clear nights, I'm told, though the Cathedral, berthed like a great galleon a few yards outside the Deanery windows blocks out all sight of the northern sky so we haven't set eyes on them. 'Decanus Borealis' has yet to glimpse Aurora Borealis. It's on my bucket list of must-see sights before I die.
At Christmas and Easter, people jokingly say to deans, 'this is your busy time'. I never like admitting to being busy - it doesn't fit with my concept of how a priest should be, having time for God and time for people. A few Lents ago we launched a rather good project with the hash tag #NotBusy and its own website. It was meant to help us all live in a more reflective prayerful way and not be overwhelmed by activity. So I smile and say, 'well yes, there's a fair amount to do. And it's all good'. (You may recognise that last bit as the upbeat catchphrase in the brilliant TV comedy series 2012. Accentuate the positive.)
In cathedrals however, June and July are just as full as the run up to Christmas and Easter. At the tail end of the Easter season comes Pentecost, and then several weeks of end-of-year celebrations and events. Schools have prize-giving and leavers' services. In Durham, this includes several days of packed leavers' services for local authority schools in the area. The Cathedral Education Department is occupied with visits at a time of year when schools are keen to take students off-site and plan imaginative excursions and projects. The Cathedral Friends, a fine body of far-flung people who support us with great generosity hold their annual festival. There are concerts and recitals. The University has four full days of vast graduation ceremonies. Hard on the heels of all this come the summer ordinations (this year in early July so I'll come back to those next month).
And of course the visitor season is in full swing. June and September are 'Saga' months when most of our visitors are adults who have chosen vacation dates that will avoid the school holidays. It's not so much children and youngsters that our more senior guests are avoiding, I suspect, as the absurdly inflated prices many outfits charge holidaymakers the moment summer term ends. This isn't true of us of course. I'm sure you know that we don't charge a penny for admission to the Cathedral: we believe that hospitality to holy spaces should be without payment or condition for all who wish to come in. This 'public benefit' costs us around £2 million each year, and voluntary donations come nowhere near to matching it. How to make up that sum and keep Cathedral finances stable is a continual challenge for the Chapter and our Finance Office.
Meanwhile, the great works on our £10.5+ million Open Treasure project continue. The precinct has been a building site for months; but at last, the scaffolding is starting to come down, and the historic buildings round the cloister are beginning to be revealed in their full glory following intensive conservation. The new exhibitions they will hold will be installed at the turn of the year. These will be fully open in a year's time, and will transform the way we display the amazing array of treasures that we hold in our collections. These include priceless Saxon and Norman manuscripts, early printed books, artefacts like the incomparable Saxon cross that go back to St Cuthbert and the Lindisfarne community, no fewer than three copies of Magna Carta, gorgeous church plate from the post-Reformation period... where do I stop? To exhibit these wonderful things in the monastic dormitory, the medieval kitchen and a new collections gallery will make for marvellous exhibitions in their own right. But we want the exhibition timeline to interpret the Cathedral's Christian past and present in ways that will help visitors understand why it is here at all. 'Open Treasure' doesn't just mean creating a rather splendid museum. It means telling the story of the Cathedral's life and community across the centuries, and pointing to the treasure that is nothing less than the gospel itself. It will become a vital part of our mission and Christian outreach.
For me personally, the month has been a time to take stock. The summer solstice has fallen exactly one hundred days before my retirement in September. This same month I notch up forty years as an ordained minister and twenty as a Dean (eight in Sheffield, twelve here). At the start of the month, the Prime Minister's and Archbishops' Appointment Secretaries visited Durham to look at what was needed in the next Dean. They met a lot of people within the Cathedral and in the wider community of this city, county and region. They will compile a report that will help the committee that leads the appointment process on behalf of the Crown. Words I'm hearing frequently are 'succession' and 'legacy'. It has to happen, of course, and I'm pleased for the Cathedral that it has already begun. But it's odd knowing that this activity is taking place around me while there is much work I still have to do, not least try to leave things in an orderly state for the Acting Dean and my eventual successor.
So no further valedictory thoughts: I'm not ready to become part of history just yet. For now, I want to go on being as present as I can to the Cathedral, valuing the time that is left for the gift of serving in one of England's most remarkable holy places. I have loved being Dean here, and am saying to myself more and more fervently with each day that passes, Laus Deo: Praise God! The sun may not be shining much up here. But as we come to the end of another month, I have so many reasons to be profoundly thankful.
And who knows? If the skies clear for long enough, I may get to see the Aurora after all.
About Me
- Aquilonius
- Pilgrim, priest and ponderer. European living in North East England. Retired parish priest, theological educator, cathedral precentor and dean.
Showing posts with label Open Treasure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Open Treasure. Show all posts
Wednesday, 24 June 2015
Sunday, 8 February 2015
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.
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.
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