In a Meadow at Runnymede: Magna Carta 1215-2015

It's been an absorbing day. I have been at Runnymede representing the Cathedral at the celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Durham does not, like Lincoln and Salisbury, possess an original 1215 Issue, the one that King John signed in this place on this very day. But we do have the only known Issue of 1216, two others of 1225 and 1300, together with the Forest Charters of the same years. It is an outstanding collection. 

Obscurely prompted by 1066 And All That, I'd imagined Runnymede as a rather soggy place. My wife told me to pack a thermal T-shirt to wear during five long hours in the fresh air. If the Barons had met the King by the banks of the River Wear, it would have been the right advice. As it was, Thames-side has been positively balmy, and when the sun came out later in the morning, decidedly warm. Just right for this happy, colourful Carta-Fest.
 
I don't need to describe the event: you will know all about it from the media. (It wasn't possible to live-tweet as there was no more 3G to be had today as there was in 1215 - a security blackout or is coverage along the Thames corridor as patchy as it is along our Pennine rivers?). So here are a few personal reflections on the day.
 
1. The speeches were the centrepiece. They were concise and to the point. The Master of the Rolls underlined Magna Carta's historic role in politics, governance and the rule of law. The Prime Minister (who has form when it comes to being tested on his knowledge of MC) cited Nelson Mandela who, on trial and facing a lifetime in prison, quoted the Charter and the constitutional liberties England owed to it. The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke about his predecessor Stephen Langton and his key contribution to Magna Carta, and as an example of upholding its principles of justice, singled out Bishops of Durham for their defence of the miners. I especially liked that bit and nearly applauded. Princess Anne referred to it as a bulwark against the abuse of human rights. Even if you could have predicted that much of this would be said, it was right to say it on this symbolic day. And it was well said.
 
2. Children and young people were prominently involved. The warm-up events gave us a hugely enjoyable menu of singing, ballet and drama. The best moment was a colourful procession of flags carried by school children into the arena. The flags represented all the counties of the UK; they were designed by children through competitions held among schools in each county. I was especially pleased to see County Durham's because the Cathedral's own Chorister School won the competition. It was good to see the Cross of St Cuthbert in all its northernness, together with a pit wheel and a Northumbrian bastle, paraded on a southern field before this large and distinguished crowd.
 
3. I hadn't appreciated until today the huge significance Magna Carta has for the USA. The American Bar Association's Magna Carta Memorial is a prominent landmark at Runnymede. Today it was rededicated by the Princess Royal after its recent renovation. The President of the ABA and the US Attorney General spoke to good effect about the American Constitution, how 1215 was only the beginning of a long journey towards justice, how we must all deliver on the promises held out then. 'Magna Carta defines what we must do and who we must be if there is to be peace in our world.' (I suppose the whole of West Wing is a dramatic commentary on this - I couldn't stop it coming to mind as we stood for the Stars and Stripes. In the Deanery we have almost reached the end of our second time watching the whole of this brilliant series. But that's for another blog.)
 
4. The music was excellent, and performers rose to the challenge of playing and singing in the difficult acoustic environment of the open air. The London Philharmonic Orchestra gave us a rumbustious programme of classics, including Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man and Beethoven's Wellington Symphony, a fun piece (not his greatest) I have only ever heard at open-air concerts. The European subtext of a German composer celebrating an English victory over a French self-proclaimed emperor was no doubt not lost on the audience (or on the PM who may even have chosen it for the occasion). The Temple Church Choir robed in scarlet sang a newly commissioned anthem by John Rutter and a passage from one of Handel's Coronation Anthems, 'Let justice and judgment, mercy and truth go before thy face'. It was just right for the occasion and beautifully performed: another highlight.

5. There was art in abundance, including a fine new piece by Hew Locke which was dedicated by the Duke of Cambridge. It's called The Jurors and consists of twelve empty chairs. They symbolise justice and the rule of law, and the idea is that visitors to Runnymede sit in them and thus become part of the good story of justice themselves. There is a noble simplicity in the way the chairs are executed and arranged; and as interactive sculpture, effective, proving very popular with today's crowd after the ceremony.
 
6. All this made for a memorable event. But I wonder if something was lacking. I felt there needed to be some big symbolic act to bring it to a climax and give ritual shape to it, some way in which we could unite in appropriating and making our own the high ideals that were spoken about and honoured today. For example, children could have processed a facsimile of the Charter on to the podium and presented it to the Queen and the Archbishop. Some sentences could have been read out, and the audience invited to respond in words pledging loyalty to its ideals. There could even have been a prayer of rededication. (Yes! Why not, when the English Church and Archbishop played a crucial part in the events of 1215?) There was one prayer and it was a beautifully framed one, but that formed part of the American Bar Association ceremony and wasn't read from the central podium. An archiepiscopal blessing on the nation in the presence of The Queen as Supreme Governor of the Church of England would have been especially apt. As so often, these public ceremonies are timid about acknowledging the central place of religion in our common life. I'm not saying the faith dimension was absent. today It was implicit in many parts of the celebration, especially the music (and not forgetting Cuthbert's cross so prominent on the Durham flag!). I'm simply wondering whether the event altogether did justice to the comprehensive religious world view of our British and American forebears to whom Magna Carta was a foundation document of faith. We should have more confidence than even in a society as diverse as ours, public ceremony need not fight shy of religion. 
 
7. The organisers of today deserve to be pleased with the success of this great event. Everything was done in an exemplary way. I want in particular to pay tribute to the officials, stewards, security staff and police on duty: their good humour and warmth made a big difference to the feel of this great event. We in the north tend to think we are better at generating a sense of welcome and friendliness than southerners. Today has made me think again....
 
How to sum it all up? I am sure everybody who was at today's sunny celebration in Runnymede will agree that it was a real privilege to be there. It has been inspiring to reflect on the emblematic significance of Magna Carta and why it matters to people across the world. I am sure it should matter rather more to us in England, and institutions like Durham Cathedral that are guardians of these almost sacred texts need to think hard about how we use them to work for us in our endeavour to promote the common good of all the human family. The Charter is not simply about heritage. It is a tool for mission and social justice. That is an important thing to have glimpsed today. 
 
As to being brought closer to the spirit of 1215, it's more difficult to say. If I felt it anywhere, it wasn't in the presence of royalty and the nation's leaders, nor in the big crowd, the music or the speeches. I felt it most when I was walking early this morning to the arena along the banks of the river that has borne witness to the centuries of history that have shaped our nation and brought us to today. The water meadows of Runnymede are still a beautiful, unspoilt landscape thanks to the National Trust. The day was calm and still, as if - corny thought this - the trees, the flowers, the water, the air were all meditating quietly on the momentous event that took place there eight hundred years ago. There was complete tranquillity. That may turn out to be - for me - today's enduring gift. I don't know yet. Time will tell. 
 

 

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. 

Spirituality and the Olympic Opening Ceremony

I admit it: I was sceptical.  The more the BBC ramped up the hyperbole in the countdown to the opening ceremony, the less inclined I was to watch.  It will be studded with slick celebs, I thought, cheerfully grandiose and gung-ho, full of the tired rhetoric of sport and nationhood.  Or it will be just plain embarrassing, like the Eurovision Song Contest. I’ll give it a few minutes, I decided, maybe dip in and out every so often.

But it was compulsive viewing.  This was not the theatre of stardom, 'us' watching 'them' dazzle us.  This theatre belonged to the thousands of ordinary people who took part in it.  And therefore it belonged to us all.  I didn’t expect to enjoy it but I did.  I didn’t think I would be moved but I was. 

Everyone said that the director Danny Boyle was faced with an impossible task.  Not simply how to follow Bejing four years ago, but how to present our country to the world.  In that, he succeeded brilliantly.  It was an astonishing technical feat that left so many unforgettable images, many of them of great beauty.  Who will forget the nostalgic rural idyll being torn apart, those industrial chimneys forcing their way out of the ground, the Wagner-like forging of the Olympic ring, or the Olympic cauldron being born out of fire?  Or the scores of nurses with their hospital beds, or Peter Pan and other themes from children’s literature, or Mr Bean (alumnus of the Chorister School here at Durham) at the keyboard during Chariots of Fire? As theatre, ballet, ceremony, call it what you will, it was hard to fault. It was entirely different from Bejing (thankfully), and in its originality, from any other sporting event I can recall.  It was far, far better.

But more important was what the ceremony had to say about us.  Is there such a thing as our national character, a collective British personality type if you like?  The opening ceremony isn’t simply a shop-window for the world: come and spend at GB plc.  It’s a mirror held up to ourselves.  The important question is whether we recognise ourselves in what we see.  And that comes down to telling the truth about us.  That is a far bigger challenge than pyrotechnics and clever effects.

I think we saw some important things that spoke about Britishness in the 21^st century.  I’m not thinking so much of pride in the beauty of our landscapes or our pioneering achievements, though it is good to remind the world – and ourselves - about them.  I’m more interested in intangible values like care and compassion, inclusivity and diversity, flair and creativity, modesty and understatement, the confidence to be at ease with ourselves, our ability to question ourselves, our enjoyment of life.  We saw something of our complexity: this was an event to probe beneath the surface and explore.  It was good to see humour play a big part in the show, something we British are surely best at in the world.  The trouble with sport is that it takes itself absurdly seriously much of the time.  The large dose of subversive irony and self-deprecation (involving even Her Majesty) came over as authentic.  But the fun was at no-one’s expense.  It was all done with affection. Of pomposity and deference there was none.  Of respect: plenty.

In this complex, richly textured offering, what about the spirituality of the British?  Here again, my expectations of a completely secular ceremony with religion airbrushed out were surprised. The lone chorister singing ‘Jerusalem’ at the start (an echo of ‘Once in Royal’ at the beginning of the Nine Lessons and Carols?)seemed to announce a spiritual dimension to the evening.  Danny Boyle’s programme note speaks about the vision of ‘building Jerusalem’.  Blake’s great poem is subtly ambiguous: it would have been so easy to blast it out in the arena as if it were the Last Night of the Proms.  Instead, Boyle was true to Blake's text, which is his Christian vision of a just and caring society. But it has to be formed and helped to flourish with the native gifts and characteristics that make us what we are.  This nuanced awareness is, I think, an aspect of the spirituality of our islands that we cherish.  It’s embedded in the way we do liturgy and theology. In its eloquence and simplicity, that moment carried great power.  

The other moment where faith broke through was in the invitation to remember ‘those who are not here’.  After the spectacle and the celebration, what heralded the arrival of the athletes was not a grand rhetorical climax but the silencing of the crowd, an act of recollection, the words of a prayer.  For yes, unbelievably, we had all of ‘Abide with me’ sung quietly while a simple ballet on the theme of being lost and found was performed on the stage.  It was a clever choice because of its Cup Final resonances; and yet once again, it was subverted in a way that restored meaning to a great hymn and personalised it.  ‘Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes / Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies’: who would have thought we would hear such words charged with Christian hope and expectation at an Olympic opening ceremony?  For me it was among the most moving aspects of the whole event.  

There is more to 'spirituality' than when it surfaces and becomes explicit.  It has an intuitive side that doesn't get expressed in words but is still alive in most people's experience of life.  Perhaps in the joy and exuberance of last night, something more about life and about God was hinted at.  Perhaps some may have experienced it as a kind of liturgy.  Perhaps, even, the sight of thousands of people of every age, background and ethnicity throwing themselves into this genuinely democratic celebration offered a glimpse of Jerusalem and of the kingdom of heaven itself. 

When words of faith do get uttered, especially when we are not expecting them, we should listen not only to what they say but how they are said.  This was what I did not foresee last night.  And for once, I’m prepared to trust how I responded as I watched.  I believe there was spiritual truth to be glimpsed in what we saw and heard. Yes, it was a performance and a great one.  But the trick was to make it more than a mere performance, to enable it to say something intelligent and interesting, even profound, about how we are to ourselves and to our world.  And, the ceremony seemed to be saying, how we are before God too. 

  

Religion by Degrees: thoughts on Graduation Day

It’s been graduation week in Durham. 

The peninsula has been a kaleidoscope of colour as academic staff and graduating students don their gowns and hoods and process into the Cathedral to receive their degrees.  The new Chancellor, Sir Thomas Allen, was installed at a ceremony on Tuesday.  Then he presided over no fewer than 14 congregations. Many thousands of people: graduands and their families, honorary graduands, staff, governors and alumni have passed through the Cathedral.  It has been a happy and enjoyable week.

The Dean of Durham is an ex officio governor of the University. This recalls the history of Durham University, founded in 1832 by the Bishop and the Cathedral’s Dean and Chapter.  The Bishop gave his castle as its first college, and the Cathedral gave large estates to secure its endowment.  It was also influential in shaping the direction of the young institution, and its first Chancellor, 100 years ago, was a Dean of Durham. 

I make a point of being at all the ceremonies.  I sit on the platform with the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor and the other University senior staff.  Most of the ceremony involves sitting still and ‘lending tone’ as we deans sometimes say.  If you enjoy people-watching this is fertile theatre: each graduand has his or her own way of mounting the dais and shaking the Chancellor’s hand (or offering a more intimate gesture).  It’s like Peter Brook’s Empty Space: each time the stage is crossed, a new drama is created.  The Chancellor is a lively speaker whose love of the north-east is infectious.  And I have to say that compared to many other such ceremonies I have been to, Durham does it well.  

It’s customary for the Dean to give a welcome at the very beginning: guests at graduations are the Cathedral’s guests as well as the University’s.  So I take this seriously because it sets the tone of the whole event.  And it’s not quite as obvious as it sounds because the majority of those who have come for the ceremony will not be used to sitting in a church.  Many of them, especially if they have come from overseas, will belong to another world faith.  Many more will be agnostics or have no faith at all (the Vice-Chancellor makes no secret of his thoroughgoing atheism). 

When I first arrived in Durham, I was asked to say in my welcome that a graduation ceremony is not a religious service.  As a now wholly-secular organisation, the University is highly sensitive about not conveying the wrong message by holding congregations in the Cathedral.  So I have complied ever since.  The formula is something like: ‘this is a working Christian church, but this is not a religious event.  So whatever your faith tradition, I hope you feel at home in this great building’. 

But this week I have wondered about whether this is an appropriate or even an honest thing to say.  It suggests that the Cathedral is simply a very grand shed in which to hold a big secular event.  There’s no point in wishing that we could ‘bless’ these ceremonies with a prayer as some Scottish universities still do.  When at my first congregation I ended by saying to the graduands, ‘God bless you wherever your paths take you in the future’ I was roundly told off for offending susceptibilities. So this is not going to happen under the present leadership.

But there is a deeper question here.  To my mind, any ceremony in a sacred building takes on the character of liturgy, even if God is never mentioned.  You simply can’t do ritual in a Cathedral without the Cathedral itself having a say in what goes on. And Durham Cathedral unambiguously says, in the old words of the Delphic oracle, ‘whether recognised or not, the deity is present’.  In such a numinous, transformative space, there is a powerful and compelling religious message. The building shapes our words and actions in ways we can’t predict and don’t necessarily intend.  Sometimes, after a graduation, parents will say: ‘thank you for that service which we enjoyed so much’.

So it’s simply not true that ‘this is not a religious ceremony’.  The Cathedral defines it as being precisely that, and as liturgists say, the building always wins in the end. Perhaps it would be better if I said: ‘you are welcome here, whatever your faith background. Make of this event what you will.  Be glad to be in this great Cathedral and let it speak to you in whatever way you are ready to listen.  This Cathedral was built for celebrations and enjoys them.  So let it help you celebrate today’.   

I have a few months to think about this: the next graduations are in January.  Meanwhile, the PA and CCTV installations are coming down, and the nave is returning to its customary calm.  For a few hours: tomorrow it’s ordination day.