The wife and I recently returned from a must needed and well deserved “extended vacation” in Europe. I put quotes around that phrase because after five years of marriage we’ve learned that “extended vacation” actually means “visiting relatives on holidays.” You can imagine this tragic definition caused considerable laughter between us once we learned that the Brits call all vacations “holidays.”
While I’ll spare you any long-winded details of our trip, a couple of moments drew such rare inspiration that not mentioning them seems criminal. We spent a remarkable night on the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral surrounded by beauty and history I never imagined beyond reading Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” and T.S. Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral.” The gothic structure’s brown, aged walls are adorned with weatherworn statues of saints and martyrs and seem to reach up from ground as if to support the sky. Because we stayed on grounds, we were able to walk around the World Heritage site at night, those same walls lit only by the blue shading of moonlight.
Inside, the Cathedral became a living, breathing animal. Tourists and clergy moved about, inspecting rows of monuments, the enormous architecture and the sheer awe of a structure that has drawn pilgrimages to the site since medieval times. While I never claim to be the most ardent Christian, I was close to tears as I walked along the deep grooves worn into marble floor by ages and ages of pilgrims. And the stained glass, dancing by sunlight, filled the dark and amazing space with small touches of color and a sense that much-higher presence surrounded those gathered.
That night we attended a candlelit choral concert inside the cavernous chamber. Again I fought back tears as voices filled in the perfect acoustics of the holy structure. The emotions rendered that night, still linger.
Another moment I hope will always remain at easy recollection belongs to the Tate Modern, London’s newest art gallery. While I could spend several hours recalling the amount of precious art Sarah and I studied there (as well as at the National Gallery), one room brought me an incredible sense of harmony.
In the 1950s Mark Rothko was commissioned to paint a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York City. The owners hoped that the color and brightness seen in his earlier work would be the perfect companion to their restaurant’s atmosphere. However, upon finishing the canvases, Rothko dropped out of the commission because the darker mood of the piece seemed unsuitable for the restaurant setting. The work now lives in a smallish room at the Tate that is surrounded by other pieces of his art, as well as several of Jackson Pollock’s better know pieces.
Once inside, enormous, dark canvases become the small room. With your back to the door, you are washed in what seems like such simple strokes, but by lingering longer, the deep complexity of the work presses into you. At first you feel a sense of claustrophobia, the type of anxiety that felt when embarking upon near-impossible tasks, but moments later the room transforms from tight space to infinite openness. Thinking back, the time I spent soaking in the canvases of maroon, dark red and black closely match the religious experience felt on our trip to Canterbury.
