Glasgow: Cathedral and John Piper

June 14, 2006

The train ride to Glasgow took about thirty minutes. We piled off the train at the Glasgow Queen’s Street Station. I stared around. We were in an underground station and had to climb a flight of stairs to get to the ground level. People bustled around us. We left the station and stood on the long, broad covered porch outside. People were hurrying everywhere. “Weird Europeans,” I growled, watching the crowds circulate past. A soldier in a black beret and fatigues. Businesswomen in knee-short, tight skirts. Loungers with long hair, grizzled beards, and flapping trousers. Girls with enough mascara to paint a black-and-white version of the “Mona Lisa”. Tall, dandified men with very tight slacks and half-open shirts, gold necklaces dangling down their chests. It was quite a crowd.

Lucas turned us loose, telling us to be back at the train station at five o’clock. My group wandered away aimlessly. We crossed George Street into a large open plaza. Statues of kings and queens mounted on horseback lined the edges of the plaza: stern faces, upraised swords, crowned heads. Gulls flapped and circled around. The buildings surrounding the plaza were all different from one another. In Stirling, we had seen a small slice of architecture two hundred years old, all crowded together. But in Glasgow, you see architecture from every period and style, built up on top of one another—a zoo of buildings. Most of the buildings in this part of Glasgow seemed to be built out of red sandstone, perhaps in the 1800s—five or six stories tall, with rows of windows staring down on the streets, and lines of carving on the corners. There were the usual suave green-glass-and-steel office buildings. There was an odd building, which had overtones of Frank Lloyd Wright, except that offices occupied the top story, a parking garage the second story, and dirty shops the first story. At the far end of the plaza was a magnificent red sandstone building, covered in wreaths and statues, with vaults and corbels and domes in the best baroque style. A pair of lions guarded a tall obelisk in the middle of the plaza. People lounged around the plaza. John stopped to stare at a greasy-looking man who was offering a small, hand-pushed cart in which to drive tourists around the town.

We wandered down one side of the plaza to a set of triple gates, where we stood and took pictures for awhile. Then we had to decide where we wanted to go. Some people wanted to go to the harbour, but that was too far away. There were science museums, art museums, and other attraction, but they also were out of walking distance. “I’d love to go see a cathedral,” I offered. “I would, too,” John said, and Emily added that she was game for the attempt. So Aaron and Rachel pulled out the map and stared at it for awhile. Then Aaron led us on our trek to the cathedral. It was actually just down the street, several blocks from the station, but we had taken a detour to visit the gates, so it took us longer to reach the cathedral. We walked past a construction zone where they were building some sleek postmodern buildings, all slanted roofs and blue glass and woodwork. We climbed the hill toward the cathedral, walking between narrow rows of grimy shops, which were crowded together like dirty pigeons. Tanning salons, insurance firms, the Cathedral Nearly New shop, hair salons, chemist’s (pharmacist’s), candy stores, clothing stores…. We walked by the campus of Strathclyde University, which was jumbled among the businesses and shops. At last, reaching the top of the hill, I spotted the cathedral: windows like stone flowers opening above the trees. We hurried forward.

Instead of entering Glasgow Cathedral through the front doors, the tourist entrance is through a side door. Everyone else went on ahead, but I lingered behind to get my bearings. Judging from the position of the sun, the cathedral was oriented, like all proper cathedrals, with the front doors facing west (west is the traditional direction of death—and it is interesting to note that when God closed the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, He set angels on the east side, but not on the west—it is by “going west” that we return to God). On the south side of the cathedral was a cemetery. The high wall built around the cemetery consisted of large plaques and stone mausoleums. There were many stones laid flat in the ground of the cemetery, so many that the ground was almost paved. Maple and chestnut trees had thrust some of the stones upward with thick roots. On the walls of the cathedral, gargoyles glared out over the graveyard: snarling boars, smiling women, growling dragons, sea-beasts with flowing whiskers and sharp fangs. For a moment, late afternoon sun flashed on the green slates of the cathedral, making them gleam like fishes’ scales. The golden weathercock at the top of the spire glinted. (Weathercocks are often symbolic of reawakening and repentance—think of Peter and the cock crowing three times.)

Opening the small wooden doors, I stepped inside the cathedral. And my eyes shot upwards. Trunks of stone towered above the stone floor, splitting into branches which intertwined far, far overhead. Their tracery held the clerestory windows like leaves, shimmering high above the floor, shining clear, uncoloured daylight into the dim nave. On either side of the nave, aisles ran under the stone columns. Stained-glass windows depicting saints and Biblical figures marched along these aisles—Moses, St. George, windows commemorating the Cameronians, etc. The sun shone straight through the rose window at the front of the church so that all the tiny, intricate pieces of glass glowed in their lead tracery.

In awe, I walked slowly down the nave. The sheer weight and power of the cathedral was overwhelming, almost like being inside a living creature. High, high overhead, the wooden ceiling beams were painted and gilded. Crests and shields bossed the points of the vaults and the places where stone pillars intersected with wooden beams.

Of course, I wasn’t the only person in the cathedral (though in my awe-struck state it sure seemed that way). There were other tourists—Germans, Asians, elderly folks with big cameras. There were costumed guides wearing tartans and cloaks, and a pair of blue-surpliced priests sitting at a table.

I moved down the nave. In the middle of the nave, a flight of steps led up to the body of the church itself. However, this part of the cathedral was separated from the rest of the nave by a wall of woodwork. Through an open door, I could see rows of chairs set up, the pulpit, the altar, two vases of flowers spraying lavishly beside two columns. Before the wooden wall, there were two flights of stairs leading downward into the crypt of the cathedral. I turned aside and followed one of these down, to the right. My feet clicked softly on the smooth, swaybacked lips of the steps. I found John down there, and we wandered around the crypt, staring at the stonework. Arches met and intersected continuously. The stone seemed to have been water once, with light rippling through it—then stone and light froze into pointed vaults and fine, interwoven tracery. The crypt smelled musty, and there were tombs along the walls, and shrines in the middle of the crypt. A plaque on the wall bore a memorial to Covenanters who had been killed standing up for the covenant (odd thing to find in a Catholic cathedral), complete with a victorious poem. The last two lines of the poem ran resoundingly, “They shall know on judgment day/ To kill the saints was no sweet play.”

Down in the crypt, we rejoined Virginia, Rachel, and Aaron. For awhile, I stood with Virginia, looking at an exhibit of old stones found around the cathedral, fragments of statues and gargoyles and other work. Some of the stones had traces of their original paint. Virginia patiently let me talk her ear off about the cathedral. “It looks magnificent now, but imagine what it must have looked like then. All this bare stone that we see would have been painted,” I said, and Virginia’s eyes widened. “This place is so incredibly magnificent. When I come to such a place, I’m reminded of just how small we are as human beings.” “It reminds you that there’s something greater,” Virginia said. “Yes, and look at the stones. No two of them are the same, yet if you pulled one out, this whole magnificent building would come crashing down. And the builders chose and shaped each one of them. It reminds me of the passage that speaks of us as living stones in Christ’s house,” I said. We stood silently for awhile, staring around the crypt. Standing there in the dim, I felt the sheer immensity of the cathedral, the weight of it, bearing down on me. Tons and tons of stone, like huge towering waves of water, frozen in place—power and weight, burden, groaning stone.

After awhile, we went back upstairs. I walked through the wooden partition into the main church. Strolling down one of the aisles, I saw Lucas and Michaela ahead of me. I joined up with Michaela. The soft murmur of people whispering in the seats of the church scurried down the long aisles. The spicy smell of incense made the air tangy. Michaela sat down at the piano behind one of the columns and played a couple of flowing bars from a hymn. The music echoed, gentle at first, then magnified by the stone and glass so that the silence seemed to gather in close and stare down forbiddingly at us.

We entered one of the two small chapels in the apse. Pointed windows told the story of the birth of Christ. A narrow lancet held fragments of glass in the shape of bread, cup, and crown.

I went outside into the cemetery and scrambled among the stones. The stones set in the ground were weathered so that most of them were blank, with only traces of carving. Deep green shadows gathered under the huge trees and under the lea of the wall. John stretched out in the green lawn of one grave while Aaron climbed around taking pictures and Rachel, Emily, Virginia, Michaela, and Lucas sat up at the other end of the cemetery. The others eventually went on ahead to the necropolis on the hill above the cathedral, but I lingered behind again. In that moment of loneliness in the cemetery, I suddenly had the strange feeling that I was not alone. It seemed as though a crowd of people had surrounded me, shadowy shapes in the fleeting sunlight that glanced through the clouds. Just as the sheer weight of the cathedral had overburdened me, so now the throng made me shiver. The hair rising on the back of my neck, I hurried out of the cemetery.

At the gate of the necropolis, just around the corner, I found Emily, Rachel, and Virginia waiting for me. The three of us walked down the road leading to the necropolis. On one side it was lined with paper aspens and rose bushes. The roses are just beginning to bloom, and the sweet smell of the enormous pink flowers vaguely perfumed the air. We crossed the bridge which spanned the valley between the cathedral’s hill and the much higher necropolis hill. We walked up a winding road around the necropolis. Straight stones stood on either side, carved in the shapes of doorways and crosses. Names, dates, scraps of Scripture and poetry. Stones marching up the hill under the thick green shadow of the trees.

To get from one level of the necropolis to another, we had to scramble straight up. The necropolis was built in terraces, with graves along the terraces. Stone retaining walls held back the terraces, and these were covered with ivy. Setting our feet in stones protruding from the wall, we clambered up behind a flat stone monument to the top level of the hill. There we found Lucas, Missy, and Michaela sitting at the foot of a large stone monument with a cross on top. And at the peak of the hill stood a gigantic stone column with a statue of John Knox mounted on its peak. John Knox stood on the highest point of the city, thundering down on the cathedral across the narrow valley, one hand upraised. We walked around the column, which had a large stone block as its base, and around the block was carved the story of Knox. Standing on the grass below the Knox monument, I looked out over Glasgow. On the hill immediately around me, grey monuments stood upright like the quills of feathers trapped upright in the grass. Tombstones, obelisks, crosses, and statues gazed sombrely out over the city. Over one monument, an angel with an upflung face stared hopefully at the sky, held forever in a moment of longing--until "the graves shall open and give up their dead". Across the narrow valley, the cathedral stood shimmering, its green roof like the flicker of wind over a dark grey pool. Lancets of silver light struck through the high white clouds and caught flecks of gold, green, and grey from the roofs of houses and shops below. Red brick and stone were dull under the sunlight. The distant hills marched away onto the hazy horizon. The others started off pretty soon, but I lingered behind again. The cemetery was wrapped up in itself, aloof from the city, looming above the shops and homes. No sound, no smells, no touch save the cool wind--only hazy sight, greys and greens and dull browns. I found myself having to return to the train station with only John and Aaron for company. When we finally decided to get moving (it actually wasn't all that long after the others left), we had to hurry. We jumped down the terraces of the cemetery and walked briskly down the street leading to the necropolis. Passing through the metal gates which at night bar the road, I was reminded of the scene in the "Phantom of the Opera" where Christine visits her father's grave. The cemetery had the same eerie, unearthly feeling of self-enclosure. We marched back to the train station down George Street, pushing through crowds of "weird Europeans". Ahead of us through the crowd, I could see Missy's pink beret. We reached the train station just after the others, and hung around waiting for Toby, Matt, and Brenda. Lucas stood leaning against a pillar with his arms folded, looking like a person I would not want to meet in a dark alley. When they arrived, Lucas said that he had decided not to stay and go to the John Piper lecture, but instead to return to Airdrie for a MET at the Quigleys' house. He left Toby and me in charge of everyone. The next order of business was to find some supper. Brenda offered that she knew a good place to eat, just round the corner, so we followed her to Waxy O'Connor's, which was in fact only across the street from the station.

We had to find our way around back since we weren’t interested in the pub. A pair of braziers burned above the doorway, flames fanning in the breeze. The waiter (who looked like Billy Boyd) led us down to a side table. Wooden legs scraped on the tile floor as the waiter pushed the tables and chairs together. We sat down along the table, and the waiter brought out drinks (water, irn bru, tea, etc.) and took our orders. I ordered fish-and-chips. Emily and Rachel both ordered burgers. While we waited for the food, everyone talked. Rachel sat and read her book of Scottish fairy and folktales, which she'd picked up in the cathedral. The usual queer, unchancy stories which sound as though they were made up on the spur-of-the-moment to frighten recalcitrant children. Virginia and Emily browsed a book of Scottish songs, Emily humming bits of the ones she recognized. The restaurant was dim, lit by a few lamps in our part. We were on the top level. Below us, the restaurant was dug down into the ground two or three stories and half-stories. The stories were open to one another in places, and enclosed in other places, so that the whole restaurant/tavern had the feel of a rabbit warren--or of a place in the Shire, though I felt more like Frodo at Bree, for I'd never been in such a place before, and the half-light and the unintelligible burr of the Scottish accent made everything seem strange. Lots of funny little bits of stairs ran between the stories, with unexpected halls, and flecks of stained-glass windows let chinks light in through odd scraps of windows. The ceilings were low, and the rooms were narrow. The beams supporting the roof and the stairs were carved like tree's limbs, and glowed satin and ruddy in the dim light. From the story below us, we could hear a World Cup game being played on TV. The faint sweet, malt smell of beer and the more bitter, unpleasant tang of cigarettes drifted up to us. When our supper came, it was quite delicious. My fish-and-chips were just as they should be, without the disgusting American grease. John and Toby both ordered haggis, neeps, and tatties (haggis, turnips, and potatoes). John said that the haggis tasted like low-grade hotdog meat, but Toby liked it. None of us ordered black pudding. We sat around talking for awhile, telling stories about squirrels and other things. At about six thirty, we left the restaurant. Virginia paid at the long bar across from the door where we'd come in. I stood behind her: since Lucas had made me one of the two responsible persons, I felt it my bound duty to be the last one of the group out of any place, sheepdog style. Behind the counter, in glass refrigerators, were kept bottles of Irn Bru (a weird orange soft drink which smells something like a cross between bubblegum and cream soda), Coke, and various sorts of golden beer. Bottles and glasses of all shapes and sizes gleamed along the wall behind the counter. Outside in the street again, we walked down a narrow alley between two buildings, down a short street, past a pizza parlor on the corner, and over to St. George's-Tron.

The church stands on a sort of peninsula where three or four streets come together, with a small plaza in front of it. There was a group of people already standing outside, but when the doors of the church were opened, we were the first to enter. Missy led us down to the second row from the front, and we settled in to wait for forty-five minutes until the service started, at seven thirty. The church inside was rococo, with lots of shells and columns painted and carved in the woodwork. Gilt, white, and shades of turquoise and aquamarine made the church feel elegant. A huge multifoliate chandelier hung from the ceiling. Ruffled gilt leaves stood out flat around its base in a large circle where it was attached to the ceiling. The pulpit was built in the old style, at the front of the church with a curving flight of a dozen steps leading up to it. On the stage below the pulpit, an ensemble was warming up to lead the worship: two violins, a flute, a pair of clarinets, a couple of trumpets, a French horn, and a bass guitar, supplemented by a piano on one side and an organ on the other. They played hymn tunes while people entered the church. By the time the service started, the church was warm. Approximately seven hundred people had crowded into the pews downstairs and the large balconies upstairs. When everyone stood to sing the first hymns, the acoustics were wonderful. The sound of that many voices in that small space was so resounding that the instruments were quite drowned out. But I would have prefered them to sing Psalms.... The focus of attention was on John Piper, of course. After prayer, singing, and an offering, all led by a British chap in a pink shirt, John Piper came out and began his lecture. John Piper is a slight older man with curly, fluffy white hair and a sweet, smooth, ruddy face. When he speaks, he uses many broad, emphatic gestures. People around us obviously enjoyed it. There were murmurs of agreement at his main points and appreciative laughter at his anecdotes. He was much less serious than I expected, but quite a good speaker. The main point of his sermon was that we should have courage to evangelize. He took Matthew 10:24-36 as his text. After the message, I felt like singing "All People Clap Your Hands for Joy", but of course we sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" instead.

There was a great press to get out. We inched slowly forward down the aisles and finally spilled out onto the plaza in front of the church. Everyone hung about waiting to speak with John Piper, but our team gathered on the far kerb. Michaela was the last to make her way through the crowd. While we waited, I watched the sunset. Gold and blue glinted in the sky on the fringes of the big, white clouds, so that the sky was like a soft opal. Seagulls flew between the high buildings. Shop windows across the street advertized expensive clothing, stylish short skirts and sweaters in the strangest modern shades of lime green and teal. Taxis, ambulances, cars, and vans rumbled along the brick street. When our group came together at last, we marched down the street to the train station. The guard at the station directed us to the proper platform for Airdrie.

On the ride back, Virginia and I got stuck in a bench separate from the rest of the group. I asked Virginia about her school. She told me that she enjoys being a music major (harp), but that she has many interests, and she's considering switching to an Elementary Ed degree because so many people have told her that she's good with children. She's also interested in training service dogs. She and her siblings worked in 4H, and her last dog project was a service dog. She also enjoys sewing, and she and her siblings showed goats in 4H. She asked about my school, and I told her about some of my frustrations with Anglo-Saxon lit. We talked about the lecture. The rails clicked by under the train, and the sun set over the dismal buildings and scrubby trees. Back in Airdrie, we left the station, which is constantly haunted by the faint, sharp scent of hot metal and cinders on gravel. We walked back to the church in a long, straggling group, like a flock of starlings flying home.