From Cathedral to Kabutwitwi Local Church...

Reading through my last post, about Gloucester Cathedral, I remembered a piece I wrote a couple of years ago at UCU in Jason Mehl's Creative Writing class, - although it was a memory, not fiction - on being in a service in another cathedral and suddenly being transported back in my mind to the tiny mud-brick church I worshipped in when I lived in Zambia. I thought I might include it here, as this is after all about processing my present and past, comparing the life I live in England with the myriad African images with which my brain is stuffed!

So here it is...

"My hands rest each side of me, fingertips feeling the smooth mahogany pew. I am in the chancel of Exeter Cathedral, with two of my family and just a few well-dressed others. We are sitting smartly, upright, politely spaced apart, waiting for the service to begin. The air is cool and bright, light pouring in from the clear tall windows and reflecting off the pale golden-grey stonework which soars up above. Looking down through gaps in the ornate screen, through the length of the cathedral you can see tourists wandering, and on out through the distant arched west door, a framed glimpse of the green grass scattered with people in miniature sitting in the sunshine, tiny pigeons pecking about, a dog running. The pew is smooth and hard, and the pew ends are beautifully carved, and the wood gives off a scent of sweet polish, but behind it is the peppery hint of aged hymn books. Soft organ music is playing, mellow breathy chords flowing and melding. You can hear the tourists whisper to each other, their murmurs are amplified somehow and rise through the music until a verger approaches them gesturing towards the chancel.

Then you hear rustling of robes, the brushing of soft footsteps on ancient stones, and the choir enters the nave. Quiet still faces above gathered white cloth. The organ crescendos and the boys begin to sing, pure notes which cut the air. A broad ray of sunlight just then flows in through the windows, dust motes flickering, golden. It is all beautiful, controlled, choreographed, beautiful, and holy.

I am newly back from Zambia, from worshipping in a small dimsy mud church, squashed on a low bench with hundreds of others squeezed in there, our knees pressed against the backs of the people in front of us, smelling each others sweat from the hot dusty walk, but all wearing our best cotton worn-out clothes. You looked out through roughly square holes for windows and could see bright green bush, vibrant blue sky, red mud houses with tawny thatched roofs. We sang low African hymns accompanied by home-made dried-grass shakers, a choir of thin brown ladies with bright scarves over their hair, swaying their hips and elbows in time to the music, to and fro. Beside me a grandmother, wrinkled skin stretched over high cheekbones, carried in a printed cloth on her back her sick daughter’s tiny baby. She used to sling the baby round to her front to suckle it only for comfort – no milk. It was dim in the church, the walls were mud with a low tin roof above, so hot, and in the front was a lumpy blackboard chalked with the numbers of people who had congregated  last week, how many had been late, what little money had been collected. The music was rhythmic, repetitive, beautiful. I felt so uplifted there.

I feel uplifted and holy in both settings. I am trying to understand why two such opposite sensory experiences can both overwhelm me with God. In the cathedral God is glorified in the perfection of  the architecture, the brilliance of the choral music, the talent of the  daily-rehearsed choir boys selected for the purity of their voices. The cathedral is kept polished, clean, light pours in, visitors show respect and reverence.

In Kabutwitwi local church, yes the dirt floor is swept, and so is the dusty ground outside. People come dressed in their best, even carrying their shoes on their heads to church and putting them on at the door, so as not to muddy them on the way. Although the building is simple and rough, the sheer brightness and colour of nature all about and of the printed clothes, and on the faces of all those who come and squeeze in there together, make the brown mud walls and floor and rough wooden benches irrelevant, out of sight.

I feel privileged to be a worshipper at Kabutwitwi, to share afterwards in the sour maize drink from an orange plastic beaker even though I can’t bear its taste. Equally but differently I feel privileged in the cathedral to share in the hundreds of years of history of perfection of worship.

Which does God prefer? I believe the externals which play upon my senses and stir my spirituality don’t mean much to Him, if anything at all. I am there, and so are the others, and that is what He is pleased about."