I read recently that attendance at services held within English Cathedrals are growing around 4% each year since the Millennium.

No surprise really. What they offer to post modern people is a connection to something pre-modern- a rediscovery of a liturgical and spiritual tradition that goes back a thousand years. It is made visible in a ancient glass and stone, and comes alive with the continued traditions of worship and seasonal observation.

I love Cathedrals. They are one of the things that I really miss about England. They survived the puritans and the Civil War almost intact, and continue to be at the heart of most of the major cities.

On the way back from out recent trip to Telford, Michaela and I visited Lichfield Cathedral, and attended the end of the afternoon service. There has been a Cathedral here since 700 AD, built to house the bones of St Chad. Fragments of this building remain, along with the Lichfield Gospels which date to around 730AD.

But the impact of the place on Michaela and I was not anything to do with historical facts though. We sat in awe as the light filtered into the ancient building. And the sound of the choir singing away in the distance found a way through the old stone arches.

And we both cried…

Cathedrals make me cry

It was the powdered bones of St Chad

Mingled with the dust made

By the masons in the soaring north transept-

Some of it lodged in my eye

.

Or perhaps it was a glint in the light

Falling through ancient glass

On a flag floor polished into smooth undulations

By the leather of a hundred thousand pilgrims

.

Or perhaps it was the west wing

Stuffed with memorials to men speared and shot

In empire battles long forgotten

Tattered ensigns flying the cross of Jesus over genocide

Or perhaps it was the music of a choir

At first half heard and half imagined

Like the very stones breathing

Then a rolling on me like a wave, lifting me on a last Amen

.

I know not what will bring meaning

To men 1000 years from now

Or what towers they will point towards God

All I know

Is that Cathedrals make me cry