Come and build your church today.

The next morning, I went to church at St. Martin-in-the-fields.

A return to the familiar, a joy to sing in that space. If you want to get to know me, go to church with me. (I'm not the proseltyzing "I'm going to invite everyone I know to church every week!" sort of evangelist, but the invitation is always there. Whenever someone comes up to me and says, "Can I come to church with you?" I'm thrilled. The invitation is always there.) At church, I'm at my happiest, my heart is burning, and my voice is different. It is no surprise that I am in love with sacred choral music and hymns. I was raised on them, and my love of them is something I inherted particularly from my mother (you'd be hard-pressed to find someone more in love with hymns than her). I love singing in choirs, I love singing in congregations. I love singing the alto line even when it's not written in the hymnal. I love descants, particularly this one descant for "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" at the 11pm Christmas Eve service crossing into Christmas Day. (My mother has taken to apologizing to me whenever she plays an organ arrangement for that hymn that does not work with that descant.)

St. Martin-in-the-fields is one of the greatest churches for singing. The acoustics are fabulous for the singer. That room supports singers. Their choir is fabulous, which always helps the congregational singing. And what was nice for me at that moment was that everything was familiar. Like at Westminster the week before, I knew the liturgy, I knew the hymns. Still reeling in the aftermath of my trip to Chartres, I found great comfort here, as the things I'd learned tried to find their way into my normal life. No experience exists in a vacuum. We should always work to apply the lessons we learn into our daily lives. (A true sign that your life is becoming more spiritual is when every moment is significant.) Obvious, perhaps, but we're all too often guilty of letting experiences sit in their own little corner (in their own little chair), hiding from the rest of our lives. How do I reconcile my experiences in Africa, my experience in Chartres, and these hymns I've sung for my entire life?

Including this one, which was the final hymn that morning:

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown? Will you let my name be known,

will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?

Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?

Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?

Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?

Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?

Will you set the prisoners free and never be the same?

Will you kiss the leper clean and do such as this unseen,

and admit to what I mean in you and you in me?

Will you love the "you" you hide if I but call your name?

Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?

Will you use the faith you've found to reshape the world around,

through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?

(which, when I sing this, all I can think of is, "Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes," which is why I'm always very glad this last verse exists:)

Lord your summons echoes true when you but call my name.

Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.

In Your company I'll go where Your love and footsteps show.

Thus I'll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

When I walked out of church, it was to more music. The orchestra of St. Martin-in-the-fields was playing in Trafalgar Square. As they do. I sat outside the National Gallery listening for a good while, before wandering into the National Portrait Gallery just behind.

I almost didn't go to the National Portrait Gallery even though it had been recommended to me. I thought I probably didn't have the knowledge of European (/British) history to really appreciate it. But really, what I should have done was given myself much MORE time in that place, because it was absolutely delightful. If you're unfamiliar, the National Portrait Gallery is filled with portraits of important British people. Arranged chronologically, too, which rocked. I started at the top with the Tudors and worked my way down. As I was wandering around towards the beginning, one particular portrait caught my eye. I hadn't seen it before, but I was immediately intrigued and thought, "Who is that dashing gentleman?" I looked, and it was John Donne.

Of course.

I wandered through for a while, pausing particularly whenever I came across a religious figure. There's a fabulous portrait of John Wesley there. But one room I entered and nearly gasped upon seeing an all-too-familiar portrait. It was a portrait of Caroline of Brunswick, wife of George IV, who hated her and thought she smelled bad. (He was drunk during the marriage ceremony.) Seems like a random bit of history for me to be so familiar with, but that whole story is a play waiting to happen. I knew this, and the portrait, from that phenomenal design class I mentioned back in my first London post, and, yes, that portrait was in the book I'd made. I distinctly remember cutting it out.

The rest of my time there was spent finding portraits that were in that book, coming across names I knew, and new names from portraits that caught my eye. Finding religious figures and artists I've come to love. Walking into a room and seeing Byron, Keats, Shelley. I fell in love with the place. I could have spent all day there, but I promised myself I would go to evensong at Westminster. So I left, trotted down to Westminster, again moved through crowds of confused tourists wondering why they couldn't get in, to take I think the same chair I'd sat in during Mass the week before, for the famed Westminster Abbey Evensong.

I've been trained as a singer my entire life. My mother was leading me in vocal exercises before I could speak. Specifically, I've been trained as a choral singer my entire life, and even more specifically, for most of my life I was trained to sing like a British choir boy. That was the ideal sound, that was even somewhat the ideal pronounciation. So listening to the boy choir sing at Westminster was almost mindblowing, because that's the sound we've all been imitating. (Introit: Tallis "A new commandment", Responses: Byrd and Quinney, Canticles: Sheppard "First Service", Anthem: Amner "I will sing unto the Lord", fyi) I love Evensong services. There will occasionally be phenomenal Evensongs at Grace Episcopal that I'm able to go to. Evensong is all music and liturgy, which are my favorite parts of any service. I love me a good sermon, I have sermons on my iPod, but there is something about lifting praises through song and voice that speaks to me very deeply. The opportunity to do that in fellowship with others is unparalleled.

I love Evensongs so much, I went to two that day.

St. Martin-in-the-fields-of-the-fabulous-acoustics was having their JAZZ Evensong at 5. Sounded exciting, so I retraced my steps, stopped by the National Portrait Gallery AGAIN primarily to grab quotes for Lindsay's show. I'd forgotten to get a pen so I stopped into the bookstore and grabbed one. While I was there, I saw something that made me laugh hysterically and so I went ahead and decided it was worth the two pounds. It was... a Lord Byron face mask. This is particularly appropriate as I already have a John Calvin face mask. (they can be friends?) I got it not even realizing that Halloween was coming up.

Halloween. Roommates. Leigh as someone from Jersey Shore, me as Lord Byron, and Madison as Princess Leia. Also, how did my roommates manage to get me a scarf in Morocco that exactly matched the Lord Byron mask I got in London? dodedodododedodododedodo...

Jazz Evensong, as I already mentioned, at St. Martin-in-the-field, was incredible. Beautiful arrangements and really, give me any chance to belt out "Give Me Oil In My Lamp" and I'm happy (my church when I was very little, in Maryland, did a retreat once that was something about oil lamps. Stuck with me for the rest of my life).

After that, I saw Inception. Random, but I hadn't seen it and had heard good things about the movie-going experience in London. I also had been flying around having experience after experience after experience that I was trying to put together, and I needed to give my brain over to someone else's hands for two hours to give myself a break. Then, wandering, then, bed before heading back to Gatwick in the morning.

In approximately 10 days, I'd been to 3 countries, 4 cities/towns (all with rivers), 6 airports, 4 train stations, 7 museums, 5 church services, 1 synagogue, countless churches, 2 cemeteries, many parks and gardens and squares, 2 shows, and 1 movie. I'd seen a lot, done a lot, eaten a lot.

I saw a lot of celebration on this trip. Of people, of acheivement, of God. I sat in so many cathedrals, and you hear people talking about how you don't know the names of the people who made these places, who built these walls and arches and windows. There are hints, there are shoemakers and blacksmiths and other such people on the windows of Chartres incidated who donated each window, but the focus is not who the cathedral was made by but who it was made for. It brings me back to sitting in Grace Episcopal one day my second year of college, when I was at my wits end and spiritually exhausted and God said, "Trust me. You can be part of building a cathedral." The appeal of this to someone like me is obvious - the opportunity to be lost in creation of something bigger than you to something bigger than all is the ideal, for me.

But something I could not deny was that these cathedrals were built by human hands. God did not create these cathedrals - people did. They are incredible human acheivements.

Which shoots me right back to the Sir John Soanes museum, and the thought that if you want to see what God is doing in the world, you must look at what humans have done. Are doing.

I think a lot of us believe that we must make a choice between God or humanity. I've often wanted to. The whole desire of mine to run off to a convent is partially based on my love of liturgy, religion, ritual, fellowship, all of that, and partially based on a nearly life-long issue of not wanting to be in the world anymore. And we can find justifications in the Bible, talking about being in the world but not of it. But abandoning the world is not what that verse means. That's not the choice at all. The choice is whether you're going to embrace the world or ignore it. Whether you're going to live life with love and generosity or if you're going to get by with indifference. If you want to embrace God, you must embrace humanity, and if you've embraced humanity, then even without knowing it or intending it or believing in it, you have embraced God. There are many cathedrals in this world. Some are churches, some are museums, some are streets, and (here's the secret)... I think some are lives. Actual, shining, human, confused, caring lives.

And there are many cathedrals yet to be built. There's work to be done. (So much work.)

Come build a church with soul and spirit

Come build a church of flesh and bone

We need no tower rising skyward

No house of wood, or glass, or stone

Come build a church with human frailty

Come build a church of flesh and blood

Jesus shall be its sure foundation

It shall be built by the hand of God.

--Ken Medema

It shall be built by the hand of God, and humans will lift the stones.

Leaving Europe was a bit sad. It was a return to familiarity, getting two phone numbers before the in-flight dinner from Tripoli to Accra was finished and hearing Twi again ("Benada! Tuesday! I know what that means!"). I got plenty of stares at the airport in Accra, this lone white girl with no luggage but a backpack, carrying a wool coat who knew exactly where she was going and answered "Yoo," when people said "Akwaaba!" Many people asked if it was hard for me to come back to Ghana. No, I would answer, because Prague was freezing. It was hard to leave Chartres, but it would have been hard for me to leave Chartres even if I was going back to New York afterwards. I'd rather be in Chartres at any given moment no matter where I am. I did fall in love with the places I went and there's a little ache that flames up when I see pictures of my Europe study abroad friends on Facebook, or when I come in the academic center and Cristann's watching The Hunchback of Notre Dame. That's the problem of loving. When I'm in North Carolina I ache for the people and places I love in New York. When I'm in New York I ache for the people and places I love in North Carolina. But what beautiful pains.

The story of Colleen and the Europe Trip. The end.