Vikings and York Minster

August 14, 2007

 

BBC One predicted a swath of low-hanging clouds, swelling with rain and 70 mile-an-hour winds, to cover the bulk of the British mainland.  Undaunted, we set off toward the ancient walled city of York, home to an archeological site unearthed in the 1970's revealing an extensive Viking settlement and yet another opportunity for the group to worship together in continuity with our spiritual ancestors. Our first stop was the Yorvik Viking Center which houses the ruins of the settlement and allows tourists to climb aboard a time machine of sorts and travel back into the past among the remains of a once-thriving Viking village, complete with the authentic stench of 866 A.D.

From the Viking Center, we began a mini-pilgrimage to York Minster.  The term "minster" is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word "mynster," which roughly translates as a missionary church.  The first "mynster" in the village of York was built as a new center for Christian worship in 627 A.D.  Because this church is also the cathedra, or seat, for the bishop of York Diocese and the head of the Northern Province of the Church of England, the Archbishop of York, York Minster is also the largest medieval cathedral in the gothic style in the whole of Northern Europe and the site of continuous Christian worship for almost 1,000 years. It is an overwhelmingly powerful place.

During our visit, its hallowed halls vibrated with the sounds of the Cathedral Choir practicing for an upcoming performance.  Our guide, the vicar of the parish church at Bail don John Knowles, blessed the group after we participated in a brief prayer service in the All Saints' Chapel at the East End of the Minster.  Aimee found a prayer in a publication of the heavily Celtic influenced Iona Community—a prayer that spoke to the liminal, or transitional, time in the lives of the American youth in this Exchange. 

Many of you may not know that Scott, Annmarie, and Charlotte will be leaving home to start university only days after our return; Sarah will be entering her final year in high school, a time of anticipation and weighty decisions, and Tray and Kate will be returning to college where they will face the arduous task of determining how they will integrate what they experienced here into their hopes and aspirations for the future. The words we read together in that towering, auspicious place from the prayer entitled "You Keep Us Waiting" might speak to you as well so we offer it here in full.

             Leader: You keep us waiting,

                                    You,

                                    The God of all time

                                    Want us to wait

                                    For the right time in which

                                       to discover who we are,

                                                            where we must go,

                                                            who will be with us

                                                            and what we must do . . .

           

            All:                   SO, THANK YOU FOR THE WAITING TIME.

 

 

            Leader: You keep us looking,

                                    You,

                                    The God of all space,

                                    Want us to look

                                    In the right and wrong places

                                                            for signs of hope,

                                                            for people who are hopeless,

                                                            for visions of a better world

                                                                        which will appear

                                                                        among the disappointments

                                                                        of the world we know . . .

 

            All:                   SO, THANK YOU FOR THE LOOKING TIME.

 

            Leader: You keep us loving,

                                    You,

                                    The God whose name is love,

                                    Want us to be like you . . .

                                    To love the loveless and the unlovely and the unlovable,

                                    To love those near us without jealousy or design or threat,

                                    And,

                                    Most difficult of all,

                                    To love ourselves . . .

 

            All:                   SO, THANK YOU FOR THE LOVING TIME.

 

            Leader: And in all this

                                    You keep us.

                                    Through hard questions with no easy answers,

                                    Through failing where we hoped to succeed

                                                and making an impact when we felt we were useless,

                                    Through the patience and the dreams and the love of others,

                                    And through Jesus Christ and his Spirit,

                                    You,

                                    Keep us . . .

 

            All:                   SO, THANK YOU FOR THE KEEPING TIME

                                    AND FOR NOW AND FOR EVER AMEN.

 

--Hank Bostwick, chaperone