Choir Pilgrimage Part 2

Singing in the Cathedral is an experience during which everything is heightened: desires for accomplishment and communication, fears of failure and distraction, openness to direction and deeply reassuring words, gratitude for composers and musicians whose music carries people to again feel their faith fully (at least while they listen and when they remember being carried). Speaking as an old hippie, it's quite a trip.

Though surprised at my physical limitations, weariness, physical pain (old joints), and brain fog, I have settled into a comfortable rhythm, giving myself time to rest and prepare.

The cathedral is BEAUTIFUL. Alongside its beauty, I'm taken by the faces carved around the place. The original stonemasons working on the cathedral's construction in the 13th century were reportedly given a lot of freedom of choice in their carving. Who did they want to immortalize in a good or punishing way? So we get faces from the time that we can read as though we know them personally, and know how the carver felt about them. I guess a bit like our own stand-up comedians. Except these images are still here, entertaining folks for 800 years!