Returning to the begining

The Phillip's family have arrived in Ilkley and unpacked. We have left the cutlery in deepest darkest Oxfordshire, but I suppose you can not have everything. It is arriving by Ordinand courier service on the way to her retreat next week. So all is not lost in the long term. We have been made to feel most welcome and we are beginning to feel very settled already.

What we could not have predicted when we moved, was how soon we would be making a return to the place where this journey all started. Not just once but twice in the space of two days. There are many beautiful and God filled places in the North East.  They are multitudes of awesome places to find silence and prayer amid the beauty of God's creation. However there is one point of pilgrimage that people around the world flock to. It was here in this magnificent cathedral, that towers over city, castle and hill that this journey began.

We have spent nearly all of our married life living in the beautiful city of Durham. It has an allure to it that I have only found in one other city (St David's). Despite being a city, it is like a small village full of people you know and who know you. Despite being away for over three years, I was able to walk through the streets and bump into people and converse with them like I had never left. Indeed, I suppose part of me never really did. It was a wrench to leave Durham. It was the place of our first house, our marriage and the birth of all our children. It is already a place that many people who settle there feel hard to leave, adding those events made it seem all the harder. However we have covered my tendency to get attached to places in previous posts and I am digressing. 

We were called to go back to the seat of St Cuthbert so soon by particular circumstances caused by our current move. We had not returned during the entire three years of my husband's training. The Cathedral stamps a mark on Durham from almost whatever direction you enter the city, making even the castle seem tiny. It is a building of towering beauty that is strong but also peaceful and is a towering witness to the awesomeness of God standing over the City.
Coming back after three years this is what struck me the most. I had worshiped there for many years and it had become part of the woodwork for me and did not seem exceptional. However on returning, walking through the door, seeing the Rose window radiating it's light at the end of the vast expanse of nave. I was truly humbled. It is a space that is just full of the presence of Christ. Even among the mid week low rumble of school visit chatter, tourist fascination and pilgrim prayer, the presence is tangible and it is a building full of grace, peace, love and wisdom. Walking around the staff have changed very little since I was last there, neither have the clergy. It is a truly special place that retains staff in this way. Though time has passed and things have changed (they have completely changed the shop for instance), it is like a little piece of life that time forgot. It stays comfortingly the same because of the wisdom and godliness of the people who serve there. It was truly special to go back and share the beginning of the next step with the people who nudged, encouraged and believed in my husband in the first place.
God is always there towering over our lives. Like the magnificent building built for us to find him in, his presence is always there stamping it's mark on our lives. We can choose to walk past the wonderful beauty, strength and peace, or we can choose to seek it. We can choose to ignore the timeless unconditional forgiving love or we can choose to embrace. I would suggest that choosing to embrace it would vastly improve our lives. Not make them simple or easy, in fact in many ways it involves a great deal of sacrifice. Through those sacrifices though we develop wisdom and gain inordinate amounts of peace and love, which we can in turn reinvest in the people and lives around us.