Glastonbury Abbey

Sheila and I went to the Abbey yesterday afternoon. I took a number of photos there so this blog will mainly be about the Abbey. I first went to the Abbey with Sheila and her mum 31 years ago, while we were staying with Sheila's folks in Highbridge, which is only .25 mile away from Burnham, you walk into Highbridge from Burnham. I have a photo somewhere of Sheila and her mum gazing into a mirror in the Abbot's Kitchen in the Abbey. You'll see I took photos of the kitchen now. The interior has changed quite a bit from when we were there in 1978. A lot has changed except, of course, for the ruins. They are truly magnificent.

A little background about the Abbey: Glastonbury has been linked with Christianity for centuries and with the "old religion" earlier than that. The Tor is supposed to have links to fairies and Celtic ceremonies. There's a legend that Joseph of Arimathea--the Joseph who directed that Jesus be buried in his tomb--came here in the first century. And a further legend is that he came here with Jesus when Jesus was a boy and that they built the first church here. Another legend says that in 1191the Abbey monks found the buried remains of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere; prior to that there had been a legend that Glastonbury and its tor was the legendary "Isle of Avalon." And, linking back to mythology once again, the word "Avalon" is actually means land of the fairies. They're legends, who am I to judge? They have been around a lot longer than I have. Anyway, what HAS been proven by archaeology and through monastic writings is that a church, a great church, existed in Glastonbury as early as the 12th century. By the end of the 12th century, the Abbey was well known. A fire destroyed it in 1184 and it was rebuilt and thrived until the Dissolution in 1539 by Henry VIII. Bits from the first Abbey are on display in the museum; after the Dissolution, the Abbey was used as a quarry, bits of it taken at a time. It's sad to think of these immense buildings, larger than any of the cathedrals currently in England, being pecked at. The only complete building on the 36 acres is the Abbot's Kitchen.

There's so much history and mystery about Glastonbury that it's a bit mind boggling. We'll probably come back here later in the summer as we didn't walk around the village at all and we didn't climb the Tor. We spent over 2 hours just walking the Abbey grounds and enjoying the peace and quiet there. There were some tourists like us around but the grounds are so large that most of the time we were alone anyway. So, here we go:



We paid our admission (£5) and entered the Abbey grounds. This is a statue of St. Didiric (I think that's the name anyway), a saint who symbolizes charity and compassion, which were virtues that the Abbey monks strove to display.

This is the sacred thorn tree which supposedly grew out of the staff that Joseph of Arimathea stuck in the ground when he arrived:



And here are the ruins themselves. I find it hard to describe them. Massive, certainly. Poignant, yes, because I thought about all the activity that used to go on in these buildings. All the effort to have a different kind of life, a life devoted to the spirit. And the faith of those who built all of this and nurtured it and then it was just taken down by those who didn't value it. Didn't think about what it represented. Are we doing the same thing nowadays to good and special things? And making it difficult to remember the things of the spirit? In our hustle-bustle world can we still understand what it means to contemplate the things of the spirit? If I were to think about the lesson that Glastonbury might have for me it is to stop and look not with my worldly eye but with the eye of the Spirit. To see not only what still can be seen but also what was. Hmmm....





To give you an idea of the height of the spires, that's Sheila standing on the ground in front. I wish that Dad were still alive, I'm sure he'd tell me how the masons must have labored on those walls:



And here's what I think is my most "picture postcard" Abbey photo. The sun was intermittent yesterday and this was one of the moments that it came out:



I was so amazed by the arches. I wish I could have seen them actually constructing them. Perhaps if I could have focused my spiritual eye. . .:




There were some trapdoors in the ground that, when you opened them, you could see examples of the medieval tile. I was surprised they didn't have protective covering over them:



And here is the Abbot's Kitchen. As I mentioned earlier, both Sheila and I remember that there was very little actually in the kitchen when we were here in 1978. And if I find that old photo when I'm back home, I'll scan and post it. I thought they did a beautiful job recreating the kitchen; it looked really appealing. I should have liked to have sat on a stool while a monk whipped up some soup and herbs and meat:









The monk isn't a ghost. There are a few folks who walk around the Abbey and give demonstrations, a kind of living history, during the summer months. We didn't stay for the monk's demonstration, we just wanted to amble around.

Here's the herb garden that the monks would use for cooking and healing. So many recognizable names, fever few, lavender, chamomile, hyssop.... I wonder if I can grow a herb garden in Arizona?? Probably, but it will require some work to maintain. Still, one thing that struck me as I walked around the Abbey was how busy the monks were daily. I have loads of time during the day; if I just shifted my time away from Net surfing and Target shopping, I'd have sufficient for monklike pursuits.






We spent several quiet minutes sitting beside this pond, watching the fish swimming around. I actually sent a photo of this to Richard and he responded within a minute. I suppose that's a different kind of "spiritual moment"--where you can e-mail a photo from a Blackberry to someone who is several time zones away and he can see it within a minute and then reply back. I think about when I lived in England it would take weeks to send a letter to my dad back in Montreal and receive a reply. Again, Dad came to mind and I think of how he would have loved this. I think he'd have been willing to learn about computers if he could have followed along on my travels. He was always grumbling about how he never knew where I was.



I am thankful to have such a great husband in Richard, who encourages me in my wandering. But maybe it's not all altruistic; perhaps he enjoys the breather too ;) And even though he teases me about all the Blackberrying I do, I think that he enjoys hearing from me and knowing what I'm up to.

Speaking of monklike living, I thought I should slip a photo of my current "roommate", Eddie the cat. Eddie tries to sleep on the end of my bed at night but it seems we take turns having restless nights. Either he wakes me up in the middle of the night by walking on my head or I wake him up by kicking the duvet over him as I go through yet another night sweat:



Well, all of this has taken me two hours and I need to go into Weston to get a SIM card for the mobile that Sheila is lending me. I can use my Blackberry as a phone but that would mean that people here in the UK would have to call a US number to return my calls. So better to have a UK mobile. All this technology--you may think I'm techno-savvy but really I'm still just a user. Don't ask me to do anything that would require actual programming....