For almost a week I have gone to Evensong at the Minster. Tonight girls and the men of the choir sang the service. It was particularly beautiful. I have taken the same seat night by night trying to get a sense of the place from a more or less familiar point.  The choir stalls are high Victorian as the originals were destroyed. Nevertheless they are quite grand and filled with examples of the woodcarvers art.  On the back of the stalls are coats of arms mainly of saints. The Vergers (clad in black on black perfectly tailored gowns) lead the choir into their place. The procession is led a single verger no cross.

Evensong is the glory of the Anglican church and the Minster one of 43 English cathedrals carrys this tradition into the new century. The congregation is not large but I see the same faces night by night. The prayers are ancient, the needs human and persistant and the grace universal and eternal.

So we enter another Lent. I would not have dreamed that I would be in York at the beginning of Lent. But here I am and I am grateful. The great bells are sounding behind me and it is night.

6:43 PM York, England

JWS

Below is the view from my room in the Dean’s Court Hotel.  My friend Tim Jones who knows such things arranged for me to have this very room. It is very comfortable and possibly  the best view I have ever had from any room in which I have stayed.