What brings us into bulwark cathedrals?

A band’s tribe trek to a cathedral that’s defied the dark for centuries.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A view from a floodlight footbridge towards a gap between office buildings which reveal a cathedral and its illuminated dome.

I went along to read some Genesis at a local Nine Lessons & Carols service, wearing the coat I’d worn the week before on my annual cathedral benefit tour with the evergreen folk-rock band Jethro Tull.

The coat still bore the stick-on backstage pass, ‘access all areas’, that acts as some form of security for band, crew and instruments. I hadn’t had time, or the skill to be honest, to soak it off gently to avoid damaging the fabric.

A number of congregants, both men and women – I hesitate, for contemporaneous reasons, to add “of a certain age” – noticed it. “Does Ian Anderson still stand on one leg when he plays the flute?” asked one. “I’ve still got some Tull albums from the Seventies,” added another. “Great band,” affirmed a third.

It strikes me that more church congregants recognise Tull than Tull fans recognise the Church of England. That’s to be expected, given that this is a tribe that grew up with a prevalent post-modern atheism. I remember in the early days following a pair of increasingly hairless old hippies into one of these gigs. “Looks like a flippin’ church,” said one. “That’s because it is a flippin’ church,” replied the other (though naturally they didn’t say “flippin’”).

These cathedral shows, of which there have been about 30 now, sell out easily and very soon after tickets go on sale in the summer. We played Bristol and Salisbury (again) last week. The larger cathedrals benefit to the tune of upwards of £25,000 for a couple of hours of Christmassy rock ‘n’ roll. They come because they like the sound of Jethro Tull and Anderson’s songwriting canon.

But there’s something else going on. They come, these predominantly unchurched people, to take ownership of their cathedral. They may come because it’s Christmas and it’s the right place to be. They come to be together, if not as the Body of Christ then at least in some sort of communion, which is true of any rock concert gathering in a corporate way, but which is lent something transcendent in a gothic cathedral.

This raises questions for me. The first is this: Come Christmas, what is it that they and we have all been waiting for, this crowd of people who seem strangely anticipative, not just to hear one of their favourite bands, but to hear something else in the air in a sacred, ancient place?

I have a theatrical role, somewhere between master of ceremonies, band confessor and rocking retainer. Top hat, tails, leggings, codpiece, pixie boots and a knobbed cane. Oh yes, and my clerical collar. It’s the dog collar that connects me to a reality beyond the show business.

In addition to cavorting, I deliver a Christmas blessing during the intro to the last number of the night (usually “May the joy of the angels, the wonder of the shepherds…” etc.). I’m struck by how moved many people are and remark on it afterwards in the crowd. There’s a real hunger for peace and goodwill in a broken world, not just an appetite for a thumping bass line to swing hips to, as they raise their eyes to a vaulted, lit ceiling far away, sometimes a thousand years old.

My second question is relatedly this: What does a merry Christmas mean in this context? Quite often, Tull’s Christmas song from 1977 will be on the setlist, Ring Out, Solstice Bells. It’s pagan in theme (“seven druids dance in seven time”) but it engenders in this setting a strong folk memory of light and cheer in the darkness. There’s a defiance of the dark here and the cathedral stands as a bulwark against it down the centuries. Be of good cheer because all will be well – that’s what it means to wish a merry Christmas.

A final question: Why do they come back every year, this motley band of ageing rockers (though there are youngsters too)? Part of the answer to that is the comfort of the familiar and eternal – and I don’t mean only songs that are up to half a century old. It’s a truth among other truths that religious observance is growing in some societal pockets, among Gen Z men for example.

Cathedrals aren’t like parish churches, where you may feel part of a small community. Cathedrals are a part of the world, in all its harsh reality. Katherine Amphlett LINK has written here of Coventry cathedral (where Tull has played) and a feeling of how Christmas is far from twee in these settings – the Christmas story is hard and subversive. To my mind, it’s a story about persecution, homelessness, displacement, oppression, refugees and misogyny.

A cathedral is big and strong enough to bring all that to. It always has been. We see some of that recognised in the audiences for these Christmas shows. Perhaps you’ll join us at a cathedral near you next year? Meanwhile, merry Christmas.

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Article

Creed

Sport

5 June 2023

4 min read

Riding from darkness to light

Long-distance cycle rides give Graeme Holdsworth time to contemplate traveling from light to darkness and back again. And, to grapple with the wordless way our bodies do what they were created to do.

Graeme Holdsworth

Graeme is a vicar of Marsden and Slaithwaite in West Yorkshire. He also cycles and juggles.

A cyclist ascends a village street between stone-built houses as twilight turns to night

An audax cyclist passes through a village as night falls.

I’m standing next to my bicycle at a petrol station in Blackpool, it is 1am. I’m eating a cheap cheese sandwich and drinking cold coffee from a can. What I want is hot coffee, but the machine only takes cash, and the cash machine charges for withdrawals. I’m making do with cheap and cold, because the need for calories outweighs the need for taste. On this night, I’m cycling from Slaithwaite to Blackpool and back, checking the route for a cycling event I’m organising. It’s an audax: a type of sporting experience typically documented by forecourt-chic social media posts. Its name is derived from the French for audacious.

A glance though long-distance cycling blogs, vlogs and curated media, hints at an experience of transcendence; the emptying of self, in the search of meaning from the zip of tyres over tarmac as the kilometres click past.

The reality, however, can be more mundane: long distance cycling often involves sitting on a weed strewn curb, while a friend fixes a puncture and though the clouds are not quite heavy enough to rain, there’s a mizziness to the air that seeps through your sportwool baselayer. There is no film crew to capture this epic moment, and you’re alone with your thoughts, which are mainly thankfulness that it isn’t your puncture.

I’m a vicar in West Yorkshire, but haven’t always been a vicar, or even a Christian and I’ve been riding bikes for much longer than I’ve been a person of faith. As a child cycling was about belonging, I was part of a BMX community whose hierarchy was measured by how high you could bunny-hop. Later, that belonging was replaced with a different sort of identity, found through music. It was only when I was older and fatter that I rediscovered cycling thanks to my wife, who thought we both needed some exercise.

We loved to explore, and perhaps this physical exploration was why we also began a journey of spiritual exploration.

Together we remembered how to cycle, and as we gathered experiences, we grew in the wisdom of the cyclo-tourist. We learned that mudguards and rain capes are things of comfort and therefore beauty. We loved to explore, and perhaps this physical exploration was why we also began a journey of spiritual exploration. I’ve no intention to suggest that cycling is a gateway drug to Christianity, more that perhaps our curiosity was being fed physically, mentally, and spiritually, in ways that were not of our making.

The first time I noticed a spiritual element to my cycling was coming back from a meeting, crossing the North Yorkshire Moors at night. It was autumn and the evening turned to dark quite early, leaving only a puddle of weak bike light to ride with. A phrase from morning prayer returned to me: ‘even the darkness is not dark to you’. A single line from a psalm in the Bible. This one line, on this one night, redefined my relationship with God. Even though all around me had turned to darkness, there was nowhere I could be lost from God.

These remote fans and supporters are constructing narratives to explain rider’s movement, or lack of it. Yet the rules of self-sufficiency mean you are alone, no one can set you back on the right path.

Not being lost is an important element to cycling a long distance, especially in a race. In events like the TransContinental – a multi-day self-sufficient cycle race across Europe, spending hours cycling in the wrong direction could be a racing disaster. Race winner Emily Chappell, in Where there’s a Will, eloquently documents the racer’s experience of being ‘watched over’. She tells of ‘dot-watchers’ following a rider’s GPS tracks across a map of Europe. These are remote fans and supporters constructing narratives to explain rider’s movement, or lack of it. Yet the rules of self-sufficiency mean you are alone, no one can set you back on the right path.

Being alone with your thoughts is a common theme to long distance cycling. While our bodies silently convert glucose into energy through glycolysis, and our muscle memory converts this into kilometres covered, our minds are set free to process our past and present experiences.

During my time at theological college, I wanted to explore the idea of physical exercise being an expression of prayer. I tried to grapple with the wordless way our bodies do what bodies were created to do. Can our bodies worship without words? Is there a physical language of lactic acid, originally written by a creator who celebrates when creation is true to itself? There’s a poetic language in the Bible that hints at this, that

‘the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands’.

Pro-cyclist Jens Voigt famously told his legs to shut up… maybe he should have let them sing.

Audaxing, long distance cycling, racing across continents; these are extraordinary journeys in which we might travel from light to darkness and back again. Simultaneously, there is a physical descent from adventurous confidence to uncertain determination, where the will to go on is no longer found in the legs, but in a dogmatic determination to see this through. Then, with the dawning of the day, there is a fresh hope: a hope of warmth and a return to strength. With the dawning of the day, the opening of the first coffee shop and this long-distance cyclist’s prayer is answered.