You know how much I bragged about Westminster Abbey in a previous piece, well, double it and you’ve got St. Paul’s Cathedral. The both have a lot of dead guys in the floors. They both are works of architectural splendor that they defy spoken description. They must be “felt” and “sensed” more than talked about. I told Kelly that I’d like to lay on my back in the middle of St. Pauls rotunda and just stare some 400 feet upward at the marvelous frescos on the ceiling. Indeed, this trip could necessitate a follow-up to Rome to see Michelangelo’s work.

The songs ever soar upward magnificently in both these places. The history is palpable. I could sit in either and observe for a long time and be blissfully contented.

St. Paul’s is “newer” if you can say that about a building that is still several hundred years old. A cathedral of some type has actually sat on the site since about 600 a.d. The present building dates back 500 years or so (it all gets kind of mushy when you think back that far). We’re talking the middle-ages; the time of Columbus and Napoleon (whose military nemesis is buried in the crypt of St. Pauls).

In a way I’d say Westminster is dark and St. Paul’s is light---we’re talking the color of the construction and the use of windows. There’s a lot more art at St. Paul’s.

One striking feature of St. Paul’s was the baptismal font. It was large, I’m guessing might have held 100 gallons of water (though it was a bird bath for dipping, not a tank for dunking). It was the location that I thought so interesting. It’s right inside the 30’ tall front doors. When you enter the church through the main front door, you can see several hundred feet through the High Alter and beyond, but the first thing you have to navigate around is the baptismal font.

The symbolism of the font’s location is significant. Baptism is the sign of entry into the Christian faith. We says baptism is a ceremony---an outward sign signifying an inward commitment. It is to faith, what a wedding is to marriage. At St. Paul’s the first thing you have to “deal with” immediately upon entering the nave is this issue of “am I in or out”? I like that! In fact I think---if I thought we should actually be building more buildings, I mostly don’t but that’s another topic---that we should mimic this idea and put baptisteries front and center at the entrance to our houses of worship. Many pastors emphasize baptism and want to have a baptism at every service. Why not take it a step further and design our architecture to symbolize the importance of the symbol by making it the first thing you encounter when you enter the meeting house?

A final crass and I hope comic thought that came to me while at St. Pauls. I was watching the people coming and going; tourists from every part of the globe all convening on this place to see this building and the thought occurred to me “This is their Bass Pro.” You see, I live in Springfield, Missouri, location of the world’s largest outdoor sporting goods store “The Grandaddy of them all” as they like to say. You folks in other parts of the U.S. who also have a Bass Pro store don’t really understand. What you really have is more of a catalog outlet. Springfield has “The Grandaddy of them all.” Hundreds of thousands of people a year comed to Springfield merely to see this store. So it occurred to me that St. Paul’s was London’s Bass Pro.

Uhm, Johnny (that’s the owner of BP). I appreciate the craftsmanship and décor you put into your stores, but you’re gonna have to step up your game to compete in London.

I can’t say enough good about St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey. I’ll repeat what I said before: It’s worth the trip to London just to see these two things. If I had to choose between the two of them----I’d do both!