{"id":847,"date":"2010-06-07T12:51:31","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T16:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/?p=847"},"modified":"2010-06-04T12:57:45","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T16:57:45","slug":"london-day-5-part-1-st-pauls-cathedral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/07\/london-day-5-part-1-st-pauls-cathedral\/","title":{"rendered":"London: Day 5, Part 1, St. Paul’s Cathedral"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know how much I bragged about Westminster Abbey in a previous piece, well, double it and you\u2019ve got St. Paul\u2019s 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 \u201cfelt\u201d and \u201csensed\u201d more than talked about. I told Kelly that I\u2019d 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\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>St. Paul\u2019s is \u201cnewer\u201d 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\u2019re talking the middle-ages; the time of Columbus and Napoleon (whose military nemesis is buried in the crypt of St. Pauls).<\/p>\n

In a way I\u2019d say Westminster is dark and St. Paul\u2019s is light—we\u2019re talking the color of the construction and the use of windows. There\u2019s a lot more art at St. Paul\u2019s.<\/p>\n

One striking feature of St. Paul\u2019s was the baptismal font. It was large, I\u2019m 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\u2019s right inside the 30\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

The symbolism of the font\u2019s 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\u2019s the first thing you have to \u201cdeal with\u201d immediately upon entering the nave is this issue of \u201cam I in or out\u201d? I like that! In fact I think—if I thought we should actually be building more buildings, I mostly don\u2019t but that\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n

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 \u201cThis is their Bass Pro.\u201d You see, I live in Springfield, Missouri, location of the world\u2019s largest outdoor sporting goods store \u201cThe Grandaddy of them all\u201d as they like to say. You folks in other parts of the U.S. who also have a Bass Pro store don\u2019t really understand. What you really have is more of a catalog outlet. Springfield has \u201cThe Grandaddy of them all.\u201d Hundreds of thousands of people a year comed to Springfield merely to see this store. So it occurred to me that St. Paul\u2019s was London\u2019s Bass Pro.<\/p>\n

Uhm, Johnny (that\u2019s the owner of BP). I appreciate the craftsmanship and d\u00e9cor you put into your stores, but you\u2019re gonna have to step up your game to compete in London.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say enough good about St. Paul\u2019s and Westminster Abbey. I\u2019ll repeat what I said before: It\u2019s worth the trip to London just to see these two things. If I had to choose between the two of them—-I\u2019d do both!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know how much I bragged about Westminster Abbey in a previous piece, well, double it and you\u2019ve got St. Paul\u2019s 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 \u201cfelt\u201d and \u201csensed\u201d more than talked about. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-london-england","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions\/849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}