"Nope."
"Too Late."
"Sorry"
"We can't give it back."
"It's your fault not ours."
"Ask the airline for the money since it's there problem, not ours."
Those were all the responses from one woman who was part owner...and she gave me all those in under 30 seconds.
I was beginning to get the idea that I wouldn't get my money back.
I headed out for coffee........
My old friend Don (as opposed to my new, not-my friend, owner of the hotel) mentioned a place for me to see in London. It's St. Etheldreda's Roman Cahtolic Church and it's reputed to be the oldest Roman Cahtolic church in the city.
I went to their website and there it was .... all wedged in between modern (semi-modern) buildings and I browsed through it's webpage with photos. It all looked quite interesting, especially after seeing one photo which was a coloful cask somewhere in the church which contained St. Etheldreda's hand.
That was enough for me.
I love visiting old churches but when somebody mentions a saint's body part, then I am all in on that!
What's not to love about a long dead saint whose bones or whatever have been distributed throughout the kingdom. I've detailed elsewhere some of the purported relics which I have seen. Laura says that she was in Japan and visited "Buddha's nostril." She was a bit dubious as to its authenticity and it's rather harrowing to contemplate, but it may be true. She and I visited Buddha's Tooth in the mountains of Sril Lanka some years ago. So, there is some presidence for parts of Buddha's head being scattered to the winds. People get real passionate about Buddha's relics. A few years before we were there some Separatist's in the country tried to blow up the shrine. But you can't keep a good tooth down and they built a bigger and stronger shrine.
I even saw "Mohammed's footprint" some years ago in Turkey.
Relics are big business and if you want to stay ahead of the church in the village down the road, you must have a relic for the faithful to visit.
And pray over.
And contribute money to the coffers over.
Today churches offer parking valet and Starbucks in the narthex and really fun rock bands for the teens and wifi with enough strenght to upload a selfie to all your Facebook friends when you nod off during the sermon.
Back then it it was relics and even though the website offered no history of the relic, their photo stream tagged the cask as containing the hand of Etheldreda. (Ethel-dreeda) Lest my Personnel Committee think I'm squandering my Study Leave on mere foolishness...I had to get to the bottomo of this apparent lack of recognition of the hand of Etheldreda.
Finding St. Etheldreda's is not like finding St. Paul's. St. Paul's could be found by The Pinball Wizard in a snowstorm. Its dome is majestic, the tourists flock there and sit on the steps and take photos of themselves sitting on St. Paul's steps and then upload the those photos within seconds to prove to everyone that they sat on St. Paul's steps. And then they wait for "Friends" to "like" the photos of them sitting on St. Paul's steps before they move on to the Millennial Bridge where they repeat the process.
St. Etheldreda's hosted the faithful since the late 1200s. I now was seeking out the saint and the church for which it is named. We got off the tube, walked through what was evidently the Jewelry District of London...dozens and dozens and dozens of jewelry stores. One man asked what we were looking for. We said, "St. Etheldreda's!" He hesitated and I thought "this guy has never heard of St. Etheldreda." But he assured us that he knew and told us to take the second street on the right and we'd find it.
"Maybe he DID know," I thought.
We went, found nothing but a couple other churches...doubled back and found it right around the corner from the guy's jewelry store. I was right...he had no idea.
We walked in.
The hall was impressive in it's simplicity and we went downstairs to the crypt, cause if I had a church with a relic in a cask, I would enshrine it in a place called a "Crypt." Even the way "crypt" is spelled makes it seem more mysterious. Besides the Albanian workers setting up for a wedding reception (nothing says, "celebration " like a wedding reception in a crypt.) I was struck by the stations of the cross which were along the walls. These were great, and worth the journey just to view them.
I needed a flash (after all...it was a crypt) but they were wonderful. Still...no hand.
Besides relics, churches like martyrs...it rallies the faithful and reminds them of the difficult times endured by their ancestors. St. Etheldreda's had eight statues of Catholic martyrs who died for their faith. The King and Church of England were not kind to the Catholics after the Reformation and rejection of Rome by Henry the VIII. (Just ask Thomas Becket's bones.) And this old Roman Catholic Church placed the martyrs around the sanctuary and had an explanation of the martyrs near the back wall.
It seems that St. Margaret Ward (1588) helped a Catholic priest escape and sadly, she herself did not and so she was killed for her act of kindness. But the statues lay claim to the Redemption in Martydom.
Stained glass windows with pictures of the Gospel stories and they were indeed beautiful.
Everywhere you turned there was an ancient door bidding you to enter or enticing you to at least look behind it.
Still no Ethelreda's hand. I was beginning to think I had come clear across the Atlantic only to have my hopes for the sacred relic dashed. So I surveyed the sanctuary again. and spotted something off to the corner of the nave. Most relics I've seen in churches make a big deal out of the relic...signs....lettering that catches the eys.....lights to illuminate the sacred object and also a box for donations. Surely that wooden box in the corner (which looks like the priest absentmindedly put there after worship and fogot about, a few centuries ago) could not be the cask of St. Ethelreda's hand.
Even though I am a certified preacher, I know enough about the altar of Roman Catholic Churches to realize that you do not tread lightly in that area. I looked around and saw no one else in the sanctuary and quickly and quietly went past the holy of holies to the corner and there it was....the cask of St. Ethelreda's Hand.
Simple in its presentation. Elegant in it's construction. I came, I saw, I blogged.
St. Ethelreda was a good woman of the 7th Century who married and left a loveless marriage and devoted herself to good works. She started a church. When she died her body would not decompose and the faithful were amazed and it became a shrine. One website says it became one of the "Top Five" Medieval shrines. (I am not making this up...but I do want to know....were they REALLY ranking these shrines back then. And if so...one would think that a non-decomposing body would not be rank at all.... But, I digress). So the body would not decompose and and apparantly people kept track of that non-decomposing body for centuries. I imagine Monks making a daily ledger entry..."just saw St. Ethelreda's body today...still composed.")
Long story short. Somehow she was finally buried and somehow her body parts got scattered to other churhes and somehow her hand ended up in a box in the corner of the nave of the church. There was no mention as to whether the hand had decomposed. But those days of relic-searching are long gone.
Think about it....who would really make a long pilgramage all the way to a church just to see a relic in a box?
I guess I would.
Having just checked off an item on my bucket list. I went in search of one more destination..."Ye Olde Mitre Pub." My friend Don recommended it also and I knew if was in the neighborhood and I knew that it was difficult to find and I knew that it was old because it says so in its name and "olde" has an "e" at the end which proves its age. Plus I have no idea what a "mitre" is...but if they spell it Old-English-y it must be authentic.
This is the Dickens-Cockney-Oliver Twist area of London. It was right down the street from St. Etheldreda's and ulike the church which nobody knew how to find, the first guy I asked about "Ye Olde Mitre" knew exactly where to find it. And we entered this weird long dark alley.
A pint will trump religious relics any day.
There wasn't a decomposed body in the place.
Cheers,
Bob
Good one! See you're sharing that pint with a cute blonde!
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