Holiday in Yorkshire

The second part of our holiday was in Yorkshire.

 The first two here are from Riveaux Abbey, one of the most important Cistercian monasteries in Europe, and is very well preserved.

 Then I went to Fountains Abbey - even more intact, and also a stunning piece of architecture. It was also a very important abbey, and you still get some sense of what it might have been like. In both of these abbeys, you can get some sense of the work that was done to build them - the care and attention to detail in the carving - all done, with hand tools, chisels and hammers.

I have been asked why, given my thoughts and comments about the church, why I have visited 3 monasteries in the summer. None of them, I should point out, have any special place for me - Lindisfarne is closer to my spiritual heart. But they are all places that have a long-term spiritual depth, places that people have met with God in over centuries. That is not something that I would even want to ignore.

But it also shows me - especially with the Yorkshire abbeys - that the systems and structures we build and expect will last for centuries can be destroyed so easily. I am sure that some of the monks involved in these abbeys felt that when Henry dissolved them, the church was coming to an end. It didn't, of course. And today, the real church - Gods people - will survive if the Church of England collapses, the Baptist church disseminates, and the Catholic church withdraws - that is, if the current church structures fail - Gods church and work will continue. The church of the 22nd century may look nothing like the church of the 21st. But that is not to say it will not be valid and successful.