Pond-Hopping, Part One

Wells Cathedral, Somerset, England

If there is anything that travel has taught me, it’s just how small the world really is. Perhaps it’s a bit ingenuous of me, but I can’t quite get over the miracle of the fact that we could be dining with a Parisian friend in Oxford one night and having vegetable soup and cornbread around our own dinner table with both sets of parents in laughing attendance the next. Such a contrast—in a little over 24 hours’ time—never fails to strike me, especially when I consider the unfathomable fact that my ancestors measured the very same journey in months. They, on the other hand, would probably not have spent their first week on native soil reminding one another to drive on the right-hand side of the road or waking each morning from a jet-lagged stupor in utter bewilderment as to where on earth they were. Cornwall? Devon? Somewhere in between??

But there’s another dimension to the smallness of this spinning planet that has nothing whatever to do with the efficiency of modern travel and everything to do with the instant connection of sisters in Christ. It was our own dear Anne Shirley who first said what YLCF has reminded us of and proved over and over again:

Kindred Spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out that there are so many of them in the world.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

And how much more splendid, not only to connect over a common bond via the internet, but to have the opportunity to meet face to face?  While traveling in England this September, Philip and I had the joy of meeting up with a couple of our very own YLCF readers and on both occasions I had the uncanny sense of reunion, instead of a first-time acquaintance. As is so often the case when meeting fellow believers, there was an immediate kinship. So much so that I discovered to my chagrin after parting with each of them that I had neglected to ask some of the most basic questions of new introductions, paddling languidly and comfortably, as it were, through the pleasant waters of ordinary conversation.

We had arranged to meet Jessica and her husband Aaron for Sung Mattins one Sunday morning in Wells, almost directly half-way between where they were staying in Worcestershire and where we were staying in Devon. I knew Wells of old, both from a previous visit and from the lively, living pages of Elizabeth Goudge’s City of Bells, and I could hardly wait to set foot on those brown cobbles once more, worn smooth by centuries of peasants and pilgrims and ordinary folk just like ourselves en route to morning worship at the great cathedral. Darling Wells! The smallest cathedral city in England, a little jewel framed by the emerald hills of Somerset, and early on a quiet Sunday morning, as old-worldly a place as can be found. A sweet place for a meeting that, in itself, could have been plucked from the pages of one of our dear Elizabeth’s own novels…

We spotted them coming out of the Quire after service and hastened to catch up with them in the cloisters. A hug took precedence over introductions (don’t you just love meetings between Christians? ), and over lunch, nestled into a quiet corner of The King’s Head, we swapped stories and talked books just as if we were friends of years and not, literally, minutes. It was good to meet with our own countrymen after being abroad for several weeks; as Philip said, “to talk American with someone”. And we confessed to them the moratorium on book-buying we were afraid we were going to have to impose on ourselves, being very much in danger of exceeding our weight limit on the voyage home.

“It’s nearly impossible to stop,” I lamented, as we discussed Aaron and Jessica’s next day’s destination of Hay-on-Wye, the famed ‘town of books’.

“Like an addiction,” Philip could have added.

“But we’re not going to buy anymore,” I firmly declared, all but thumping the well-lacquered table in my earnestness.

After lunch we wandered about Wells, peeking into closed shops (and ducking into a few open ones!) and reveling in the medieval architecture of the Vicars’ Close (recognizable to Goudge readers as the quarters of Henrietta in City of Bells), before turning back to the Cathedral for Evensong at three.

“What do YLCF readers do when they meet up with one another for the first time?” I quipped to Jessica as we strode along with the quarter-till bell ringing in our ears. “They go to church—two times in a row!”

We were all laughing at the idea, and at how natural it had been to suggest it, but our voices were silenced and our steps sounded hollowly, serenely, on the stone pavement of the nave as we hastened back towards the Quire, from whence the rolling music of the organ already proceeded. The lights were lit in the stalls and the great Golden Window above the altar was living with the glow of the afternoon sun as we filed silently into our seats behind where the choir would be seated. Soon the choir and clergy filed in, the boy choristers looking cherubic in their ruffled white collars and surplices, their older counterparts grave and respectful. And when they opened their mouths the very glory of Heaven seemed to break forth upon us. I spent the better part of the service with tears blurring my eyes.

We parted with Aaron and Jessca on the Green, the bishops and saints and apostles of the Western Front gazing down upon us with their solemn, centuries-old eyes and the ravens and rock doves beginning to circle homeward about the cathedral spires. It had been a beautiful day and my heart was full of God’s goodness as I hugged my new friend goodbye and the men shook hands, promising to keep in touch.

And if anyone doubts my claim that the world is as small as I’m asserting it to be, then they surely cannot dispute the dear smallness of England itself. For two days later, picnicking on the banks of the placid little River Eye in Lower Slaughter, Gloucestershire, I glanced up at a passing couple, meandering hand-in-hand along the quiet bank.

“Jessica?” I gasped, nearly choking over my baguette.

We all had a good laugh, and compared notes on the day that we had both apparently chosen to spend in the Cotswolds and asked a few questions we had forgotten to ask before–like, when their baby was due! . And then we parted again with another hug and another promise, and Philip and I smiled after them as they walked on, still holding hands. Ten years behind us and so full of beauty and promise and Christ-centered ardor. Could such newlyweds but know what a sweet fragrance they are!

A few hours later I was standing in a bookshop in Chipping Campden, my arms guiltily full, when I heard a voice behind me:

“So! I thought you weren’t going to buy any more books!”

And so another laughing reunion, a blissful half-hour perusing the shelves of an irresistible shop (yes, we added a few more volumes to our already sinking boat of overweight luggage) and a bit of a hunt for a tea shop (which proved fruitless, it being after five by this time). And then, for the third time in as many days, I said goodbye to Jessica, on the narrow sidewalk of a golden Cotswold village.

I think it bodes well for our meeting again.