Saturday, March 12
On the very last day of our Scotland/Wales trip, we spent the morning at Stratford, and then made our last stop in Coventry. We stopped to see the new cathedral there. I'll admit that I was less than excited. We've seen three large gothic cathedrals and the neo-classical St. Paul's. I just couldn't see how a building built in the 1950s could compare. It turned out, though, that it was an extra-ordinary place in its own right. Unfortunately, pictures weren't allowed inside. We're running out of picture space, so I added a link to Wiki that has a lot of inside pictures.
Coventry was bombed badly by a German raid in November 1940. The raid was devastating to the city. Coventry had a large section of city that dated from the medieval period. Almost all of it was destroyed in the raid. The large cathedral was left with just the outside shell. The church leaders re-conceived the church on new lines: as a center for reconciliation between people. The church's rector wrote the words "Father Forgive" on the burned out walls of the building on the day after the bombing. He made it clear that he didn't just mean "forgive our enemies" but "help us realize our own sin" as part of the process. That began the emphasis on reconciliation. The wood cross in the picture below is a replica of the one built from the burned out wood of the fires. The original is on display inside the new building. It's hard to make out the gold lettered "Father Forgive" behind the cross; the original was written in black.
In the middle of the now empty shell of the old cathedral are several striking monuments. The one below of two people experiencing reconciliation has copies in Berlin, Northern Ireland and Hiroshima.
The new cathedral makes beautiful use of glass, but it wasn't possible to take pictures from the inside and the outside pictures are a bit hard to see. Here's Tink with her friend Claire in front of the main worship entrance, also seen below. The stained glass picture from below is from Wiki
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