Bath Bonus—Song Sung Abbey

Thursday, May 25. Sitting at 6:37p inside the abbey waiting for the sung eucharist of Ascension Day. Not that I've gone catholic or anything...I want to experience a cathedral in the purpose it was built for.

The building is hushed, yet every sound is magnified in the vaulted space. The creak of a pew and the wooden boards beneath them. The jangle of keys. The elderly women's whispered agreements on where to sit. A cough. Shoes scuffing and heels slapping on the granite and marble tombstones that form the flooring. The sliding shush of fabric as a jacket is removed.

The clear strains of yet another piper in the courtyard drift in through the open side doors at the back of the church. Earlier I had walked the floor and read the tombstones--one of a mother and daughter who died 40 years apart, each aged in their 80s, in the 1800s--and heard the tune of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from the single flute.

The dark, wood pews are covered in a pad of red carpet, and kneeling cushions--blocks of red vinyl and fabric--hang on brass rings and hooks in front of us on the pews ahead.

The walls of the corridors that flank the abbey are lined from the floor to about 8 feet up with marble tomb markers. Elegant, elaborate, simple, carved, uncarved. No matter. Each one is a way to commemorate and notice that someone lived and died. Loved. Was loved. Lived, worked, sometimes served the community or a regiment, sometimes created something famous, sometimes did nothing more notable than be a beloved spouse or son or daughter.

The next 12 to 20 feet above rises with arched, stained glass depictions of biblical scenes--picture books put to glass. One window shows myriad coats of arms, and carvings of coats of arms decorate the junctions in the vaulted ceiling.

It is easy to feel somber in a place that is so redolent with death and reminders of the brevity of life. Yet each time the choir sings and the pipe organ plays during the service, the abbey seems to come alive from the inside out.

The deep bass vibrates through my feet in the floorboards. The midtones reverberate from the walls. The choir's clear notes slide up and over in rolls of music that lift to the rafters and fold back to us like audible light.

Gone are morbid thoughts of people long buried, with granite markers their only memory. In their place is a thrill of living, of breathing, of hearing song that flows out and returns with tenfold force. My hands and heart open in prayer, and the abbey sends it gloriously on.