Elizabeth Wood

Dear Friends,

Although we have now lived outside the United Kingdom for more than thirty years, my husband and I sometimes indulge in a little nostalgia for our home country, and enjoy some infusion of British traditions and way of life.

Things like Boxing Day, watching the Queen’s recent Platinum Jubilee celebrations, bingeing on murder mysteries set in idyllic English villages, Cadbury’s chocolate and, later this year, the World Cup (where England will almost certainly suffer a heartbreaking quarter-final loss on penalties).

So, I was happy to see that Saint Philip’s choir residency this year would take them to the beautiful city of Wells. Friends of ours were married in Wells Cathedral some years ago and we have very happy memories of a wonderful celebration there with family and friends.

Despite that visit, I didn’t know much about the history of Wells so I spent some time this week looking at the Cathedral website. I learned that in the 1970’s and 1980’s archaeological digs in the area found what are thought to be Roman ruins.

In 750 A.D. the Saxon king of Wessex first founded a church on the site where the cathedral now stands. It is believed that this was a “minster” church which means “that it looked beyond the diocese to an area that was not yet served by a network of parishes.”* Over time, a town developed around the church, providing a place of worship for the craftsmen who built it and the priests working there. (The Cathedral itself was built starting sometime around 1175 and is a stunning example of Gothic style).

I love this thought of the town growing up around the church to service the needs of the people who were there already, worshipping and serving God. The idea of the church being the first thing to be built and the town developing to support it—not the other way around.

How often we are tempted to think about church as a place we visit on Sundays. We even describe ourselves as “churchgoers,” as if this were the same as being a “Costco shopper” or a “gym rat” or a “frequent flyer.” Instead of “going to church on Sundays,” how do we make the shift to being the church, here in Tucson and beyond, every day?

I wish I had been able to go to England this summer to hear our wonderful choir sing in such an historic and glorious place! I know that their voices will be soaring to the heavens, up through the ancient towers, where people have come to worship for hundreds of years, drawn to this place by the tolling of the bells—an enduring reminder of the call for us to serve God, to be the church, wherever we are.

—Elizabeth Wood

*from Wells Cathedral website