fun day. I met Kristen, like I said, for Mass at the Brompton Oratory. It was the weirdest mass I've ever been to. During the Eucharistic prayer, the priest didn't go behind the altar...eh said all the prayers in front of it, often with his back to the rest of the congregation. Then for communion, rather than going up in a single file line like every other Catholic mass I've been to, we went up to the edge of the altar and knelt down and waited for the priest to come distribute the Eucharist to us. This is not to mention that the communion process, in ALL of Europe is crazy...there is no way of filling up to altar in an orderly fashion...it's every man for himself. That's not to say any of these things are bad...they are just much MUCH different than I've ever experienced at home.Then we went on our St. Thomas More journey. As I mentioned yesterday, Sir/St. Thomas More (STM) is the patron saint of lawyers. He was a lawyer (obviously), a statesman,
and a loyal adviser to King Henry VIII. But when Henry wanted to separate from the Catholic church and make himself the head of his new church (now the Church of England), STM said now. His famous words were "I am the king's good servant, but God's first." Because of my impending cold (which has dissipated a bit today, fortunately) and Kristen being tired of walking, we really only did one of the four areas around London. Because the Brompton Oratory is in Chelsea, we decided to do the sites there. We first went to find the old library. After first thinking we missed it, we found it was right under our noses. The library is supposed to hold a couple of famous pieces of art work of More and his family, but since it was Sunday and an antique show was going on, we didn't get to see them. The road which the library is on is also supposed to be the northern border of what was More's estate.The next stop was to find Old Church, the parish More attended during his adult life. Odd enough,
the church he went to, which still has a statute of him in front of it, is where his first wife is buried (and I think his daughter, too), and apparently often does things to commemorate More, is part of the Church of England. (I understand that the Anglican church has saints an is very similar to the Catholic church in many aspects, it seems odd to me they would recognize a man who is canonized in the Catholic church in large part because of his fidelity to it. But that's neither here nor there....) There was a communion service going on inside the church, so we didn't get to go inside, but the outside is just beautiful.The final stop for the day was the Tybrom Convent. Many of the people who died defending the Catholic church during the reign of Henry VIII were hung from the Tybrom Tree not far from this convent. The convent was supposed to have a tour which they give every week. Every week except for this one (of course!). I'll probably try to go back, especially because I think (although I need to find out for sure) that many of the trials of those accused of treason were also held here.
Tybrom is at the opposite end of the Kensington/Chelsea Borough, so we had to walk through Hyde Park to get there. On our way there I realized that today is Sunday, which
means Speaker's Corner. Speaker's Corner is something that I've wanted to see since my Grandma Friedman told me about it before my first trip to London in 2000. Basically it's an opportunity for anyone who wants to to stand up on anything they can find and talk about anything (and everything) they want. Most of them, of course, are about highly contentious political subjects. Discussion of salvation is a close second. It seemed the speaker getting the moat attention today was the man who we heard say, "I'm not anti-semitic just because I support Hezbola." (He didn't get a lot of applause for that one.) I'd like to go back again to hear what other topics are brought up and to listen a little more.It was great to have Kristen all day and to do these things with her. We made it back to my flat (after a slight detour for some amazing gelato) and she stuck around for dinner. I'll probably get to see her again in about a month when she comes back to London to hang out with another friend of ours that is visiting at that time. It's just nice to know that someone I know and enjoy is really so close. :) After she left, I spent the evening re-learning how to play euchre with some people from my program. Overall, it was a great day. Hopefully tomorrow will bring equally as fun but different adventures.
Here is a link to some of my newest pictures (some are already posted here, but there are more if you follow the link.)
