Today we went on a tour of Westminster Abbey.\u00a0 I had an idea of what I would be seeing but I had no idea what I would be feeling.\u00a0 I am not a religious person in any sense of the word; it must have been years since I last stepped into a church.\u00a0 Yet ever before entering Westminster Abbey I could tell there was something different about this church.\u00a0 It gave off the appearance of grandeur and made me feel in awe.\u00a0 Upon entering I knew that this church was different than any I have ever been in before.\u00a0 Though filled with tourists, I could imagine the Benedictine monks of the past walking silently, in deep thought and prayer.\u00a0 There was something about that mental image which was very appealing.\u00a0 Spiritual silence; complete and tranquil.<\/p>\n
On top of all this was the sense of being surrounded by great individuals, long gone but not forgotten.\u00a0 The burial ground of the “Unknown Warrior” was particularly striking.\u00a0 The story behind it was incredible and the fact that this British soldier was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor is all the more remarkable. Everywhere I turned I saw more and more famous individuals, whether Henry V, Mary Queen of Scots, Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens or Charles Darwin.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, I am glad that someones ideas we think challenge religious belief is actually buried in Westminster Abbey.\u00a0 Charles Darwin’s name has been thrown around to promote this and that and whatever else.\u00a0 But the fact that this man is buried in one of the greatest churches on the planet is a testament to the human ability to reconcile differences and respect one another, no matter what.\u00a0 Belief in God is certainly no prerequisite to feel the sense of awe and peace within Westminster Abbey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today we went on a tour of Westminster Abbey.\u00a0 I had an idea of what I would be seeing but I had no idea what I would be feeling.\u00a0 I am not a religious person in any sense of the word; it must have been years since I last stepped into a church.\u00a0 Yet ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[733],"tags":[934],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrew-f","tag-westminster-abbey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}