Our trip to Ely

Dan's take on Ely:

Ely is a little city, just 15 minutes up the road from Cambridge. Just a town really, it rises out of "the fens," a large wetland area that over the years has been flooded and drained, with Ely actually being an island at certain points in history. This little town of Ely has a huge medieval cathedral, and is the seat of the diocese of Ely in the Anglican church. Sitting at the highest point of the town, the cathedral is something out of a story book. The original religious community there was a monastery founded in the 7th century by St. Etheldreda (that's right, Etheldreda-- a name to come back into vogue soon, we think), who was abbess for about 6 years until her untimely death from a plague. As it turned out, we visited on October 17th, which happened to be a feast day for Etheldreda that the cathedral still celebrates. So perhaps our visit was spiritually fortuitous-- an accidental pilgrimage of sorts.

The cathedral of course changed hands during the English Reformation, with some damage done to a lot of the statues, tombs, and stained glass windows, thanks to Henry VIII and others. Most of the main windows are restored, though the huge side chapel to Mary today has clear glass, which has its own aesthetic appeal nonetheless.

The subject of smashing up Catholic cathedrals and monasteries is a perfect segue to Oliver Cromwell. When touring various ruins in Ireland several years ago, I realized I was able to see only whatever he left standing. It turns out he spent many years with his family in Ely, just a few blocks from the cathedral, so we toured his home and learned a great deal about a very complex guy. So much of British history seems to turn around him, and more than a little spinoff into the American history (since he was an anti-royal, parliament supporting Puritan rebel). One of our favorite tidbits so far is that his head is hidden somewhere in his old college in Cambridge, Sydney Sussex, just across the street from the Woolf Institute. So Oliver and I occasionally have a little chat about religion and politics as I walk past each morning.

Cromwell wanted Christmas (he preferred the term "Christ tide" to expunge any hint of Catholicism from the term) to be a time of fasting, repentance and prayer. For awhile, the Parliament sided with him and banned Christmas festivities from England. After reflecting on the theological pros and cons of Cromwell's proposal, we have come down on the other side, and so have decided to try and get back to Ely for some Christmas festivities in the cathedral-- food, libation, and song-- during the Christmas season.