Communion at Westminster: Autumn in Europe Day 2

If, like me, you grew up with British culture from afar, through English novels, TV shows, films and a famous London-themed real estate board game, then coming to London for the first time will be full of odd little moments of recognition. You will find yourself walking down Oxford Street, only to notice Regent Street and Bond Street in quick succession. Then you will look up at a clock and realise that you are looking at Big Ben; or you realise that the bells you are hearing come from St. Martin’s, and though they are not singing, “You owe me three farthings”, they might as well be.

My trip into the city this morning was filled with moments like these. I set off with the intention of seeing Westminster Abbey and the House of Parliament, but while there I became aware of so many other places in the near vicinity of where I was: Trafalgar Square and the Nelson Column; No. 10 Downing Street (not accessible from the street, it turns out, at least not to the general public); not to mention all the familiar names of places and streets that jumped out at me as I walked. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a foreign city that is filled with so many ready-made memories and associations.

Yet those things which feel so familiar can catch us by surprise with just how different they are. Take, for instance, the convention here of standing to the right on an escalator; back home, it would be to the left. Everything looks and feels the same, but for one minor detail.

Then there are those moments which curiously blend the very familiar with the entirely different. The communion service at Westminster Abbey was a perfect example of this: a liturgy I know well, set in a medieval building so full of history which I have absorbed all my life yet never seen or connected with personally. Was I really standing in the building where William the Conqueror was crowned? Was that a real Medieval painting on the back wall of the chapel? Like the street names on a Monopoly board, I had taken in such things from birth, yet no more expected to come near them than I had expected to see a giant boot paying rent on a hotel at Trafalgar Square. And yet – the building where I took communion had born witness to people and times that for me was only the stuff of history books; and when I shared the greeting of the peace, I shook hands with people who, it seemed, came here for communion most days on the way to work.

Living in a relatively new city like Melbourne, it is easy to feel detached from the kind of deep history that London carries on its surface. I did not go to all of the Roman ruins that are here to be seen; there were locations from the books of my childhood that I did not have time to visit. I have spent much of my time here – only two days – trying to balance constant movement with just being: enjoying what is here; taking it in, not consuming more than I can process. But one memory will, I think, remain clearly: that moment during communion when I looked beneath me and stared at the tiles lining the chapel’s floor and realised that those tiles were profoundly, magnificently old, and I could wonder, for that moment, how many others, kings and commoners alike, had stood on that floor. I felt, for that moment, not like a tourist trying to squeeze in every significant London moment; I was a Christian, standing on the same floor as a millennium of other Christians. And that was a beautiful moment.

I did not get to see Buckingham Palace; I forgot to visit the Coliseum I saw listed on a map. There were Monopoly Streets I did not get to walk. I have had so little time and so many demands on it. In a London-themed Bingo contest, I doubt I would come close to winning. But I took communion at Westminster Abbey, and that was worth not having a sleep-in.