Baptism Sunday!

Yesterday morning I went to church in Coventry Cathedral. It was very similar to our episcopal church services at home. Some of the wording was different, and they have a "Verger" and a "Curate" (1st year vicar as far as I can tell) which we don't have but everything else is largely the same. I was amused when I flipped through the bulletin, I let out a familiar groan and instinctively looked toward the exit as I noticed it was baptism Sunday! Really it wasn't too bad, and I got to see them use their very cool baptismal font that is a hollowed out boulder from Jerusalem.

Afterward I found myself at a lunch there to discuss international students/parishioners. So that was excellent, as the combo of free food while meeting good people never goes amiss.

Consecrated in 1962 (when the Queen herself broke a bottle over it), this is the youngest cathedral in Britain, and I was pretty excited when I realized that my church at home is actually older than one here. Very excited.
Now the old cathedral was built in the 14th century-ish and was destroyed in November of 1940 when Coventry was heavily bombed during WWII. They did not rebuild it, but rather left it as a visual memorial and reminder of what people can do to each other. The "new" cathedral, St. Michael's Cathedral formally, was built directly attached to the ruins to show the bridging of the old and the new. Rightly so, all of Coventry is interested in the reconciliation after the war, rebuilding the city, stiff upper lip and all that. The symbol of Coventry is the phoenix, of course due to the birds rebirth and rising from the ashes to be better than before.
All cathedrals everywhere are built on a North/South axis. The new cathedral here is on the East/West axis, which serves I think only as a bit of trivia. (okay, nerd rant over)
The tapestry inside is the second largest in the world. It used to be the largest of course, then someone with a ton of money decided that they wanted the largest tapestry in the world so they got to sewing.
So, it's a pretty cool place, lots of modern things, mixed with some traditional things. I like it mostly, but I'll leave it for you to decide.