1/12/91

Went to the morning service at Westminster Abby today. I've never really experience anything quite like that before. The place is ... well ... huge. The ceiling towers hundreds of feel above you. And the service was so solemn. The Bishop (I think) read from The Book of Prayer and we responded as we were supposed to. I don't believe the service has changed in the 900 years the Abbey has been there. We took communion - first time for me. Each person knelt at the altar. Then the Bishop handed me a piece of bread and gave me a blessing. After doing the same for about 10 others, he came back with this amazing gold goblet with jewels in it and we each drank from it and received another blessing. It was real wine - heavy and dark and sweet. Not the grape juice I remember my parents taking years ago.

There was no singing. After the service, while walking out, I saw a statue of Benedict Arnold (here's a hero over here) and the grave of Oscar Wilde.

I took the Tube back with Korf and he told me how the stations were used for shelter during the German air attacks of the second World War. I thought about how America has never really been attacked during a modern war and what it would be like. I wondered what it would be like if we were carrying those kinds of collective scars. Would the public be as supportive of President Bush if their home had been destroyed by an Iraqi missile? I guess war is fine if it doesn't affect me.