Conventry Cathedral

There is fog for as far as the eye can see. And probably even further. I am standing on the deck of a ferry crossing the English Channel.

I have been to Coventry. If you ever go to Coventry you should visit the Cathedral. It is not hard to find, it is next to Primark. It was bombed during the Second World War and was never rebuilt. The bare walls of the roofless cathedral stand there to remind you of what once was. Like a wound that has hardened but never completely healed. I visited the Cathedral. I had been there once before. It was in the 1970s when my brother and I went on a bicycle trip to England.

 

I don't have a photo from then, because neither of us owned a camera. I do have a photo of the Cathedral though, with my mother in front of it. She went to England on trip with an Christian Women's organisation once. It was her only trip abroad ever, and she had been very impressed with all the things she saw. She was from a generation where travelling abroad was not a common thing at all. She didn't have a camera, and the photo of her in front of the Cathedral was a present from one of her friends who was also on the tour.

 

 A year later she died of cancer, much too young.

 

That photo was on my mind as I stood there in front of the Cathedral. And it was on my mind now when crossing the Channel. We have been to the same place. We have seen the same wound.