London is different.
It's not Latin America! I'm so used to traveling in Latin America that things about England continually amaze me. Toilet paper (lots of it) that you can flush and soap, even in public restrooms! Drinkable tap water! Everything costs double in dollars what the number says the price is! Everyone understands English! I can eat salad without hearing anyone caution me about digestive problems! I feel so safe on the street, because I am surrounded by tons of other tourists, and even feel safe enough to pull out my tourist map and study it! My stomach doesn't clench in knots when I go on public transportation! (But after that one Mexico City subway ride, I don't think any underground rail system will freak me out again, Kandice and Brock and Adam know what I'm talking about.)
London is different, but I'm doing some of the same things I did before, but in a different way. Like Westminster Abby.
To save on money (prices being double what they are in dollars) we went to Westminster Abby to hear Evensong instead of doing the usual tour. Wow! We sat in the choir loft, behind the choir, and participated in a worship service in one of the grandest cathedrals in the world. In English! I've loved liturgy for a long time now, but I love it even more since that experience. I was staring up at this enormous gothic cathedral, eyes bleary from three hours of sitting-up sleep out of the last 36, unable to take it all in. Worship that has continued the same for a thousand years. The service included Psalm 136, about God’s unfailing love, and I was suddenly struck by how little I understand the eternality of God. I couldn’t even wrap my jet-lagged mind around the age of the cathedral, but for God Westminster Cathedral has existed for a mere moment, whereas He is forever. And his love for us endures forever, whereas Westminster will someday crumble to dust (an unimaginable thought when you are sitting inside it).
To further extend this thought, I managed to catch a Eucharist service today at Southwark Cathedral, another Gothic cathedral. As I sat through the familiar (yet slightly different) Eucharistic liturgy, said in that place for over a thousand years in a British English, I reflected on Jesus, and how eternal he is. I also found myself thinking about how worship is worship, whether in a historic Gothic Cathedral in London or in a rural mountain church in Honduras. I have worshipped both places, but the God of the worship is the same.
