The Great Dame of the Cathedral Choral Society

I’ve had a couple chances as of late to participate in Warrshington high suh-sci-uh-tay. The first opportunity came a week and a half ago when I visited the National Cathedral to hear a concert performed by the Choir of Westminster Cathedral, a world-renowned band of men and boys who sing sacred liturgical tunes. I often enjoy choral music as part my devotional life and also for casual listening, so I jumped at the chance to see the choir perform live. The afternoon performance was on a sunny day, but spending my time inside the great cathedral was well worth the sacrifice. The light streaming in through the magnificent stained glass windows of the national church managed to make the day seem even brighter indoors.

I came to the concert early with the intent of standing in line to buy same-day, student-priced tickets. For $15, I wanted to get a seat in the north transept and hear the choir performing from the left arm of the cross-shaped cathedral. Unfortunately, however, the ticket given to me was for a south transept seat. I asked if another seat might be available on the northern side, and the pleasant lady behind the desk asked me to wait a little while as she received ticket money from other concert-goers. I obliged and stood by patiently. After selling a few more tickets, the vendor offered me mid-knave seating about halfway back in the main part of the sanctuary. I asked again for a north transept seat, but the kind seller thought I was protesting my normally $45 mid-knave seat. I stood by and smiled at her as she offered me a spot in the front of the sanctuary among seats reserved for patrons of the cathedral at $65 a pop. Thus, as a student I was given a prime ticket to sit among the choral society’s elites.

I made my way up front with a glimmer of pride as surprised ushers were forced to allow me through to my prized throne. After having to move back and then forward again because of a mixed up seating arrangement, I met and began to speak with a longtime Episcopal supporter of the National Cathedral. She had grown up in DC, attended St. Alban’s parish next to the cathedral, and sent her children to the private Anglican school there. Now in her late 70s, she sat in the same seat that she had occupied for decades. The seat next to her own, which had once been filled by her deceased husband, now held her eldest and effeminate son.

Our conversation, strangely enough, focused on what most polite discourses do not: politics and religion. We spoke about the state of affairs within the Episcopal Church -- specifically on the ordaining of women and gay bishops. My elderly friend was thrilled with these new and progressive developments. It wasn’t too ago, after all, that she herself had been allowed to become a Eucharistic minister in serving the Lord’s Supper to parishioners. Although a cradle-to-grave Anglican, this great dame of the choral society was thrilled with her church’s liberality in its acceptance of both women and homosexuals. After hearing I was a Baptist, she spoke out and I consented to her rightly-assumed stereotype that I would disagree. Wanting to pick apart my beliefs, she questioned and criticized my understanding of the scripture’s disapproval of homosexuality and female church leaders. I smiled, not wanting to argue with the sophisticated intellectual of Episcopalianism, and passed off her probing with a quiet and gentle response about differing worldviews.

The choir’s performance and my interaction with the elderly dame gave me an afternoon of great satisfaction. I’m not sure if this satisfaction challenged me in faith or gave me a greater understanding of the Kingdom of God, but it did give me a window through which I could see the life of Washington’s Anglican elite.