A Gray Day in Cambridge

I arrived in Cambridge today to visit my sister who goes to school here.  It was a gray day and very cold with a little rain blowing on the wind.  The center of town is full of medieval and early Renaissance churches and college buildings.  The overcast weather and the rain made the grass and lichen on the trees glow a bright, technicolor green.  In this picture I am standing on a bridge over the Cam River--Cam-bridge!

The city is a awash in Anglican churches, but I found the one Catholic parish--the church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs, built far out on the edge of town during the days when English Catholics were persecuted.  The lichen-covered Calvary group carved over one of the portals was my first clue it might be Catholic!

This is a typical street in Cambridge with a stone church, and little shops crowded onto the cobblestone streets.

Even though it is January, the trees framing the magnificent chapel of St. John's College already had a few pink blossoms.

This is the gate to St. John's College with gilded unicorns flanking the crown.  The rose insignia to the left recalls the War of the Roses and the gate on the right is the heraldric symbol of the great fifteenth-century patron of Cambridge, Margaret de Beaufort.

The Great Court of Trinity College has a massive green lawn with an ornate fountain in the middle of it. The surrounding buildings house offices and classrooms and even living quarters for some Cambridge professors.  A few of the doors even have heavy iron rings, like something out of Robin Hood!  No one can walk on the grass except the fellows of Trinity College, which are specially distinguished professors.  They look very important, striding across the lawn in their black "Harry Potter" robes!

Speaking of Harry Potter, they say that J. K. Rowling got the idea for the "whomping willow" from this towering old tree in New Court at Trinity.  Sometimes the students hang a bicycle in the tree to make it more like Hogwarts!

Here is my sister standing on another bridge over the Cam.  There were swans floating down the slow current in the green water.  Just beyond the bridge is a cow pasture with animals belonging to King's College.  They're called "King's cows."

I heard sung a Holy Eucharist service in the evening at King's College chapel.  This is the home of the famous King's College Choir, which sings the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols each Christmas Eve.  I listen to the broadcast of that holiday service every year with the unmistakable sound of the voices reverberating off the elaborate stone fan vaults above them.  It was amazing to sit near the altar in the dark church and listen to the choir sing the liturgy by candle light.  Cambridge is full of ritual--when a gong rings during dinner, the students rise as the University fellows enter and recite a Latin prayer over their food.  The King's College Choir boys wear top hats and coat tails when they go to and from their performances.  So I should not have been surprised that the Holy Eucharist service was very much a High-Church liturgy--akin to Catholic mass and even preserving some elements that disappeared from the Roman Rite after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.