I'm not a religious person, but I do love sacred verse and I also love sacred spaces. On the leaflet that described the historical and spiritual significance of Halifax Minster, there was the following stanza from T S Eliot's Little Gidding:
You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself,
or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where
prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the
conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice
praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.
These words are just so glorious, they make me want to believe in something, even though I don't.
