Bicton, Devon
Many people find a powerful sense of validation from having their names inscribed on walls. Even having one’s name on a small piece of Formica laminate in a slot on an office door is a source of esteem to a lot of us. I have to admit to more than the slightest bit of envy recently when visiting the epic Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, wondering who these people are that were privileged to have their names put on magnificent doors in grand hallways of this vast neo-classical edifice. There is clearly a difference between those little pieces of plastic that are removed in a second versus magnificent brass castings of names that are securely fastened in place with a dozen screws. We derive a sense of place and significance from having our names written down, especially if they have the appearance of being more permanently attached. Some of the most important finds in all of archeology derive from very large chunks of stone with the names of kings and wanna-bees inscribed on them.
A couple weeks ago I was climbing up inside the vast dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. There are five hundred and thirty steps from street level to the top of the second largest rotunda in the world; about half of these being in amazingly constricted passageways with very low overhead. Prominent signs at the bottom warn would-be climbers to think twice if they have uncertainties about their health or stamina. There is no turning back once one commits to the ascent. Having once lived in a castle and always being mesmerized by spiral stairs, I happily committed to the climb.
Inside the narrow corridors I was instantly reminded of the confining close quarters one finds on climbing into the inner chambers of many great pyramids. These inner chambers are notoriously hard to get to on steep irregular steps in tiny passageways with a perverse lack of oxygen. The compelling issue is no longer stamina or health; it is the mental wherewithal to fight off a newly emergent case of intense claustrophobia. I was vividly transported in my imagination back to my nether world explorations inside pyramids.
While ascending inside St. Paul’s vast dome, I was entranced with how all the interior surfaces of these passageways are uniformly covered with a million names and dates. People find the wherewithal to fight off their claustrophobia and breathlessness long enough to stop and pull out their ever-ready permanent markers and deface history in their efforts to become part of it. People feel a strong need to let the world know they have been in these secret places. In the spiral stairs of the great tower of the Cologne Cathedral one also finds this same amazing visual montage of a hundred thousand anonymous people wanting to be seen in the eyes of history, even if in reality only in the eyes of tired and weary tourists seeking to have their own moment on top of the world.
Another one of Christopher Wren’s masterpieces is about a mile distant from St. Paul’s. The Monument was built to commemorate one of the great fires that laid waste to the city several hundred years ago. This two-hundred and twenty-two foot spire contains a sublime spiral staircase with three hundred fifty steps. Curiously, the walls do not contain the first name or date on them. They are absolutely devoid of markings of any kind. There were no attendants or graffiti police on that challenging set of stairs to make sure we pseudo-archeologists kept our Sharpies and Marks-a-Lot pens in our pockets. I was intensely curious as to why people write their details on the walls of epic old churches but not on monuments to great fires.
Naming opportunities have become a way to acquire large amounts of money. Corporations and individuals alike seem to crave the opportunities to have their names inscribed on the lentils above entries into imposing academic buildings and stadia of all sorts. People are willing to pay millions to see their names routed into a chunk of stone over a doorway. Fund raisers in many charitable organizations have found people will pay to have their name on just about anything. Even our small community theater has found patrons are willing to pay good money to have their name etched on a small adhesive-backed brass plate which is in turn stuck onto the back of a used auditorium chair given to the theater by the hospital when it gutted its own auditorium. We desperately want to be affiliated in some fashion with something bigger and more durable than ourselves. We want to create a sense of significance for ourselves; believing people who have their names inscribed on the world and its attachments must count for something. We struggle with our own sense of impermanence and smallness; even becoming indiscriminate about where we leave our names.
On the periphery of the splendid Italian gardens at Bicton is an old parish church; long in disuse. Tourists to the garden wander into it out of curiosity, as did I. In front of the tower of this old church are the older remains of an even smaller chapel; the empty gothic window mullions vaguely reminiscent of the windows left standing after the destruction of Coventry during World War II. A long neglected cemetery contains ancient slab tombstones with nearly obliterated names and dates. One barely legible stone contains the exact same first and last names as the man of the house where I am taking residence. Another stone contains the same family name as my friend, Tony. The existential questions regarding death, significant, and immortality took on a slightly enhanced urgency.
These names, once etched into stone, legible and enduring, are now barely detectable in the rough surface of broken tombstones in the overgrown church yard of a long disused church. Certainly the names scratched onto the interior walls of old church buildings with pen, pencil, chalk, and marker are at risk for being erased, if not by centuries of erosion, then in a few seconds when a painter runs a roller full of fresh paint over them.
Even the grandest structures in the world eventually disintegrate and are lost. The magnificent polished marble faces of the pyramids were long ago looted. The Sistine Chapel is being eaten away by acid rain and smog. Earthquakes did to ancient wonders of the world in seconds what thirty centuries of time failed to do. Developers tear down magnificent structures in the name of economic expediency. Entire cities are lost to the insanity of war. Lots of names go away.
The Revelation of John describes a heavenly city where names of the apostles and tribes of Israel are written on the foundations and walls. There is nothing to suggest looting, acid rain, earthquakes, developers, or war are ever going to compromises these walls and foundations. The names will be there for all to read for all time.
Recent acquaintances have been spending several days digging around in old parish records in the Devon Records Office. They have found evidence of land ownership, marriages, death, and even involvement in the life of the church. What my new friends did not find is anything about the fate of these people. Were their lives as temporal and evanescent as the faded ink on moldy record books?
Even more compelling is the recording of our names in the ultimate parish record - The Lamb’s Book of Life, the book that grants to all those inscribed therein a place of residence in that celestial city where “death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away.” Perhaps we need to come out of the dark passageways and put our markers away and allow the One who writes with indelible ink to inscribe our names in a place where all eternity will not obliterate our names. Where I seek to have my name inscribed is an all important decision.
Make sure your good name isn’t graffiti on the world, rather an entry in the ultimate guest book of all time.
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