Our cathedrals are something of a mystery. We know little about the men who designed them and even less about the men who built them. The Welsh poet John Ormond pondered this and wrote a much-admired poem ‘Cathedral Builders’. He recognised the skill and application of men with rough hands and sharp eyes. ‘They climbed on sketchy ladders towards God’, he writes, ‘With winch and pulley hoisted hewn rock into heaven’. They ‘inhabited sky with hammers … took up God’s house to meet him’. In five stanzas he considered working men who, like most of us, were nothing special but who brought magnificence into being.
We have to ask ourselves questions as a result. Was their work with hammers and chisels an act of prayer? Has it anything in common with the labours of those who wrote prayers, composed music and constructed organs to shape the worship of others? In his early days Ormond earned his living by working on newspapers. At one time he was on the staff of ‘Picture Post’. At university he had studied art alongside his major subject. He had a feel for creative work and for those who did it in the course of earning their living.
The old tag ‘laborare est orare’ – to work is to pray, or work is worship – takes us some way. In their own manner monks in mediaeval monasteries put the idea into daily practice combining set times of prayer with equally set times of cultivating an abbey’s acres. Without the cowl and the habit we do well to regard our work in an engineering shop or design department in that light. ‘Who sweeps a room as for thy laws Makes that and the action fine’ wrote George Herbert. The lines, you remember, come from his hymn, ‘Teach me my God and King’. We should not over-spiritualise the faith so that it loses touch with everyday humanity.
Ormond died in 1990 aged 67. He is remembered for his documentary films and for this one outstanding poem. It merits our attention. As does Colossians 3.23,24.
IT MOVED
In 1912 the present church of St Gabriel’s, Sunderland came into being. It was made possible by shipyards workers who jacked up the old church and moved it to clear the site for the replacement building. St Gabriel’s has a reputation for backing the worldwide proclamation of the Gospel. Four of its clergy became overseas bishops. Today the church supports medical work by the Church Mission Society in Vellore, South India and Tearfund, amongst other agencies. At home it runs a streetcare drop-in. The Vicar is Libby Wilkinson.
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