Pilgrimage to Canterbury
We recently celebrated the 80th anniversary of the death of Evelyn Underhill. One of her many talents was as a conductor of retreats. She led retreats for both laity and clergy and in 1927 she was one of the first woman to lead a retreat in Canterbury Cathedral which was attended by 50 other women. She is remembered in the cathedral in a very special place, the All Saints Chapel which contains a crucifix that used to belong to her. The Cathedral Archivist told me that ‘the figure was found in Florence in a ‘junk shop’ by Evelyn Underhill. It was used on the altar of her house, Lawn House in Hampstead. When Lawn House closed, it was acquired by A B Norman who presented it in her memory to the Cathedral for All Saints Chapel in 1965’.
She led the movement that encouraged Christians to spend time in silence and prayer and through her book ‘Mysticism’ encouraged the study of the Christian mystics, those men and women who, she wrote, ‘insist that they know for certain the presence and activity of that which they call the Love of God … They know a spiritual order, penetrating and everywhere conditioning though transcending the world of sense.’
This week I visited Canterbury Cathedral for the first time and went to find the All Saints Chapel. I ask several guides and even the chaplain on duty and no one could tell me where it was. Then I bumped into one of the senior vergers coming out of a lift and he told me the chapel wasn’t open to the public. I explained why I wanted to visit and he took me through a locked door, up a narrow winding staircase to a beautiful, simply laid out chapel with Evelyn Underhill’s crucifix behind the altar. Opposite the altar was a window looking down into the cathedral and he told me that Archbishop Runcie used to use this chapel as his private retreat space. I can understand why – it felt like one of those ‘thin’ places a sense that Evelyn Underhill would have understood well.