Reading Alexander Pope’s

… some to church repair,

Not for the doctrine, but the music there.[1]

reminded me of my first year at university when we had a lecture that conveniently finished just as evensong was beginning in the cathedral, so, with a fellow music student, I would wander out of the music department and up the cathedral path after the lecture and listen to evensong to fill the hour between the lecture and evening meal in college.  Had it not been for the close proximity of Durham music department and cathedral, or the convenient timing of the lecture and meal, we probably would not have bothered to go to evensong (or at least I wouldn’t).  Though I am inclined to think there is a very good reason for this proximity.

Needless to say, I remember more about the evensong hours than I do of the lectures.

[1] Cited in Viladesau, Richard Theology and the Arts: Encountering God through Music, Art and Rhetoric (NY: Paulist Press, 2000) 29