A country Churchyard
Tonight I’m going to share with you a state of mind. A serenity located in the church yard of one of the most peaceful and serene spots on Earth.
It's quiet and offers dew and birdly chirpings.
It’s a study in solitude.
Its combination of atmosphere and presence make one burst with a feeling of wellness.
The church yard of St. Giles country church in Stoke Poges, England , just 20 minutes west of London.
I was alarmed to see this church yard in the first scene of a James Bond movie where double O 7 took off in a helicopter.
It was for all the world to see but all they saw was the helicopter.
I’m glad. It's still my secret.
I found it on my first visit to Buckinghamshire in 1979. Allow me to take you there.
Park in the lot just outside and walk to the weathered, vined and gabled entrance.
Approaching the gate , there starts an awareness that
the mind is getting curiousor and curiousor, for the gate, with its winding vines and variegated flowers provides a whisper of what lies ahead.
“Does it get better than this? You ask.
As you pass through the gate let your eyes drink in the tilted gray stones marking the passage of long gone soldiers, priests, chambermaids, mayors, chimney sweeps faded to dust.
Standing there a feeling of blissful change, stillness begins to soak into your being.
Standing there in the mist, just inside the churchyard gate, before your mind takes you away, lift your head and take in the entire picture of the weathered grave stones helter skelter and the saxon church in the distance.
The structure itself dates well before the invasion by William the Conquerer in 1066.
The three parts remaining also include parts of the early gothic in 1220 and the Tudor architecture in 1558.
The church entrance is guarded by a heavy and never locked medieval wooden door with imposing black cast iron hinges which is approached through an alcove with heavy seats on either side.
The very act of traversing this door into the old church with its ancient wood and boxed pews tempts asking what stories they could tell. It’s like being reborn into the eternal heaven of a hectic world.
Although minuscule compared to gothic churches the design of the church is of a typical cross with small chapels on either side of the main altar in the nave. Breathe in the dank smell of ancient history here.
Just outside of the nave wall are two rather large and inconspicuous sarcophagi.
Here lies beside his mother and his aunt, the churchyards most famous resident.
Standing beside the sarcophagi and looking into the distance just past where Roger Moore and his Jet Ranger violated a sacred quiet, stands a sandstone monument beside a large oak tree.
Which reads in part. “This Monument was erected A.D. 1788 among the scenes celebrated by that great lyric and elegant Poet Thomas Gray. He died July 30th 1771 and lies unnoticed in the graveyard adjoining under the tombstone on which he piously and pathetically recorded the interment of his Aunt and lamented Mother.”
I give you lines 13 through 20 of “Elegy written in a country churchyard” by Thomas Gray.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
I’ve just described my favorite place on Earth. If you go I wish you all the stillness of soul that inspired Thomas Gray . I wish you the mental balm that the church yard has brought me. I wish you many happy hours reading the weathered gravestones there.
If only death could be as peaceful as this but sitting there on your bench in the Yew tree's shade, You may well wonder: How could it possibly be?
