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Toto, I don’t think we’re in London anymore

London has hundreds of popular tourist spots that attract millions of visitors each year. I admit, I did the whole Big Ben to Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace to Tower of London circuit and I enjoyed it. I loved being able to walk out of the hotel and onto a street that contained a 500-year-old house right down the block from a modern tube station and an Indian curry restaurant. But the intricacies of this city, like any city, are often found off the beaten path.

Both my visits to London have included a hike up Highgate Hill and then a walk down the small, winding lane leading to Highgate Cemetery. Many are familiar with London’s abbeys and churchyards, but the real appeal of dead London is Highgate, often referred to as a Victorian Valhalla.

Well, We Can’t Just Put Them on the Streets

Highgate Cemetery was established in 1839. Around this time the church graveyards were becoming quite full, and rather than dump the dead out on the streets, Parliament established seven private cemeteries to be located within London proper. In 1954, when the popularity of burial at Highgate was at its peak, a second part of the cemetery was opened to accommodate all the new “arrivals.” This newer cemetery was coined the East Cemetery, leaving the older side to be called, naturally, the West Cemetery. During the bone yard heyday, both cemeteries had elegant parades of well-dressed mourners following caskets to elaborate tombs and mausoleums. Later, when cremation became legalized, the processions of ornate funerals halted and both cemeteries were maintained less and less. Eventually, in 1975, the West Cemetery was closed altogether and efforts were put into maintaining the East side.

Luckily, a group called “The Friends of Highgate Cemetery” was formed and in 1981 procured both sides. To this day they are responsible for upkeep of the 37-acre sprawl encompassing both cemeteries. However, the West Cemetery, sometimes called a “maintained wilderness,” had become so overgrown that upkeep involved maintaining and restoring the tombs but only clearing the vegetation along the paths and around the nearer graves.

A Garden of Dead People

Highgate does manage to attract a few tourists due to its most famous “resident,” Karl Marx. Marx, along with Michael Faraday and other historical notables, is buried in the East Cemetery. This side, although it exhibits manicured lawns and moderately-kept headstones in some areas, has wooded stretches where the paths disappear into the trees, and headstones are crowded amongst ivy, moss, and each other. It resembles the scene of a ghostly movie; in fact, the cemetery has been the set of a few horror movies. And yet I found, even in this green expanse dedicated to housing dead people, a sense of tranquility, mixed with an overwhelming fascination. This place just exudes mystery.

Even more mysterious is the West Cemetery. While access to the East Cemetery is open to the public (for a modest fee), the West Cemetery has tours by appointment only (for a slightly higher fee). The day I booked my tour it was overcast and gloomy, with an ever-present threat of rain, the perfect backdrop for a necropolis jaunt. The entrance to the West side is a daunting structure, once a chapel with two sides—one for Anglicans and the other for non-Anglicans (or “dissenters”). A tunnel runs under the lane that divides the cemeteries so a body would not have to leave consecrated ground on its way to be buried.

For Your Mental Safety, Please Stay With the Group

Our guide led us through the chapel gate onto the stones of a courtyard. It was eerily quiet here, making it hard to believe that we were still in London. From my vantage point, the cemetery itself was hidden; it was located up a tiny hill behind the chapel and beyond the courtyard. The trees, bushes, and overgrowth cleverly hid nearly all the signs of headstones.

At the top of a stone stairway leading into the cemetery, a path began, and a stretch of graves ambled up either side among the tangles of vines and growth. The variety of graves was amazing. Small markers were ensconced amongst larger markers that bore angels and broken columns, crosses and torches. Many looked as if they would disappear overnight into a fit of ivy and other creeping vegetation.

The path continued through the archway located in the middle of a foreboding stone structure. Flanking the arch were two sets of hulking columns. The guide explained that this was the entrance to Egyptian Avenue, a row of continuous family vaults that form an alley leading up to the Circle of Lebanon. The doors to the vaults were adorned with various funerary symbols signaling the passing of life into death, and as we walked on I got a creepy, tingly feeling.

On other side of Egyptian Avenue was the Circle of Lebanon, another series of continuous vaults with an inner and outer circle. In the outer ring was a columbarium, a place for storing the ashes of those who have been cremated. In the inner ring, a large, sprawling cedar tree was perched in the soil above and between the vaults. The tree itself was here before the cemetery was even built, and its position high above the cemetery contributed to the spooky feeling.

But Wait, There’s More

Located behind the Circle of Lebanon was the tomb of Julius Beers, the largest and most ornate tomb in the entire cemetery. It was built to block the view of London from the terrace of the church directly behind the cemetery that Londoners often would enjoy after Sunday service. Under the terrace was a catacomb of tombs that was closed off to the tour. The vaults themselves could not be seen, and only a gated entrance led into the darkness under the stone. While listening to the tour guide explain the history of the tomb, we rested our backs against the cool stone of the terrace. I had my back to the gate of the entrance just to scare myself a bit. After a few minutes of listening to the guide, a dull thudding noise came from behind the gate. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who heard it, as the other members of the group looked nervously around. As we slid away carefully, we heard the noise again, only louder. Was the guide playing a well-timed prank on us?

Along the eastern edge of the cemetery, more mausoleums and tombs stretched along either side of the path. At one time these tombs were ostentatious displays of wealth, but now they looked worn and frail. Near this part of the cemetery was where the dissenters were buried, in an area apart from the Anglicans.

You Mean There’s Something Out There?

Some subsequent web searching revealed that, aside from the physical mysteriousness of the cemetery, there were a few stories of the supernatural. The most interesting of these is of the Highgate Vampire. In the late 1960s, following a string of alleged spectral sightings and the accumulation of blood-drained animals in the cemetery, rumors circulated that a vampire was roaming Highgate. Several people claimed to have either encountered or been attacked by the vampire.

Various occult experts undertook rituals to purify the cemetery and rid it of the vampire, but conflicting accounts of these activities and their results led to feuds that persist to this day. Vampire investigations are reportedly ongoing. Needless to say, the entire existence of the Highgate Vampire is controversial, and the Friends of Highgate Cemetery would rather ignore it, in order to keep outsiders from breaking into the cemetery in search of the bloodthirsty apparition.

Vampire or not, Highgate Cemetery is the most interesting cemetery I have ever visited. Its isolation, desolation, and eerie scenery make it akin to a real-life movie.

Guest author Jillian Hardee is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on June 2, 2006.

Image credit: JohnArmagh [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Douglas Adams, one of my favorite authors of all time, was born on this date in 1952. Although he died in 2001 at the much-too-young age of 49, he left behind an incredible body of work, not the least of which were the “trilogy in five parts” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and two books about a “holistic” detective named Dirk Gently. I had the honor of meeting Douglas once at a book signing in the early 1990s. He was a delightful man who shared many of my own interests (Macs, synthesizers, procrastination) and similar views on religion and the environment. I miss him.

I didn’t realize it until today, but Douglas Adams’s ashes are at Highgate Cemetery in London.

Image credit: Michael Hughes [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Springing forward, grudgingly

Ah, the time to spring forward has arrived again. It seems like barely four months ago that we were all falling back, and I was grateful that I could enjoy an extra hour of sleep for one night. And now, just like that, I have to return that borrowed hour this weekend. Spring may be nearly here, but somehow I’ve never been able to reconcile the joyful notion of going “forward” with the reality of losing an hour of my day.

A reader once sent me an email that said: “Falling back can also be related to what, coarsely, in Scotland is called a woman with round heels.” What a great euphemism! (For those who need to have it spelled out: “round heels” implies someone who is prone to supineness—sorry, I couldn’t resist—hence, metaphorically, a woman of loose morals.) I imagine “falling back” could also be extended to someone who is drunk, narcoleptic, or just extremely tired. How curious that on the day we spring forward we should all be less well-rested, and thus more prone to falling back!

The Arrows of Time

I am speaking, of course, of the beginning of what is known in North America as daylight saving time, or DST for short (and not, according to a common misconception, daylight savings time). In Europe, this period begins and ends on different dates and is simply called “summer time.” Many other localities around the world make similar changes to their clocks, on various dates and under various names. But there are exceptions. Even in the United States, Hawaii and most of Arizona don’t participate in daylight saving time, nor do American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the Virgin Islands. And my wife reminded me that Saskatchewan, Canada, where she grew up, also shuns DST. Thus begins an annual eight-month period of having to recalculate time zone differences, which are confusing enough already, when planning travel or phoning friends in another part of the world. Who is to blame for this madness?

Well, you could blame Edison, who brought us all the electric light bulb, or his archrival Tesla, who pioneered alternating current electricity. Or the public utilities, or the producers of coal, oil, and natural gas. Or yourself, if you’ve ever complained about your electricity bill. One of the major motivations for daylight saving time was to reduce the consumption of fuel used to create electricity. The logic was that if we can artificially make it stay light one hour later, we’ll stay outside longer or at least use less electricity once we come inside for the night, because there will be fewer hours of darkness before bedtime.

Early to Bed, Early to Rise?

The name “daylight saving time” implies that to sleep while the sun is shining is to “waste” valuable time; being active while the sun is up saves (or, shall we say, makes best use of) time. I take exception to this claim: I do most of my best work after dark, and I quite enjoy sleeping while the sun is shining—the sun, after all, has nothing in particular to do with my profession. But people who really prefer to be awake when the sun is up could simply arise an hour earlier in the summer. So yes, they’d still have to change their alarm settings, but at least it would become a matter of personal preference rather than law.

The first experiments with DST occurred during World War I—in Germany, the UK, and the United States. It was unpopular in the United States but made a reappearance during World War II, as a way of saving fuel. It was repealed again following the war. For two decades, DST was applied unevenly by some localities but not others. As a way of resolving the chaos, the U.S. Congress passed The Uniform Time Act of 1966, which stipulated that DST would run from the last Sunday of April through the last Sunday of October (though states could vote to opt out of observing DST, and some did). During the 1970s, the law underwent several other changes. For example, in 1974, daylight saving time in the U.S. began in January in response to the energy crisis—I remember going to school in the dark that winter and finding it quite strange. In 1986, the Uniform Time Act was amended again, moving the start of DST up to the first Sunday in April. Starting in 2007, DST in the United States was changed again to begin on the second Sunday of March and end on the first Sunday of November.

Overclocking

There is a movement afoot to end DST in the United States, and it’s rapidly gaining steam. The supporters’ arguments are that contrary to expectations, DST results in disrupted sleep patterns, more traffic accidents in the mornings, inconvenience for farmers (who must set their schedules according to the sun, no matter what the clock says), and needless confusion for all concerned—without, they claim, providing any appreciable energy savings, given our modern lifestyles and schedules.

One bold proposal is to conflate the two westernmost time zones (so that the west coast would, in effect, always be on daylight saving time and the mountain region would always be on standard time) and also conflate the two easternmost time zones. The result would be just two (rather than four) time zones across the continental United States—and no one would ever have to change a clock. I think this is a brilliant idea, and therefore one that will never work. Americans, in my experience, embrace adversity (and not in a good way).

Other ideas are more likely to take hold, even though they’ll be more complicated. Several states (including California) have either already passed or are considering legislation to stay on daylight saving time permanently; once any such legislation passes, it must be approved by the federal government before it could take effect. Other states (including most of New England) want to achieve the same end by different means—shifting one time zone to the east (Atlantic time) and then opting out of DST. Then there’s Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, which are all trying to switch to standard time year-round. If all these states have their way, fewer people will have to change their clocks, but we’ll also have much more confusion and less uniformity across the country. (My personal opinion: this abominable practice of adjusting clocks must end, and if it takes wacky time zones to make it happen, that’s a small sacrifice.)

But the real folly, in my opinion, is that we consider daylight saving time, which lasts eight months, nonstandard, while “standard” time lasts only four months. If we must change our clocks, let us at least do it with logic and honesty. Let’s rename the period from November through March “Daylight Squandering Time” and declare the rest of the year “standard” time. I’ll bet Saskatchewan would sign up for that.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on April 2, 2005.

Image credit: U.S. Air Force graphic

Today is the beginning of Daylight Saving Time in (most of) the United States. While you’re going around your house setting all the clocks forward an hour, it’s a good idea to check the batteries in devices like smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, and radon detectors. And, you know, any other devices you depend on to keep you safe or enable you to earn a living but which run on batteries that might inconveniently die at the worst possible moment.

Image credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Jonathan Koob

Becoming a modern monk

Thanks to Kathleen Norris, being a Benedictine oblate is almost hip these days. Norris is the author of the critically received books Dakota: A Spiritual Geography and The Cloister Walk. Both tell the story of a literary New Yorker who moved to the Great Plains and found a spiritual life at—of all places—a Benedictine monastery. More than any other person since Thomas Merton, Norris has helped rekindle interest in monastic spirituality among the “thinking crowd.”

While I’d like to think that I became a Benedictine oblate before reading Norris (somehow I think it is morally superior to choose a path before it becomes popular), the truth is that her ruminations on the relevancy of Benedictine spirituality for contemporary life were formative in my own choice. I became an oblate of a small Benedictine community in Oakland, California, in 1999.

The Life of a Saint

So what is a Benedictine oblate? “Benedictine” does not, in this case, refer to the liqueur of the same name (although that liqueur is made by Benedictine monks in France). Rather, Benedictine means an association with the monastic order based on the teachings of St. Benedict, himself worthy of a separate column on this website. St. Benedict was born in 480 CE, 70 years after the fall of Rome. He came from an educated, wealthy family but eventually left that life behind to pursue the spiritual life. Over time, his reputation as a holy man spread, disciples flocked to him, and he eventually established 12 small monasteries.

All monastic communities require some kind of “rule of life” that orders their common spiritual life together. In Benedict’s time, there were several monastic rules in circulation. The most popular one seems to have been a document called The Rule of the Master. Benedict drew from this rule, but with significant changes—mainly in spirit and tone. The Rule of the Master saw monastic communities as a group of individuals gathering around the feet of a sage (usually the abbot), to whom was given enormous power. Benedict, instead, emphasized the relationship of the monks to each other. He saw the monastery as a community of love and the abbot’s main job as tending to the well-being of this community. In addition, The Rule of the Master was harsh and unrelenting in its demands on the monks. Benedict’s rule was known for its moderation, its humanity.

Benedictines R Us

Benedict’s rule ended up having an enormous influence on Western civilization. At the time of Benedict’s death, his rule was one among many. However, within a century or two, the Rule of St. Benedict had become the norm for Western monasticism. And monasticism had, by this time, become the norm for what was left of Western civilization. Monasteries were, by the sixth century, the one vital institution left in the societal breakdown precipitated by the fall of Rome and the waves of “barbarian” invasions. Benedictine monasteries accumulated illuminated manuscripts and works of art, kept the light of learning and scholarship alive, and generally provided order and stability in a chaotic world. As the Benedictine scholar Esther de Waal writes, “To sketch the history of the Benedictines in the Middle Ages would be not only to write a history of the church, it would be to write a history of medieval society as well.” (From Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict, pg. 21.)

Although not as numerous as in their heyday, there are still today hundreds (if not thousands—I couldn’t find an exact number) of Benedictine monasteries around the world. What’s most interesting to me about contemporary Benedictine life, however, is the number of lay men and women who have found spiritual sustenance in the Benedictine rule and in the spirituality it expresses. The test of its popularity? Go to Amazon.com and type in “Benedictine spirituality.” You’ll get hundreds of titles, most published quite recently.

Becoming an Oblate

Which brings me to the second word in the phrase “Benedictine oblate.” In the most general sense, an oblate is someone who makes an act of oblation. (That explains everything, right?) An oblation literally means “an offering.” So an oblate is someone who makes an offering of themselves—that is, someone who dedicates themselves to a spiritual life. More specifically, oblates are lay people who take an abbreviated form of monastic vows (called “promises”) and become associate members of a particular monastic community. The promises are considered to be for life and are not tied to that particular monastic community—so if you move, you are still an oblate, even if you have no regular contact with the monastic community in which you made your promises. No getting out of them that easily!

Oblate promises differ from community to community, but most of them (and this was certainly true of my own) will be based on the three vows taken by all Benedictine monks:

• Obedience. While obedience for monks certainly includes the idea of following the will of an abbot or one’s monastic community, it also means more generally attuning one’s spiritual ear to the voice of God in all people and situations and responding to that call. (In fact, the word obedience comes from the Latin root oboedire, which shares its roots with audire, to hear.)
• Stability. Stability refers to physical stability, meaning that a monk commits to life in a particular community and to not leaving when the going gets tough. However, for the oblate, stability is interpreted more generally as not only keeping one’s commitments in life but also committing to the deeper stability of one’s inner being, to a calmness and peace of mind.
• Conversatio Morum (or, in English, roughly “ongoing conversion”). Finally, the truly fun and scary promise of conversatio morum simply means that one (whether monk or oblate) commits to always being a pilgrim, to remaining ever open to change and transformation.

In addition to the above three ideas, oblate promises would also tend to include some language that says the oblate will follow the Rule of St. Benedict insofar as one’s station in life allows. Now, I confess that to simply sit down and read the Rule of St. Benedict leaves me a little cold. As with the Bible, I need modern scholars to help interpret the relevancy of this book for my life. Thankfully, there are many such books available. My favorite authors are the already-named Norris and de Waal, and also Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun and rabble-rouser. I’d recommend any of their books on the subject.

An Ancient Rule for Postmodern People

One of the things I appreciate most about Benedictine spirituality is its emphasis on moderation and balance. Nothing is to be taken to the extreme. For instance, it recognizes the need both for community and for solitude. As a person brought up in a relentlessly community-minded Anabaptist tradition, I have found this an important balance. I love my community; I also need holy solitude on a regular basis. And while Benedictine life is centered around prayer, it’s understood that this must be balanced by work (with a historic emphasis on manual work) and scholarship. Although this insight may seem rather self-evident, I have found it quite helpful in practice. When I feel out of balance, I ask myself, “What do you need, Soul? Do you need to go out in the garden and pull weeds; do you need to read a challenging book; or do you need to sit down and meditate?” The question is always helpful, and usually yields the answer I need.

It’s fascinating to me that contemporary men and women have a common bond with those first small monastic communities founded 1,500 years ago. Our lives couldn’t be more different, and yet both I (a married, Mennonite woman) and a celibate, Catholic monk of 600 CE have found a foundation for a vital spiritual life in the writings of St. Benedict. In a time when new spiritual fads abound, I find this kind of continuity and stability comforting…and possibly even hip.

Guest author Sheri Hostetler is the pastor of First Mennonite Church of San Francisco. The Benedictine community to which she belongs is called Hesed. It is a non-resident community made up of laypeople from a variety of Christian denominations who are committed to the practice and teaching of Christian meditation..

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on September 1, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on August 12, 2004.

Image credit: Randy OHC [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

One observation I’ve made in my years living on Earth is that nearly all humans have (or had) parents. Those parents also had parents. Indeed, for the entire history of humanity, it’s pretty much been a long series of parents and offspring. What a curious way to run a species, right? And yet many humans have only a passing awareness of their genetic lineage (and the many other people to whom they are related). One would think that is significant information. If you’re a human with insufficient knowledge of your ancestry, today’s a great day to start fixing that, whether through conventional genealogical research or by spitting into a tube, which is apparently what the cool human kids do these days.

Image credit: Pixabay