Inside Christchurch's broken heart
Nicky Lee for Cathedral Extra
| 04 Oct 2011
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The Cathedral's Visitors' Centre is strewn with rubble.
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ChristChurch Cathedral's stone altar has been shaken off its pedestal.
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ChristChurch Cathedral's retrieval team poses for a quick photo before venturing into the rubble.
We're venturing into the broken heart of Christchurch but we cannot resist some quick photos of the Cathedral's west front, minus the rose window. The sun is shining and there is plenty to look at in the central city.
We are marshalled round to the east end of the Cathedral but this no longer means trekking through the south carpark, which is behind the extended barriers because of the risk of falling stone.
We are out on the road this time, edging out of the way as another monster truck thunders round the back of the Cathedral heading for an unknown demolition site.
The south lawn resembles a lush, green back paddock of a particularly profitable dairy farm and the back yard is piled high with autumn leaves that never received the leaf blower treatment this year.
We listen to another safety briefing but time is limited and we are ready to get inside and set to work.
The Isaac organ is lifted out of the choir vestry and heaved into a furniture trailer by Director of Music Brian Law and some of his choir gents.
Books are tumbled into rubbish bags in Lynda Patterson's office, and Bishop Selwyn’s desk and Bishop Harper’s table are removed from the debris in the Dean’s office.
All through the offices there is a heavy layer of grit, cracks in the walls, light fittings hanging down.
The Visitors’ Centre greets us with the smell of the flooding down in the basement. The AAW banner is unceremoniously hauled out and joins the growing pile of items outside the office vestry, waiting to be packed and taken away.
Time is short and we lift out the retrieval list items we can find, take the photos and leave. As I bend to lift a box I see a dusty wallet tucked under the shop counter and take it with me. It belongs to an Australian tourist and I wonder about her story that day in February.
Before I leave I look into the Cathedral from the sanctuary doorway. All is peaceful there but for the flutter of high-flying pigeons as they perch on the clerestory window ledges in their new playground. Everywhere there is grit on the chairs and a heavy grey dust covers the floor’s mosaic stories of the city’s ancestors’ arrival in their sailing ships.
A large slab of the high altar stone has fallen and I look around for signs of Aslan having been here. Others ask if I am frightened to visit, but the place remains where I belong and I am glad to see it again, battered and unsafe as it may be.
I lament at the brokenness of the sanctuary, then turn to look towards the west end. Here sunlight pours through the enormous gaps in the stonework after the fall of the tower in February and then the rose window in June.
This part of the Cathedral has the beautiful stone arches washed with light. I think of congregations who have gone out into the world through the west doors of the Cathedral over the years, having shared together in the eucharist, renewed by the risen Christ.
Then comes a call for help to load up the trailers and I go back to the work at hand. I will remember the soft light on the stonework and the flutter of pigeons, and reflect on the possibility that I may have to let go of the old so it can rest in peace.
Nicky Lee is PA to Dean Peter Beck
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