Canterbury: A Student's Tale

I'll be completely honest when I read the Canterbury Tales my senior year of high school and again last quarter I wasn't exactly a fan. I appreciate Chaucer and all he did for the language, story telling, and history but actually reading his works was not my favorite. Now after seeing Canterbury for myself I have a whole new perspective. As we walked through the city gates I imagined what it must have been like as a 13th or 14th century pilgrim to reach that point. Weeks or months of traveling and you have finally made it. I can definitely relate to that after this amazing trip. There has been so much travel involved and I have learned that half the fun really is getting there. However there is nothing like the feeling of reaching your destination and knowing you have arrived. For those pilgrims that Chaucer writes about I can only imagine that feeling multiplied by about one hundred. 

As we walked up to the cathedral itself I was in awe. It gloriously points to heaven and dwarfs everything around it. The inside is even more extravagant and it is a great work of art and worship. It was amazing to see where St. Thomas Becket was murdered and I could feel the gravity of the history in the room. As we climbed the stairs up to where the shrine once was I understood how the pilgrims felt as though they were climbing to heaven and redemption. For hundreds of years people from all over the world and all walks of life have climbed those stairs looking for knowledge or simply praising their Lord. It was humbling to be one of those people and I'm thankful we were able to make our own pilgrimage to Canterbury.