POLISHED WOOD AND STARLIGHT

I still remember the smell of the polished wood. It was there in the lobby, then it was there again when the doors opened and I was in the chaplaincy centre. The triptych hung at one end - three vertical paintings, each displaying something abstract about the Trinity. Bookcases lined the wall, with a tiny halogen lamp embedded in the flat ceiling above.

Textiled banners hung, as often they do in places like this - some made by the Anglican Society, some by the Catholics. One even by the Baha’i people! None of us in the CU had made one. I always found that interesting.

The roof angled slightly towards the centre of the room from all directions. There it converged in a simple square hole, in which a small spire supported a skylight window. Lie on the floor in the middle of the chap centre, and you could see the stars!

And by day of course, the light streamed in, lighting the tapestries and banners as the sun moved through the afternoon. Though I was rarely there in the day. My best time was night. On my own.

There were of course, church-chairs: sturdy wooden frame, soft pink upholstery seat and back rest, complete with hole for communion cup, and nearly impossible to stack. At night they seemed to be arranged in a wide circle, but they were often left scattered, or in rows, sometimes nearly ready for the early morning prayer meeting. We were students though. We never used them. We sat routinely on the carpet.

There must have been a pulpit too, though my guess is that it was one of those moveable ones. I actually can’t remember it - again, students in the CU favoured a more relaxed approach to spirituality. I expect ‘wandering around with a New King James Version’ was the hip approach. And there were no iPads in those days, though if there had been, I bet we’d have used them.

But my favourite configuration for meetings in the Bath University Chaplaincy Centre was definitely just me, alone, with the piano, late at night.

It was an upright piano. Just a normal, wooden, upright piano, with a covered back and shiny wood, just as you’d find in any primary school or church hall.

That piano is the reason I can still describe the place - it used to swim in and out of focus with my tears. I spent hours worshipping God there at night, just on my own behind that piano: playing, singing, writing, longing, hoping. No-one told me to; nobody said it would help me. Nobody even knew! I just went and did it. Out of earshot of anyone, out of sight from the world, a secret, secret place with God that I treasured with all my heart - by the triptych, with the smell of polished wood, under the thin window of stars.

That was more than twenty years ago. I’d barely lived that long when I first found the Chaplaincy Centre. Now here I am, all these oceans of time later, wishing somehow for just one moment there again.

I really need it tonight. I feel as though I could pour out my whole heart, all its woes and joys, spilling into the quiet air of mahogany and books, with every prophetic note. Perhaps God could pick them up? each one, and sort them one from the other, singing them gently back to me. Don’t be afraid. I won’t be afraid. It will all be alright. It will all be alright. I feel as though I’d very much like that; I’d very much like to go home.