ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on direct quotations from visitors and the volunteers who welcome them to highlight aspects of people's experience of the numinous, the holy, in Durham Cathedral, which has been a place of prayer and pilgrimage for over 900 years. Children's experience is considered, as is that of adults who come with little or no faith and find themselves somehow touched. The chapter reflects on questions surrounding photography and the Lego® Cathedral before suggesting ways the Cathedral can respond to unlikely mystics who visit. Within the Cathedral there are two shrines: the Feretory, the Shrine of St Cuthbert, and the Venerable Bede's tomb in the Galilee Chapel. The Cathedral's fairly formal and non-participatory worship is catalyst or container for mystical experience. The cathedral is a place of memory-making. Christians draw inspiration and strength through praying in the Cathedral especially, but not only, at the Shrine of St Cuthbert.
