Tuesday 29 September 2020

OPENING UP

We have finally resumed worship at St Peter's. Some of the church council were very apprehensive about it, but others were quite insistent that St Peter's people were not coming to joint services at St Mary Mags for good reasons, like the distance they had to walk, and missing the particular atmosphere of St Peter's. I think the anxiety was mostly from those who sit near the door and are charged with keeping order, which can sometimes be a challenge, given the odd selection of damaged and troubled people who turn up from time to time (and never actually on time). In the end, there is nothing we can do about that, because it's important that people find this place a sanctuary, and so we went forward in faith and trust.

As it happens, there has not been much of that sort of random and disruptive attendance since we came back. I think many people have got accustomed to there being a lot more rules, and doing what they're told. Certainly our food bank has to operate with strict conditions, that mean that the usual denizens of Harrow Road cannot just wander in and out as they are accustomed to do. The clients do not seem to mind very much. I suppose some of them know that they are vulnerable to the virus one way or another, and so see the point, but it's also the case that they are mostly people who are used to being told what to do, because they don't actually feel they have much agency in their lives.

The resumption of worship has been a challenge, since we can only seat twenty-eight people (a few more if families come together and sit on benches) because St Peter's is just a small space, with a rather low ceiling. I've certainly found that it feels quite different from how it does at St Mary Mags, a vast, cavernous, well-ventilated (some might say draughty) place; at St Peter's you are conscious of unavoidable proximity to other people, and so I don't think people really want to sing, whereas at St Mary Mags I know some people are struggling to restrain themselves. This last Sunday we had a baptism, which I could see presented a challenge for regular parishioners, who were clearly jumpy about the dozen strangers who weren't exactly keeping their distance from each other (but we didn't know who lived with whom, did we). It certainly meant that the church was close to full, which increased anxiety, and I'm quite sure that some people were jsut anxious about being in a confined space with a bunch of people they didn't know. Normally church is quite reassuring because although you may not be intimate, you are pretty familiar with the faces that surround you, although you may come from very diverse backgrounds you are at ease with each other because of familiarity. That was all upset by the influx of strangers on Sunday. Not that they were all strangers, as the mother of the babies, and her mother, are fairly frequent attenders (and were very regular fifteen years ago) but it was their guests who changed the usual dynamic. It was interesting to observe, and raises a whole lot of questions about how we react to strangers, which are important for our mission, because, you know, we do actually want strangers to come in!

Still no news about the murderers of the Somali boy. Two Sundays ago a woman's body was found on Westbourne Green, causing some inconvenience to some of the congregation of St Mary Mags. Everybody thought the worst, and I suppose people were relieved when it emerged that the police were treating it as probable suicide. It doesn't make it any better for the family left behind, but the community feel a bit less unsafe.

   

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