BRICKS AND ICE

Confirm, O Lord

This morning I went to school. All sorts of unpleasant ghosts came back to me, and it evoked all sorts of uncomfortable memories as I waited for an early bus and then joined a throng of children heading for school. In this case St Marylebone School, the local Church of England girls' secondary, once a grammar school, now an academy growing its own subsidiaries. I was going to the school confirmation service. Now generally I don't really approve of school confirmations, because I think confirmation is about mature membership of a particular Christian community, and that should be the parish church where you worship on a Sunday, but I will put my hand up and say this was an exception which demonstrates the value of doing it this way. Because I had been alerted to this service by the school chaplain, who contacted me to check the baptism details of one of the candidates; it turned out that this was a girl who had been at St Mary Magdalene's School, and who we had baptized, at her request, when she was ten. I was highly delighted that she was now getting confirmed, because she is someone whose home circumstances never made it possible for her to come to church on Sunday when she was younger, but now that the opportunities of faith have been put in front of her at St Marylebone she has made it her own. By all accounts she is an enthusiastic worshipper and her charm has made an impression on the clergy there (who have every reason to be cynical). I hope that  we can continue to support her.

The confirmation was taken by Bishop Robert Ladds, who is a retired Bishop of Whitby, but who is also Provost of St Marylebone School. Those familiar with Anglican education might be aware that the Woodard Corporation  has a Provost; I can only suppose that St Marylebone has adopted the same title in emulation. The Woodard Schools are a group of Anglican public schools, originally founded by a cleric called the Revd Nathaniel Woodard, which remain much more self-consciously ecclesiastical than most Anglican schools, and include places from Lancing to Ellesmere. Being involved with the Woodard Corporation is the sort of thing that the more establishment high-church clerics have on their cv. I imagine that Bishop Robert has done his time there as well, but now he's St Marylebone's tame bishop, and so laid hands on a dozen girls this morning. He preached an entertaining sermon, involving an impressive chemical reaction, which is fair enough since he's a scientist by training, but I'm not sure how many of the girls were actually well-enough up on Star Wars to follow some of his references. Still, it all went very well, despite chaos being unleashed at the Peace. The Chaplain was flapping ineffectually, so the Rector bellowed the announcement of the next hymn, which put a stop to all the fraternization. It was a pleasure to be involved.


Ice Bound

London has been freezing for the past few days, and the Canal was frozen over yesterday and today. Yesterday I watched two Canada geese come into land and be surprised by finding themselves landing on ice rather than water. It wasn't so thick, though, as one of them managed to break the ice by merely sitting down rather forcibly and kicking a bit. Today I was told that the pond in Regent's Park was frozen, which is unusual.  It was a beautiful day for cycling on Saturday, but I had a heavy cold and so couldn't go riding, so I drove out into Oxfordshire and was impressed by places where the frost had clearly been lying for days, and was as white as snow on some roofs. Gloria was wearing her tee shirt for the Women's March which she couldn't go on.


Another Brick in the Wall

Last night we had the local service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, at Emmanuel Church in Harrow Road (by the bus stop, opposite Iceland). It was commemorating both the five hundredth anniversary of the start of the Reformation, and the end of the Berlin Wall, and we used the symbolism of a wall as part of the liturgy, which would have been easier with almost anything other than the water-smoothed stones we had for the purpose. Still,  it was a strong idea, a wall built of prejudice, isolation, hatred and so on, being broken down and put into the form of a cross.  We sang Luther's "Ein Feste Burg", which was very appropriate, as well as something of Timothy Dudley-Smith's to "Danny Boy", which I enjoyed but found defeated the range of my cold-addled voice. The good people of Emmanuel even provided rice and peas. A genuinely diverse occasion, with a real variety of voices expressing something of the variety of Christian experience round here.                     

BUSES AND TRAINS

Vegan Buses

As the buses stand waiting for the traffic lights to change outside the Parish Office I often read the adverts on their sides; "La La Land" is being well-promoted. In the last few days adverts have appeared from a vegan organisation, GoVeganWorld.com, which have come as quite a surprise. There is one with a cute calf being nuzzled by its cuddly mother and the message "Dairy takes babies from their mothers". Now this irritates me on several levels. First, there's the sentimental anthropomorphizing; "babies". No. Baby as a noun refers to human infants; we might indeed talk about baby calves, but that's using baby as an adjective, because what you are talking about is a calf. The cute picture is part of the sentimentalizing as well, the attempt to provoke an emotional rather than a rational response. Then there's the assumed high moral tone, the implication that  vegans are more moral than the rest of us. Most of all, though, I object to the idea that this is about animal welfare, when it manifestly isn't: if the dairy industry is abolished the result will not be lots of happy cows, but lots of dead cows, and then no cows at all, because why would there be any cows if we weren't milking them? If existence is better than non-existence (which seems to me to be a fairly uncontroversial point of view) then veganism, which implies the extermination of all farm animal species, can hardly claim moral superiority. Of course humans have obligations to treat other sentient beings responsibly and kindly but it's perfectly possible to have a dairy industry and an egg industry that aren't cruel; cruelty and abuse are not inherent in consuming milk or eggs. The extermination of whole species really would be implied if the world did truly go vegan!


Thanks To Keble

Last week I had a couple of very pleasant days at Keble College, Oxford. Keble are the patrons of the living of St Mary Mags, which in the past meant that they appointed the vicar; nowadays it's all more consultative, but they still have a role. Like good patrons they want to support their incumbents, and so put on a biennial conference for us, and that was what I went to last week. We heard from two CSMV sisters about prayer, which was helpful, and it was a good opportunity for me to re-establish links with them, as CSMV sisters worked in the parish for many decades, up to the 1950s, and it would be very good to get them involved in the heritage project. It was great to meet other Keble incumbents, and encouraging to see priests with a very wide range of experience, and lots of learning. It was also good to meet a couple of ordinands who are at Keble, and the Chaplain, also Fr Everett (though he rejoices in the Christian name Nevsky).


New Lines

Going to Oxford I tried for myself the new route from Marylebone, and can thoroughly recommend it. There is a half-hourly service, which is as quick as the First Great Western trains from Paddington, and they are pleasantly uncrowded. The grotesque overcrowding on the Paddington-Oxford trains has been a feature of the line for years, so this great boost in capacity is very welcome. The stop on the new curve at Bicester is for Bicester Village, the vastly popular retail outlet centre, and you can tell where its popularity comes from by the fact that the on-train announcements when you get there are in Arabic and Chinese as well as English!  Sensible enterprise from Chiltern Rail. 

SIMPLY HAVING...

Your Busy Time...

"It's coming up to your busy time, isn't it?" people say, cheerily. Every priest gets this, all through their ministry, every Christmas. There's no point in saying that actually there are more services at Easter, because people are trying to be friendly. It's an indication that they sort of understand Christmas; it's a frenetic time, and they recognize that we have some sort of proprietorial relationship with it. And to be fair, Christmas is more stressful than Easter because the extra services are things that you are not in control of. In Holy Week you have a very demanding round of worship, but you set the pace, and the liturgy is all given, so you know what's coming next, whereas at Christmas, there is an expectation that you will put in an appearance, give a welcome, say a prayer or a blessing and generally be Christmassy at events that you haven't planned, and where you don't know how long they will last. If they are using your building then you probably have to open and close for them and generally do what a verger does in places that have vergers (though the excellent Lesley does some of that for me here). When you go to someone else's premises to do the Christmas thing you often fail to factor in the possibility of being offered mince pies by nice hospitable people, which again adds to uncertainty over timing. I should say that I'm in no position to complain, as we have hardly any outside requests for use of our buildings as Christmas venues, unlike some of my brethren, in more "civic" churches, where there is a constant procession of carol services for one organisation or institution or another from late November onwards. It's also not just worship, because there are Christmas events of other sorts that require a clerical presence as well.

The reason clergy tend not to welcome the "busy time" comment, though, is that underlying it is the assumption that we're not busy the rest of the time. There is a very persistent presumption in England (which goes back centuries) that the clergy are idle and ineffectual, and in a society that doesn't much want to engage with things of the spirit, or matters of life and death, it's not surprising that many people simply can't envisage what we do all day. We are economically unproductive, and so don't fit easily into a business model, which is how most people seem to be encouraged to view the world just now. To be fair, lots of churchgoers seem to imagine that their parish priest does nothing very much for most of the time, which is a bit frustrating. All the clergy I know work very hard, all year round, and don't actually take anything like the amount of time off that they are supposed to. Finding the time for one's personal relationships, not to mention prayer, study and reading, all of which are supposed to be priorities for us, is always a challenge.     


Are You Going Away?

The other question that grates for us just now (this is really Scrooge-like!) is when people ask, "Are you going away for Christmas?" which someone does almost every day. Some then think about it and add, "Oh, but I suppose you have to be here," but it's amazing how many that never occurs to. Yes, actually, I shall be here, because I have to celebrate the Holy Mysteries at Midnight, and on Christmas morning; and please don't think I'm complaining about that. Far from it; that is a great privilege for a parish priest. And it's entirely appropriate that we should be at home at Christmas, because you're supposed to be in the bosom of your family, and actually, for the priest, your congregation and the people of the neighbourhood are your extended family. It would feel very strange to be worshipping with a different bunch of people at Christmas from those you minister to for the rest of the year. But the question just forgets that whereas Christmas means holiday for most people, we are the one profession who are absolutely guaranteed to be working, at least up until lunchtime on Christmas Day. It doesn't necessarily stop then, either, because I remember years ago having someone turn up on my doorstep after dark on Christmas Day who needed to make a confession, which demanded quite a change of gear.


Deck The Halls

The events, however, have been joyful. Our Christmas fair raised over a thousand pounds (which should please the treasurer, who was crewing a yacht sailing across the Atlantic) and passed off happily. The Lunch Club Christmas Party fed about sixty people (variously elderly, vulnerable or needy) with, frankly, a feast, cooked almost single-handed by the indefatigable Jacqui, and ended with an extraordinarily diverse group sitting around playing dominoes. I went along to the Paddington Festival Gala Awards last week, to support one of the volunteers who works incredibly hard to support the Lunch Club, and who we'd put up for an award, which he duly received, but then I found myself being given an award for "encouraging community spirit", which was a total surprise. It was good to see ordinary people being saluted for making an effort in their community, and moving to see how loyal to the area many people who have grown up in Paddington are. Probably our most important events, though, were carols in St Mary Magdalene's Church for Edward Wilson School, the other school on the Estate, the secular, "community" school, whose student body is at least 90% Muslim. The current Head decided a year ago that it was not sustainable for the school to ignore Christmas, as it had done, and so last year was the first time they used our building, while I stayed away, at his request, so as not to appear to be proselytising. This year I was asked to be present and welcome people, which I was delighted to do, and it was really encouraging to see lots of parents there. A new group of people found that they were welcome in a beautiful and inspiring space, which is what it's all about. Happy Christmas!    

THREE CHURCHES

 

THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH

I went back to my old parish in Reading the other day, for the induction of the new Vicar; now you never attend the induction of your immediate successor, for obvious reasons, but after that there’s no particular prohibition. It is quite unusual, though.  All Saints, Downshire Square, Reading, is a Victorian daughter-church of Reading Minster, which sits on the crest of the chalk ridge along which the Bath Road runs. It is a handsome, well-kept church, much beautified by my predecessor. I suppose I have kept in touch with All Saints better than is normal, mostly because Helen’s best friend is still there, and of course here in Paddington we are quite conveniently situated for popping over to Reading (fast trains from Paddington, as they say). I carefully tried not to undermine my successor, and I have no intention of criticizing the new Vicar, but when I heard about the Induction I thought it would be good to go along. The new Vicar is a woman, you see. 

When I moved to All Saints, in 1996, it was in the wake of great controversy, and deep hurt, over the ordination of women. My predecessor, Fr Jones, had been a doughty opponent of women’s ordination, and when it came to pass spent a good deal of energy in trying to persuade his people. In the end he resigned in 1995 and became a Roman Catholic (though he subsequently came back to the Church of England). There were bitter arguments in the parish, and one family moved to another church amid much unhappiness. When I was appointed the bishop’s clear desire was that I should keep the parish in the Church of England and try to heal the divisions. I stayed eleven years in Reading, and hope that was what was achieved. We managed to steer a course where I hope everyone felt they were part of the family. I believe my successor carried on much the same. Now, though, a woman has been appointed, and I felt it was important to be seen to offer support, so along I went. It was interesting to see a number of those who had been unconvinced by the wisdom of the ordination of women were there to welcome their new parish priest. Nobody was tactless enough to ask me, “Did you ever think you’d see this?” but I don’t suppose I did. Things have changed. Not impressed by the poor turnout of clergy from Reading Deanery, though; in my day we tried hard to attend these things, for the sake of solidarity.

OPEN OR CLOSED

I had a Sunday off to go down to Exeter, to the parish I served my first curacy in. There they were closing a church, St Andrew’s, on Alphington Road. St Andrew’s is a modern building, which replaced a “tin church” that had been destroyed in the war, and has a very high, steeply-pitched roof. Its fittings are a bit 1960s. Now I had no particular connection with St Andrew’s when I was there, I was mostly at the parish church, St Thomas, but St Andrew’s was Helen’s church. She was the head server there when I arrived, and her father was churchwarden, and her mother became sacristan. Ian, her brother, was in Cambridge then, but when he returned to Exeter when the Met Office moved down there a few years ago he slotted back into St Andrew’s. So the life of St Andrew’s has been part of my family for thirty years. I didn’t particularly want to go, but the idea gradually crept up on me that I should, and I asked a colleague whether he could do the service for me at St Peter’s, having worked out that it was just possible to get down leaving after Mass at St Mary Mags; he sensibly said he could do Mary Mags as well and urged me to have a Sunday off. So I did. I realised that I owed it to Helen. She would have gone, and while she would have told me I shouldn’t leave my responsibilities here, if I’d had any sense I would have insisted on going with her. So I had to go.

It was fantastically difficult. I couldn’t look at the servers (dressed exactly as they used to be) because I just saw Helen. Serious catch in the throat when singing. So many memories from so long. I renewed acquaintance with someone I was very close to before Helen and I got together, and hadn’t spoken to in twenty-eight years. Many people there who remembered me, and who I remembered, even if not their names. I was thinking that one really does feel old in that situation, having started work in a church now closed, but then I thought of my boss there, Fr Alan, who, when he was a student, had been present at the consecration of St Andrew’s back in the early 60s, and was now there with us at its closing. It was very brave of the present congregation to decide to close, and to throw in their lot with St Thomas, especially those who, like Ian, have a lifetime’s memories there. Of course we can worship anywhere, and it is the quality of the human fellowship that is the most important feature, but we do all invest memories in buildings, even modern ones like St Andrew’s.

A FAMOUS SHRINE

I had the honour to be asked to preach at St Mary’s, Bourne Street, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, last week. St Mary’s was built as a servants’ church, a little brick, gothic place behind Sloane Square tube station, but it was transformed by Fr Humphrey Whitby in the early twentieth century, who installed lots of baroque furnishings, many by Martin Travers, and attracted a smart congregation. The congregation remain smart in many ways. There was a surprisingly good turnout for a midweek evening, and it was all very well done. The choir sang a Mozart setting and a Bruckner motet, though there wasn’t enough congregational singing for my taste, just two hymns (one unknown) and the Creed to the Missa de Angelis. The ceremonial is what is described as traditional, and all justified by the most impeccable authorities, but of course as it was a modern service (albeit old language) which inevitably affects the ceremonial, you can’t really claim that this is the traditional rite. Fortunately, as a visiting preacher one has few opportunities to mess up the ceremonial. It all went on very smoothly around me. Everybody was very kind and welcoming, and we chatted merrily over a glass of wine afterwards. It was here that Helen and I came on the Sunday after she had received her diagnosis last May, when we wanted to be somewhere we weren’t known, but no-one remembered me from then. Why would they, since I wasn’t dressed as a priest on that occasion?  The people were very positive about the sermon when we had a glass of wine in the Presbytery afterwards, though I came away starving, as there were only tiny snacks, and it was too late to eat a proper meal.

BIG FOOD RESCUE

Big on the Small Screen

St Peter's appeared on the television today, and may do so again this week, on BBC 1 at 9.15am, in a series called "The Big Food Rescue", which is all about The Felix Project. Readers of the Evening Standard will already be familiar with this excellent project, which collects waste food from businesses and directs it to those feeding the needy. It seems to be an idea whose time has come. This week they are getting five morning slots of documentary on BBC 1 telling their story. Needless to say, there were minor inaccuracies on the voice-over, but never mind. It did show the Lunch Club (and Jacqui) in action, which was good; the bizarre spectacle of the Lunch Club feasting on asparagus had a certain surreal quality, but fortunately they concentrated on nourishing soup, which was a bit simpler to eat. Who knows whether they will use any more of the footage they took: one of our users throwing his plate at his carer perhaps?


An Odd Encounter

I was invited to a reception in the Lord Mayor's Parlour last week, apparently nominated by the councillors, and found myself with a very assorted bunch of people. I was chatting to two locals when someone came over who asked if I was from "The True Church" (the capital letters were implied!) to which I replied that obviously everyone in my business has to think his is the true church. I assumed this was a light-hearted conversational opening, but soon found that they meant it. I wanted to think they were pulling my leg, but this just went on, and it became clear they were not joking, and obviously thought I would be pleased because the True Church, in their view, was the Church of England. Turns out that their taste is for Matins at the Abbey at a civilised hour on a Sunday, so I don't think they will be joining the flock here soon, but I came away marvelling at what some people regard as acceptable discourse. Perhaps it shows how soft and liberal I am, but I don't think claiming absolute truth for one's religious denomination is a normal feature of cocktail party conversation. In the religious melting-pot which is London, we muddle along pretty well with one another, but on the basis that none of us makes truth claims in the public space. You can assume that the practitioners of any religious system believe it to be true, and it is polite not to try to enforce your view on them, because we can live perfectly well side by side; co-existence rather than competition is the way to harmonious relations. The jihadist, of course, would take an opposing view. It might be supposed that my interlocutor would do the same, but I'm not so sure, because I think they didn't mind co-existence as long as we just patronised other faiths.


The Pastor and the Imam

So our film show will be happening on Monday, something for which we owe the (multi-faith) chaplaincy at Wormwood Scrubs a debt. The film comes from Nigeria, and is an encouraging story of reconciliation in a situation where Christians and Muslims sometimes do actually end up killing one another. It is plain that the clerics in the film (and our two friends from the Scrubs) are sincere believers, and not woolly liberals, but they demonstrate that respect and common humanity are at the heart of all religious faith. The film exists online, but we are showing it in the splendour of St Mary Mags at 6.15 on Monday 5th, with a question session and refreshments afterwards.   

THE CONCRETE AND THE CLAY

 CONCRETE CITY

One of the most obvious features of our neck of the woods at the moment is the enormous amount of concrete being transported about. Because of restrictions on turns at the Prince of Wales junction it all comes up to the traffic lights outside St Peter’s and lumbers around, gradually destroying the traffic island. This traffic comes (I presume) from the Tarmac company’s concrete batching plant next to the bus garage on Great Western Road, beside the railway, and involves both concrete mixer trucks and huge tipper trucks. Lots of concrete obviously means lots of building work; the last big spike in activity was in the early stages of Crossrail, but I think this is not destined for that scheme, which seems to be past the big concrete stage. It’s clear that the property boom continues unabated, despite recent events. You just have to look at the skyline, where you will always see cranes somewhere. Wherever you go in London there seems to be “development” taking place, with old buildings being swept away and new, shiny ones taking their place, or the existing buildings being extended or “basemented”. With all this building going on, one might ask, why do young people find it so hard to get a place to live?

Both my churches were put up during a previous building boom, in the 1860s and 70s, when, I have read, Chippenham Road was surfaced with wood blocks (I don’t think that lasted long). St Mary Magdalene’s features an early use of poured concrete, in the vault of the undercroft, a patent fireproof product, which shows how progressive the neo-gothic architects actually were. Much as I may fear and resent today’s concrete traffic (as a cyclist) I have to concede that life must have been much worse then, when there was far less regulation, and you had wooden scaffolding, steam-driven piledrivers and far more workmen. You only have to look at the photos of the digging of the Circle Line on display at Paddington Station to become aware of how ghastly it must have been. The Circle, remember, basically follows the street pattern, and was built in a huge trench dug down from the existing road; think what that would have done for traffic on Marylebone Road! Health and safety was rudimentary, and consideration for residents seems to have been very limited; you just had to put up with it as they tunnelled past your house. Meanwhile, the speculative builders were putting up whole new districts, like ours, with cheap, meanly-built housing. They look quite solid and respectable, but were often built in a hurry and ended up being let by the floor or the room as they weren't actually nice enough for the imagined target market. The planned development of Queen’s Park was a reaction to the free-for-all that had gone before, somewhere orderly and decent rather than the wild west of St Peter’s Park. It can still feel a bit like that!

THE HERON KNOWS

As I was taking a bite to eat at Clarence Gate the other day (in a break while cycling round the perimeter of Regent’s Park) I was watching the herons. I have mentioned before that there they now seem to have adapted to humans being an easy source of food, and they join the geese and gulls in looking for bread; well, on this occasion I was watching with fascinated horror as a tourist held out his hand towards a heron’s beak. Have you no imagination? Have you not seen what they do to fish? (Probably not, of course). They stab their beaks through fish a good deal thicker than your hand, so watch out, mate! Blessedly, nothing happened, but then I turned to watch one heron standing on his own in the middle of a flowerbed, stock still, classically immobile. Then a jogger came into view. She was short and extremely skinny, and dressed entirely in grey. As she came past him the heron clearly turned his head to follow her progress, as if not entirely sure that she was of a different species.

A FUNNY OLD YEAR

For All Souls’ Day we invite the families of people whose funerals we’ve done in the past year, and so I was going through my records to find the names and addresses. Now I haven’t done any more funerals than normal, but this year’s have been pretty memorable. I’ve been doing funerals for thirty years, but had never done a stillborn child until last November; and now I’ve done two. Stillbirths are not as uncommon as we suppose, but as parish clergy we tend not to do the funerals, as the hospital chaplains generally look after most of them. Fortunately I got to know the excellent Rosie at St Mary’s pretty well last summer, and so when the first one came to me last November I was able to pick her brains, and she directed me to her colleague, Michele, who specialises in this particular ministry. So, I had appropriate words to use, and it wasn’t too terrible. The more recent one, where I knew the family (slightly) and the funeral was in church, was pretty traumatic, and they remain traumatised by it all. There is clearly still work to do. So I’ve had two neo-natal deaths, and as well the funeral of a fourteen year old who died from an acute asthma attack. She was a twin, and I baptised them both and gave them their First Communion when they were altar servers, before their mum sent them to boarding school. That funeral involved a white, horse-drawn hearse, and a Pentecostal music group, but the thing that really sticks in the memory is the remaining twin sitting at a keyboard and singing a song she had written for her sister. Remarkable. Beside that, going back to Colchester to do the funerals of an old friend (aged 90), and my sister-in-law’s mother (also over 90) seemed more or less normal. As did the burial at Kensal Green of one of our most notable characters at St Mary Mag's. But it has been a funny old year.         

LIGHT PERPETUAL

THE LORD LOVES A CHEERFUL GIVER

The trouble is that I’m a pretty graceless giver; I wish I could get better. On Tuesday morning I came to St.Peter’s to get ready to say Mass, and Linda, the cleaner, told me that the homeless guy was in the church foyer. He’d asked to come in and use the lavatory, and then had curled up on the easy chairs in the warm. No problem there, but I hoped he’d wake up before I was finished. Linda just cleaned around him. Then, as I was going backwards and forwards preparing the altar, a young man waiting for an appointment with the Enterprise Centre said, “Oh, sorry, there’s someone at the door for you.” So, up I go and find a local man who is known to me, brandishing doctor’s letters about an inguinal hernia, and saying he has no money for his fare to the Charing Cross Hospital and if he misses the appointment it’ll mess up his benefits. This is 9.55. I am due to say Mass at 10. I haven’t dressed yet. I haven’t opened the safe. This isn’t the best time! Ungraciously I end up making a point of bringing out my wallet and giving him a fiver “from my own money – nobody else’s”. I am mortified to realise a moment later that the young man waiting for his appointment has heard the whole conversation, and witnessed my grumpiness.

At the end of Mass, the homeless man is still asleep, and after I’ve bumbled around clearing up I have to wake him because I need to lock up. He  goes to the lavatory again and then says he’s diabetic and needs food, so I find some crisps and fruit bars and give him a fiver as well.

THANKS TO FELIX

We discovered the Felix Project a few months ago, or rather, they discovered us. They give waste food from supermarkets to groups feeding the hungry, and they have transformed our lunches. They don’t do meat, so we still have to find that, but they give us all our vegetables, and all manner of excellent extras. The only trouble is that sometimes the enthusiastic staff on the van are just too keen to shift stuff, and force food on us that we can’t realistically use. Three cartons of Rooibos tea anyone? A couple of weeks ago we had a young man making a TV film about the Felix Project who came in to see the lunch club in action, and did interviews. Whether any of it ends up being shown is quite another matter, and I wonder whether his pretty committed work is necessarily what his editors want, but we shall see (or at least we will if they warn us when it is to be broadcast).

GIVE THEM REST

Last night was All Souls’, our big occasion at St.Mary Mags. We had orchestra and choir, and about four hundred in church. We sang Fauré, in memory of Helen, and I presided in the black High Mass set that we bought in memory of Ian McPherson, a dear old Mary Mags regular a couple of years ago. I always invite families for whom we’ve done funerals in the past year, and each year some of them come and really get it. This year a young mum, who lost a teenage daughter to an acute asthma attack came, along with the daughter’s twin, and they loved it. She was absolutely blown away by the experience, which is as it is meant to be. The music, which is sublime, in that beautiful setting, and with the solemn mystery of the liturgy, takes people to a better place. We had lots of positive comments afterwards, from Warwick Estate families as from Little Venice grandees. The Music Society has been putting on a French Romantic Requiem for All Souls’ Day here for nearly fifty years, and we must be one of the very few places where it happens with full orchestra, which is really special. My mission has been to make it clear that this is an act of worship, not a concert, and so I’ve managed to get a second congregational hymn into the order, as well as making sure the order of service is designed to help people participate. We always invite people to add names to the list of departed to be read out at the intercessions, while the musicians want to suppress the list, so there’s always a little tension there. To be able to preside at All Souls’ Day at Mary Mags is a great privilege in my ministry.