This morning there is a Benefice Service at a little church in a village north of where I live. (What is a Benefice Service? It’s a special service for a group of parishes under a single minister, where there might otherwise be separate services in the respective parish churches on a Sunday. You knew that? Oh, sorry. It’s just that it’s the sort of thing that I didn’t know when I came to live in England.)
It’s early May, not time to cast a clout yet, but I risk going out without my puff jacket, because it feels mild. I walk down the little path to the church with some others arriving at the same time, watched by a group of black cows (fenced off from us, fortunately).
On entering the building, we are welcomed and reassured that the heating is on. This isn’t the church I usually attend, and I am wary of inadvertently causing offence by taking some elderly person’s habitual place, so I settle in the empty front pew on the right. (Front pews are invariably the last to fill!) However, the church is busy this morning, and I am soon joined by some other ladies, most of them known to me.
It turns out that one of the hazards of being in the front row is that we find ourselves still standing when the rest of the congregation behind us has long since sat down. (I find myself wondering if I looked alright from behind.) There are also ladybirds exploring the stack of kneelers next to me, perhaps having strayed from a nearby flower arrangement.
The first hymn starts up with the wheeze and perilous stutter of the organ, the functioning of which requires a team - one to play, and two to take shifts manually pumping it. It is a pity that this spectacle is at the back of the church, as it would be most absorbing to watch, wouldn’t it? However, for the remaining hymns, the organ is abandoned with some relief on all sides, and accompaniment switches to a keyboard at the front of the church, together with an ‘orchestra’ of violinist and flautist.
The service includes a reading about the importance of both faith and works (as opposed to just faith), and the sermon highlights how the volunteer economy in Britain is apparently worth GBP55 billion (that’s correct, not million but billion!) and how many important institutions (hospitals, schools etc.) were started by the church. Also, how Richard Dawkins has recently had the cheek to say that he is a “cultural Christian” but not, of course, a believing one. (Yet.)
During the sermon, my leg jerks involuntarily with a sudden sharp burning sensation on the top of my right foot. I look down in consternation and, to my astonishment, see a thin column of smoke rising from my shoe. Holy smoke! I touch my neighbour’s arm and point.
I had been sitting with my legs crossed, my buoyant right foot tucked under a heating pipe that runs the length of the wooden pew enclosure in front of me. I am wearing Skechers made presumably of recycled plastic fibres, and the contact with the hot pipe had started to melt the top of the shoe! Fortunately the brief pain alerted me to what was happening and my shoe did not actually ignite. Imagine if the church had had to be evacuated, and during the sermon, because my shoe had caught fire!
I see that my neighbour’s feet are concealing a warning notice about making contact with the pipes, which get extremely hot. You don’t say!
Well, this incident affords much hilarity over coffee and brownies after the service. Later, I ‘hot foot’ it back to where my car is parked, about ten minutes’ walk away, down a country lane lush with green spring growth and a field of bright yellow rapeseed adjoining it. I pause on a little wooden bridge and purposely let a teardrop fall into the fast-flowing stream.
Why am I crying? That’s another story. Sometimes, not often, I cry in church. I’m not always sure why. But there, my tears are on their way to the ocean. This doesn’t make me stop crying, but it seems meaningful, somehow, as if all the pain in this world is on its way to some vast collection point, where it really does matter.
Comments