Yesterday I was in church as part of our 'Open June' season. I was sat by our inner doors which look out over towards the vicarage and the bit of Ponsonby Road between the church and the vicarage. A car then drew up containing two lads - late teens, early twenties- who were bobbing around listening to the music on the radio. Oddly, though, they did not turn the engine off nor did they get out of the car. Strange. One or two ideas were forming in my mind as I watched them, but then the puzzle was answered.
A woman, 30ish, approached the car, and then suddenly, and I would have missed it if I hadn't been looking directly at them, she handed the man in the driving seat something, he gave her something. She put whatever it was down the front of her teeshirt, and walked straight off. The car then drove off immediately.
In all the whole business couldn't have taken more than thirty seconds, and the hand-over less than two seconds. I knew that we had drug dealers operating around here, but I had never seen an exchange before. Mobile phones have changed the dealing business. You don't really need a 'drug den' or 'crack house' nowadays. All you need is a car and a mobile phone.
I find it a tiny bit amusing that despite all their precautions - choosing a nice quiet street, doing everything with speed and forethought - I was able to see everything they were up to. They couldn't see into church because of the light differential, and assumed that no one would be there. Why should anyone be in church?
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Friday, 24 June 2011
A Lesser Splash
On Wednesday evening we had our Poetry Evening. We hadn't advertised the 'do' very well, but we reached seventeen folk by the end of the evening. It was great fun. We had some original poetry and some old favourites.
For my turn, I read from W. H. Auden, a poem called 'Musee des Beaux Arts'. It is about a painting by Pieter Bruegel called 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'. The painting is a sly take on the ancient myth about Icarus and his father Daedalus who try to escape from captivity by making two pairs of false wings. These are feathers sealed together with wax. At first they fly off with no trouble, but the exhilirated Icarus flies higher and higher, but too close to the sun, which melts the wax and disintegrates his wings. The poor lad then crashes to earth. This is it:
In some ways there is a comic element to this. All you can see of Icarus is his two legs splashing about in an ungainly fashion as he sinks beneath the water. This is down towards the bottom right hand corner of the painting. And the point is that no-one is looking. No-one notices. Even the closest figure to him, the fisherman, is concentrating on his line rather than the tragedy taking place before him.
Auden's poem is a bit more po-faced than the painting. He turns the image into a meditation on suffering:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
But there are some lovely touches:
some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree
We don't know what sort of life dogs have so Auden simply refers to 'their doggy life'. The dog in the picture is looking up in the same direction as his dreamy master, the shepherd, but he is in his own thoughts or what passes for thoughts. The horse in the picture has a large behind, and you can just imagine him backing up to a tree and having a good scratch.
The reason that this poem speaks to me as a Christian is that it is true - most suffering in this world goes on out of sight. We don't notice it. It's over there somewhere. We can't do anything about it, or so we think. But we have no excuse to be ignorant. When Jesus talked about the Rich Man and Lazarus, it was the Rich man's ignorance of the poor Lazarus at his gate that most annoyed him.
Our intercessions during our Sunday and weeday services are and expression of our concern for the world, but also an education into where so much suffering takes place. Suffering cannot ever be ignored, it must be addressed, prayed about, prepared for and tackled wherever it is possible. The tackling is the most difficult issue, but we have no hope unless we address, pray and prepare beforehand.
For my turn, I read from W. H. Auden, a poem called 'Musee des Beaux Arts'. It is about a painting by Pieter Bruegel called 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'. The painting is a sly take on the ancient myth about Icarus and his father Daedalus who try to escape from captivity by making two pairs of false wings. These are feathers sealed together with wax. At first they fly off with no trouble, but the exhilirated Icarus flies higher and higher, but too close to the sun, which melts the wax and disintegrates his wings. The poor lad then crashes to earth. This is it:
In some ways there is a comic element to this. All you can see of Icarus is his two legs splashing about in an ungainly fashion as he sinks beneath the water. This is down towards the bottom right hand corner of the painting. And the point is that no-one is looking. No-one notices. Even the closest figure to him, the fisherman, is concentrating on his line rather than the tragedy taking place before him.
Auden's poem is a bit more po-faced than the painting. He turns the image into a meditation on suffering:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
But there are some lovely touches:
some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree
We don't know what sort of life dogs have so Auden simply refers to 'their doggy life'. The dog in the picture is looking up in the same direction as his dreamy master, the shepherd, but he is in his own thoughts or what passes for thoughts. The horse in the picture has a large behind, and you can just imagine him backing up to a tree and having a good scratch.
The reason that this poem speaks to me as a Christian is that it is true - most suffering in this world goes on out of sight. We don't notice it. It's over there somewhere. We can't do anything about it, or so we think. But we have no excuse to be ignorant. When Jesus talked about the Rich Man and Lazarus, it was the Rich man's ignorance of the poor Lazarus at his gate that most annoyed him.
Our intercessions during our Sunday and weeday services are and expression of our concern for the world, but also an education into where so much suffering takes place. Suffering cannot ever be ignored, it must be addressed, prayed about, prepared for and tackled wherever it is possible. The tackling is the most difficult issue, but we have no hope unless we address, pray and prepare beforehand.
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Yawn Tennis
I had to go down the road to Wimbledon yesterday. After hunting around for some bits of shopping, I found myself in the Centre Court Mall next to the station. As I came out of a shop and saw the sign, the awful realisation hit me - just a week to go until the b***** tennis.
It isn't just that the media will be saturated with the sport, it is also that the roads around here will be one massive traffick jam. It is absolute murder trying to get from A to B around here as all the side streets and main roads get clogged by people coming hither and thither swarming like flies around the All England Club on Wimbledon Park Road .
There used to be a visual joke about a crowd of people in a stand moving their heads in unison from right to left and back again as they watched the ball going shuttle between the two players on the court in front of them. Much fun was made of this phenomenon as humourists ran ever more surreal scenarios as to what the crowd might be watching. That joke has largely disappeared. The reason? Well, there is very little of the ball going backwards and forwards between players these days. The ralley has become a thing of the past. (Some people might not know even what a ralley is.) I think that this is the reason I dislike modern tennis so much. In all of sport I do not think that there is anything quite so exciting as an acrobatic, fling yourself around the court, slam after slam ralley. I can remember them reaching fourteen or fifteen knocks before weariness or mischance sent the ball skying out of the playing area.
But now we seem never to see such prowess and agility in action. It is there all right. These are fine athetes. Well, yes, you might see a little bit of a ralley of up to five hits, but never what we saw in the past.
Is this just nostalgia for a slower, gentler age? Possibly. But the prime mover in the change has been technology. The materials that go into the manufacture of rackets and the string have made the rackets move the ball faster and with greater accuracy. There are far more aces now than there ever used to be. And now the ability to blast the ball has become an end in itself. They even have a speedometer calibrating every serve.
So what we are left with is a dreary blast, counter-blast of a game where amazingly fit, but otherwise (it has to be admitted) desperately dull young people fire balls at each other. Eventually in an hour or two, one will wear the other down, and will emerge the victor or victoria. I can't be doing with it. Dull. Dull. Dull.
How can the administrators of the game have let it get to such a pass? They could change the rules a bit to encourage more rallies - a softer ball? They could shorten the matches. Do we really want to see hours of just two sweaty twenty year olds slugging it out on television? Why so long? Boxing matches are just minutes, fencing matches are seconds, ping-pong - just minutes again. But there is a nasty great big fix going on. The All England (???!!?) Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (all of 375 members! I suspect Barnsley Tennis Club has more members.), the BBC, the equipment manufacturers, the corporate sponsors all have a massive vested interest in keeping things just the same.
Apart from getting duller, Wimbledon hasn't changed since John McKenroe foul-mouthed his way into the tennis establishment thirty years ago. All the other great sports have transformed themselves in the last twenty years. More action, more strategy, more zest, more unpredictablity. In Wimbledon everything stays the same. It has painted it self into a corner. A very lucrative corner where the punters turn up in droves, hoodwinked into believing what they are seeing is something to do with fun and spontanaeity. No it is all just a great big money making machine. I have no worries about the money making. But it is the machine that I object to.
Henman Hill will turn into Murray Hill, and in twenty years their clones will be doing exactly the same, year in year out.
It isn't just that the media will be saturated with the sport, it is also that the roads around here will be one massive traffick jam. It is absolute murder trying to get from A to B around here as all the side streets and main roads get clogged by people coming hither and thither swarming like flies around the All England Club on Wimbledon Park Road .
There used to be a visual joke about a crowd of people in a stand moving their heads in unison from right to left and back again as they watched the ball going shuttle between the two players on the court in front of them. Much fun was made of this phenomenon as humourists ran ever more surreal scenarios as to what the crowd might be watching. That joke has largely disappeared. The reason? Well, there is very little of the ball going backwards and forwards between players these days. The ralley has become a thing of the past. (Some people might not know even what a ralley is.) I think that this is the reason I dislike modern tennis so much. In all of sport I do not think that there is anything quite so exciting as an acrobatic, fling yourself around the court, slam after slam ralley. I can remember them reaching fourteen or fifteen knocks before weariness or mischance sent the ball skying out of the playing area.
But now we seem never to see such prowess and agility in action. It is there all right. These are fine athetes. Well, yes, you might see a little bit of a ralley of up to five hits, but never what we saw in the past.
Is this just nostalgia for a slower, gentler age? Possibly. But the prime mover in the change has been technology. The materials that go into the manufacture of rackets and the string have made the rackets move the ball faster and with greater accuracy. There are far more aces now than there ever used to be. And now the ability to blast the ball has become an end in itself. They even have a speedometer calibrating every serve.
So what we are left with is a dreary blast, counter-blast of a game where amazingly fit, but otherwise (it has to be admitted) desperately dull young people fire balls at each other. Eventually in an hour or two, one will wear the other down, and will emerge the victor or victoria. I can't be doing with it. Dull. Dull. Dull.
How can the administrators of the game have let it get to such a pass? They could change the rules a bit to encourage more rallies - a softer ball? They could shorten the matches. Do we really want to see hours of just two sweaty twenty year olds slugging it out on television? Why so long? Boxing matches are just minutes, fencing matches are seconds, ping-pong - just minutes again. But there is a nasty great big fix going on. The All England (???!!?) Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (all of 375 members! I suspect Barnsley Tennis Club has more members.), the BBC, the equipment manufacturers, the corporate sponsors all have a massive vested interest in keeping things just the same.
Apart from getting duller, Wimbledon hasn't changed since John McKenroe foul-mouthed his way into the tennis establishment thirty years ago. All the other great sports have transformed themselves in the last twenty years. More action, more strategy, more zest, more unpredictablity. In Wimbledon everything stays the same. It has painted it self into a corner. A very lucrative corner where the punters turn up in droves, hoodwinked into believing what they are seeing is something to do with fun and spontanaeity. No it is all just a great big money making machine. I have no worries about the money making. But it is the machine that I object to.
Henman Hill will turn into Murray Hill, and in twenty years their clones will be doing exactly the same, year in year out.
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Get out of that without moving
It is strange sometimes how you can be part of a decision making process, but then be gobsmacked when the decision is put into effect. This has happened to me with respect to our Church School, next to Holy Trinity.
We had an OFSTED inspection about three years ago. These are dreaded by all schools, but on this occasion we did very well. I am and was at the time the Chair of Governors at the time, and so I was very much involved in the whole process. The only area where we were found wanting was in the area of the children's safety. The school is old - it goes back to the eighteen forties and it is situated on Wimbledon Common on a very small site. In some places the school walls are directly accessible from the Common. In another part of the school there is only a waist high metal fence between the Common and the school grounds where the nursery has lessons and plays. It is these that worried the OFSTED inspectors. The question they put to us was: can you guarantee that no child can be abducted from this part of the school during the course of the school day? All that needs to happen is for someone to bend over the metal fence, grab a child and make off.
Huh? The suggestion seemed bizarre. It has never happened in the past, why should it happen now? The inevitable reply: 'Well, it has happened at other schools.' And like other schools we have family situations where estranged parents might well seek to take their own children despite restraining orders or complete banns. They might even take them away to a foreign country.
The chief inspector was so concerned that he sent a letter to our Director of Education about it all. The governors of the school had to do something about it. There was no alternative.
Up to this point we can all nod our heads and say, well it is 'all Health and Safety gone mad', but at the end of the day it is the children's safety that is paramount. The decision has to be made. So let's do it.
Then the decision is put into effect. The first I heard about it was when a friend of mine came up to me yesterday and said, 'Look at that, they're penning the kids in.' I looked up to the nursery area, and there was a wicker fence of about six and a half feet high all around the area that had been protected by the waist high metal fence. It did seem that the kids were being corralled into the entrance and lesson/play area. They could not see the Common any more. There was very much the sense of a transition from an open space into a contained space. The wicker fence was fine, beautiful in its own way, but the sense was definitely one of confinement, rather than freedom or interaction with the Common.
I went round to the headteacher. 'Did we agree to all this. I can't remember.' Patiently and courteously he took me back to the OFSTED report and its recommendations. 'Yes. We discussed all this at the Governors, and we voted to do all that was necessary.' By this time I had calmed down.
The Head and his staff had done what they had been told to do. There was no alternative. And they had done it in keeping with the environmental and aesthetic ethos of the school. There could be no criticism at all.
However, I am left with a distinctly queasy feeling about it all. We did what had to be done, but what we have done has inevitably diminished the children's enjoyment and experience of the Common. We have added to the pervasive culture of suspicion that afflicts our culture. It is sad.
For me, it is sad, because I don't really believe all the rhetoric. But by the same token, I don't believe that there is any room to take up an heroic stand against the bureaucrats and apparatchiks who have given the safeguarding agenda a life of its own. It is not my job that is on the line. I do not have to deal with these people everyday of my working life. In this respect I have it easy.
Part of the doctrine of Original Sin is the idea of structural sin. This is the sin we all participate in, simply by virtue of being a part of a community. The wicker fence is an example. It is sin because it falls far short of the purposes of God, and it is sin because we collude with the forces that have brought it into being. We can only put our hands up and ackowledge our part in it. The sin is compounded if we shy away from responsibility. 'It's not my fault, gov. Rules is rules.'
But putting our hands up is important. By acknowledging our part, we do keep ourselves sensitive to what are the good purposes of God. We are more alert of future examples of structural sin, and when we find that these do cut across our neighbour's vulnerability, we can act. Desensitisation to sin is a long road, a road that leads to a place that none of us wants to go to.
We had an OFSTED inspection about three years ago. These are dreaded by all schools, but on this occasion we did very well. I am and was at the time the Chair of Governors at the time, and so I was very much involved in the whole process. The only area where we were found wanting was in the area of the children's safety. The school is old - it goes back to the eighteen forties and it is situated on Wimbledon Common on a very small site. In some places the school walls are directly accessible from the Common. In another part of the school there is only a waist high metal fence between the Common and the school grounds where the nursery has lessons and plays. It is these that worried the OFSTED inspectors. The question they put to us was: can you guarantee that no child can be abducted from this part of the school during the course of the school day? All that needs to happen is for someone to bend over the metal fence, grab a child and make off.
Huh? The suggestion seemed bizarre. It has never happened in the past, why should it happen now? The inevitable reply: 'Well, it has happened at other schools.' And like other schools we have family situations where estranged parents might well seek to take their own children despite restraining orders or complete banns. They might even take them away to a foreign country.
The chief inspector was so concerned that he sent a letter to our Director of Education about it all. The governors of the school had to do something about it. There was no alternative.
Up to this point we can all nod our heads and say, well it is 'all Health and Safety gone mad', but at the end of the day it is the children's safety that is paramount. The decision has to be made. So let's do it.
Then the decision is put into effect. The first I heard about it was when a friend of mine came up to me yesterday and said, 'Look at that, they're penning the kids in.' I looked up to the nursery area, and there was a wicker fence of about six and a half feet high all around the area that had been protected by the waist high metal fence. It did seem that the kids were being corralled into the entrance and lesson/play area. They could not see the Common any more. There was very much the sense of a transition from an open space into a contained space. The wicker fence was fine, beautiful in its own way, but the sense was definitely one of confinement, rather than freedom or interaction with the Common.
I went round to the headteacher. 'Did we agree to all this. I can't remember.' Patiently and courteously he took me back to the OFSTED report and its recommendations. 'Yes. We discussed all this at the Governors, and we voted to do all that was necessary.' By this time I had calmed down.
The Head and his staff had done what they had been told to do. There was no alternative. And they had done it in keeping with the environmental and aesthetic ethos of the school. There could be no criticism at all.
However, I am left with a distinctly queasy feeling about it all. We did what had to be done, but what we have done has inevitably diminished the children's enjoyment and experience of the Common. We have added to the pervasive culture of suspicion that afflicts our culture. It is sad.
For me, it is sad, because I don't really believe all the rhetoric. But by the same token, I don't believe that there is any room to take up an heroic stand against the bureaucrats and apparatchiks who have given the safeguarding agenda a life of its own. It is not my job that is on the line. I do not have to deal with these people everyday of my working life. In this respect I have it easy.
Part of the doctrine of Original Sin is the idea of structural sin. This is the sin we all participate in, simply by virtue of being a part of a community. The wicker fence is an example. It is sin because it falls far short of the purposes of God, and it is sin because we collude with the forces that have brought it into being. We can only put our hands up and ackowledge our part in it. The sin is compounded if we shy away from responsibility. 'It's not my fault, gov. Rules is rules.'
But putting our hands up is important. By acknowledging our part, we do keep ourselves sensitive to what are the good purposes of God. We are more alert of future examples of structural sin, and when we find that these do cut across our neighbour's vulnerability, we can act. Desensitisation to sin is a long road, a road that leads to a place that none of us wants to go to.
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Update
I met up with my friend Fr David Gummett, the Catholic Parish Priest earlier today, and he was able to say a little bit more about the victim of the fall I reported on Monday. The young man who died was the son of a parishioner of his. I myself know the lady whose son it was. She is a lovely person. But we do know that the young man had been troubled for some time. We shall be praying for the young man and his mother on Sunday.
Monday, 13 June 2011
Out of the blue
We heard a helicopter circling round this morning. This isn't an uncommon experience here. We even have them at night with searchlights weeping the area. We thought no more anout it, but then we saw a large red Virgin medical helicopter parked on the Common just in front of the Roehampton Church School's Infants' Department.
Something serious must have happened. A few minutes later I had to go to pick up some dry cleaning from Roehampton High Street. As I was walking along Roehampton Lane I saw four ambulances parked on the Lane just by the Library. Their lights were flashing but there was no noise. The great temptation is to try to get a closer look. But that gets in the way of the emergency services, so I crossed the road to go about my business. It was then that I bumped into Mrs A, a member of the congregation. She was very shaken and tearful. She had seen it all.
Just as she was crossing the road by the Library she had looked up to the top of Allbrook House, the block that stands over the Library. It's about ten storeys high. Something had caught her attention. Then she realised what it was. A man was falling. It was over in an instant.
It appears that the man was killed. The emercency services had got there within a few minutes, and they covered the body with a sheet.
We have forty three tower blocks in Roehampton, and we have had many falls over the years. I have taken the funerals of a few of them. Most often, you can't really get at what happened, the circumstances are just too confused. It is so sad. We hope and pray that the family will be consoled, and that there may be peace at the last.
Something serious must have happened. A few minutes later I had to go to pick up some dry cleaning from Roehampton High Street. As I was walking along Roehampton Lane I saw four ambulances parked on the Lane just by the Library. Their lights were flashing but there was no noise. The great temptation is to try to get a closer look. But that gets in the way of the emergency services, so I crossed the road to go about my business. It was then that I bumped into Mrs A, a member of the congregation. She was very shaken and tearful. She had seen it all.
Just as she was crossing the road by the Library she had looked up to the top of Allbrook House, the block that stands over the Library. It's about ten storeys high. Something had caught her attention. Then she realised what it was. A man was falling. It was over in an instant.
It appears that the man was killed. The emercency services had got there within a few minutes, and they covered the body with a sheet.
We have forty three tower blocks in Roehampton, and we have had many falls over the years. I have taken the funerals of a few of them. Most often, you can't really get at what happened, the circumstances are just too confused. It is so sad. We hope and pray that the family will be consoled, and that there may be peace at the last.
Saturday, 11 June 2011
Open June
This month we are opening our doors to the general public on weekdays from 10.00am to 5.00pm. This is something that we would like to do the whole time. The problem isn't vandalism - we could cope with that, it is arson.
We used to leave the doors unlocked right up until the early 1990s, but then one day the vicar of the time discovered the remains of a small fire that had been lit in our lady Chapel. Our problem is that if ever a fire got hold within the church, everything else would go up too. We have so much polished wood that, in effect, the whole place is a tinderbox.
But now we are open once again, it has been lovely to welcome passers-by into the church, and quite a few people do just wander in and look around. We are very lucky in that the church is so beautiful.
What is so fascinating about parish churches, is that they are concrete records of the tragedy and triumphs of the various families, groups and individuals what have made up the local community for hundreds of years. Municipal buildings come and go. The great bastion of the old Greater London Council, County Hall, for example, is now a block of flats. Churches tend to stay around because they are served by a dedicated community - the local congregation. They aren't paid, in fact they pay for the building. They do it out of love - love for God first and foremost, but also out of love for the place where they worship him.
Holy Trinity, our parish church has been on its present site for just over a hundred years, and so it has memorials marking the great events of probably the most momentous century in our history. Most significantly, there are two memorials marking the First and Second World Wars. I shall be talking about these in later posts. What I want to draw your attention to is one small domestic tradgedy.
Set into the west wall are two pairs of stained glass windows. These are exquisite creations of the high tide of the Victorian era. They depict seven women saints and Rachel the matriarch from the Old Testament. The dominant colours are red and gold. Each pair has a quote from the Bible and a dedication. The first pair have: ‘These are they that came out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’ and the dedication ‘These words are here inscribed in loving remembrance of Ella Mary FitzRoy aged twenty, and Maud Eugenia her sister aged 18, daughters of Eugenia Susannah St Aubyn who passed through the fire to their rest. Christmas 1885-6.’
The second pair have: ‘How glorious is the kingdom where all the saints rejoice with Christ, they are arrayed in white robes and follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth.’ and the dedication ‘These words are inscribed in recollection of Eugenia Susannah St Aubyn born 4th Nov. 1844 and died March 12th 1886.’
This is the story of a fire in one of the local big houses. Two of the daughters of the house died in the fire and their mother died barely three months later. We do not know whether she was injured in the fire, or whether she died of a broken heart.
I was touched by the way in which this incident had lived with the St Aubyn family for many years and how they wanted to mark it - because our church was not built until 1898, twelve years after. They had waited that time to commemorate their loved ones. The family wanted them to be remembered. It reminds me of the saying that we all die twice: once when our bodies cease to function, and secondly when we cease to be remembered. Eugenia and her daughters have been given a fragile kind of afterlife.
The reason that this memorial has struck such a chord with me is that it reminds me of an incident I was involved with in my last appointment when I was in Cumbria. I was vicar of four urban parishes near Whitehaven. At the time I was also Force Chaplain to Cumbria Constabulary. One night I got called out to debrief a shift of officers who had attended a fire the other side of Whitehaven in a village called Harrington. There were twelve officers, and they had been ordered to secure the scene of a house that had caught fire - a chip pan fire which had killed the mother and three children of the family. Only the father and, I think, one child survived. These lived in just an ordinary council house, and they certainly would not have been able to afford a memorial in the local church. I hope that they will be remembered. The trouble is that people do not like to remember horrible incidents. They would rather get on with life. One of the great consolations of the Christian faith is that we believe that God always remembers us. He does not forget nor look away.
Sombre thoughts. But there are some less melancholy items in our lovely building. One of them (and this goes against the 'loveliness' I have been proclaiming) is the most hideous 'Bishop's Chair' you can imagine. It is in West Ham colours, claret and blue, and it has images of severed heads at the ends of its arms for your fingers to explore when you sit in it. This was aquired by one of our former churchwardens, Harry de Bossart. Harry used to work for the BBC in the scenery department. At the end of productions some of the bits of scenery would be sold off to the cast or production team for a song. Harry had been working on a medieval drama and spotted the chair. Just right for Holy Trinity. And so now we have it.
I have a deep and abiding loathing for the thing, but my churchwardens and the rest of the church council have rather a soft spot for it. I am hoping that some shady character might sneak into church and make off with it, or, even better, with what I call Auntie Flo's dresser. This is another hideous piece of domestic furniture - all black laquer, broken brass handles and irritating pointless little windows, which houses our hymn books. The only trouble is that both are immensely heavy, and so our shady character would have to have about four muscled strongmen to help him.
Mercifully these are the oly two blots on the beautiful interior of the church, which of course, we invite you to come and look at any time this month.
We used to leave the doors unlocked right up until the early 1990s, but then one day the vicar of the time discovered the remains of a small fire that had been lit in our lady Chapel. Our problem is that if ever a fire got hold within the church, everything else would go up too. We have so much polished wood that, in effect, the whole place is a tinderbox.
What is so fascinating about parish churches, is that they are concrete records of the tragedy and triumphs of the various families, groups and individuals what have made up the local community for hundreds of years. Municipal buildings come and go. The great bastion of the old Greater London Council, County Hall, for example, is now a block of flats. Churches tend to stay around because they are served by a dedicated community - the local congregation. They aren't paid, in fact they pay for the building. They do it out of love - love for God first and foremost, but also out of love for the place where they worship him.
Holy Trinity, our parish church has been on its present site for just over a hundred years, and so it has memorials marking the great events of probably the most momentous century in our history. Most significantly, there are two memorials marking the First and Second World Wars. I shall be talking about these in later posts. What I want to draw your attention to is one small domestic tradgedy.
Set into the west wall are two pairs of stained glass windows. These are exquisite creations of the high tide of the Victorian era. They depict seven women saints and Rachel the matriarch from the Old Testament. The dominant colours are red and gold. Each pair has a quote from the Bible and a dedication. The first pair have: ‘These are they that came out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’ and the dedication ‘These words are here inscribed in loving remembrance of Ella Mary FitzRoy aged twenty, and Maud Eugenia her sister aged 18, daughters of Eugenia Susannah St Aubyn who passed through the fire to their rest. Christmas 1885-6.’
The second pair have: ‘How glorious is the kingdom where all the saints rejoice with Christ, they are arrayed in white robes and follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth.’ and the dedication ‘These words are inscribed in recollection of Eugenia Susannah St Aubyn born 4th Nov. 1844 and died March 12th 1886.’
This is the story of a fire in one of the local big houses. Two of the daughters of the house died in the fire and their mother died barely three months later. We do not know whether she was injured in the fire, or whether she died of a broken heart.
I was touched by the way in which this incident had lived with the St Aubyn family for many years and how they wanted to mark it - because our church was not built until 1898, twelve years after. They had waited that time to commemorate their loved ones. The family wanted them to be remembered. It reminds me of the saying that we all die twice: once when our bodies cease to function, and secondly when we cease to be remembered. Eugenia and her daughters have been given a fragile kind of afterlife.
The reason that this memorial has struck such a chord with me is that it reminds me of an incident I was involved with in my last appointment when I was in Cumbria. I was vicar of four urban parishes near Whitehaven. At the time I was also Force Chaplain to Cumbria Constabulary. One night I got called out to debrief a shift of officers who had attended a fire the other side of Whitehaven in a village called Harrington. There were twelve officers, and they had been ordered to secure the scene of a house that had caught fire - a chip pan fire which had killed the mother and three children of the family. Only the father and, I think, one child survived. These lived in just an ordinary council house, and they certainly would not have been able to afford a memorial in the local church. I hope that they will be remembered. The trouble is that people do not like to remember horrible incidents. They would rather get on with life. One of the great consolations of the Christian faith is that we believe that God always remembers us. He does not forget nor look away.
Sombre thoughts. But there are some less melancholy items in our lovely building. One of them (and this goes against the 'loveliness' I have been proclaiming) is the most hideous 'Bishop's Chair' you can imagine. It is in West Ham colours, claret and blue, and it has images of severed heads at the ends of its arms for your fingers to explore when you sit in it. This was aquired by one of our former churchwardens, Harry de Bossart. Harry used to work for the BBC in the scenery department. At the end of productions some of the bits of scenery would be sold off to the cast or production team for a song. Harry had been working on a medieval drama and spotted the chair. Just right for Holy Trinity. And so now we have it.
I have a deep and abiding loathing for the thing, but my churchwardens and the rest of the church council have rather a soft spot for it. I am hoping that some shady character might sneak into church and make off with it, or, even better, with what I call Auntie Flo's dresser. This is another hideous piece of domestic furniture - all black laquer, broken brass handles and irritating pointless little windows, which houses our hymn books. The only trouble is that both are immensely heavy, and so our shady character would have to have about four muscled strongmen to help him.
Mercifully these are the oly two blots on the beautiful interior of the church, which of course, we invite you to come and look at any time this month.
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