As we prepare for the Easter weekend, full of the joys of Spring and the promise of chocolate and two Bank Holidays, churches across the constituency are getting ready to celebrate the Resurrection after a very strange time.
For the first time in aeons churches, mosques, temples and synagogues were forced to close their doors to worshippers, as the Covid-19 pandemic made us all retreat into our homes and stay away from other people in a way which has not been seen in living memory.
But while doors to places of worship were closed, avenues of outreach opened up, with communities pulling together to support the most vulnerable and needy. Many of those who would usually have been taking part in services, meetings, and prayer groups joined the ranks of volunteers delivering shopping and medicines, running online groups, ringing people for a chat and picking up where normal life had packed its bags and scarpered.
I recently visited the church of St Mary The Virgin in Fryerning to meet Rev. Sally Croft who has been one of the members of local clergy doing outstanding work in holding their communities together through such difficult times. Rev. Croft and her team are delighted to have got back into the routine of church services, visiting local schools, and holding church meetings which are such a key part of church life.
I was delighted to be able to look round St Mary’s not least because it has a wonderful stained glass window in memory of Airey Neave MP, who was assassinated outside the Houses of Parliament in 1979. Another, more modern window, marks the end of the second Millennium and the beginning of the third. All local churches are mini museums for the communities they serve, and this little church in Fryerning is a wonderful example of how the work done in local communities adapts through time.
I hope you all enjoy a wonderful Easter break and have the chance to spend some time with family and neighbours – at the risk of tempting fate, as we go to press, the forecast for the Bank Holiday weekend is good …
