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IT IS exactly 50 years since we replaced the ancient church that the German bomb blew to dust, and Bishop John arrives to see what we have done in the mean time. Housekeeping-wise, a huge amount. But, while acknowledging this, he feels it his duty to draw our attention to the sacredness of the building — every church building.
There is a Herbertian severity, or shall we say seriousness, behind his kind words. The family silver is paraded on the altar, cups and dishes touched by all those generations of village people. Cold spring winds whip around the churchyard. Our priest, Henry, walks between the war-torn memorials.
I walk behind the Bishop, read from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, the bit in which he writes gladly about a broken wall and a fresh architecture of which Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, and speaks knowledgeably about all the building being fitly framed together so that it can be a holy temple.
George Herbert loved the word “temple”. His friend Nicholas Ferrar knew this, which is why he entitled the poems The Temple. Paul, of course, goes on to tell us that we are a temple within a temple, a sacred construction ourselves. With infinite tact, the Bishop draws us away from the housekeeping to the stillness within both us and this phoenix building.
Jenny Joseph (“Warning — When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple”) comes to lunch. But, although an old woman, she is wearing a nice tweed motoring cap and a capacious motoring coat. We have mushroom omelettes and rosé wine, and then we drive to the little Norman church to see St Francis preaching to the blackbirds.
Well! It is entirely filled with scaffolding. An intricate cat’s cradle of steel pipes and platforms divides its interior from floor to ceiling. The scaffolders swing about happily. The dog-toothed arches feel youthful. Why, it is 1120 all over again. A church is going up in a field, men are going up ladders, benefactors are totting up the cost, a bishop of somewhere or other is standing in the wet grass, his crozier at the ready.
The bells are being cast in the graveyard so as not to run the risk of their getting cracked on the foundry cart. Mass is being said in a builder’s yard. Hammering and lugging stops for some singing. Aeterna Christi munera, maybe. Trampled flowers (it is mid-May, of course) lift up their heads.
And now, a millennium later, the scaffolders are back; the buttercups are crushed; the old arches are grinding their dog-teeth because of the interruption. A young workman, powdered with Norman dust, hurries after us as we leave. We have left our umbrella, the special one that Jenny purchased at the special umbrella shop in London.
The painted apostles and angels will be blinking across the aisle in what for them will be their first experience of a cloud of unknowing. Shouldn’t the workmen wear masks? The silver tubes give out little screams as they are screwed into place, and these follow us as we make for the gate.
The Rector will be saying her evening office in a neighbouring parish. Jenny drives on and on to Minchinhampton. I tell the white cat how fortunate she is to live in a house where spring-cleaning is a minimal event.
I must cut the grass so that the Flower Festival ladies do not carry my sloth into the wide world when they come for alliums and spectacular leaves.
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