Sanctuary seeker
THE other day, on the school run, somebody dropped a small doll’s detached head on the pavement. I noticed it as I walked back home. The next morning, when I went to unlock the church, I noticed the same head lying on the bench in the porch.
Trying not to give any credence to the idea that the thing was haunted and following me, I supposed that somebody had picked it up and brought it to the church, and I reflected on what the potential thought processes behind that action might have been. Was it a feeling that the church is a safe place for lost things? The notion that enough children use the church regularly that one of them might recognise it? The idea that churchgoers tend to know the village well, and could help return the object to its rightful home?
Whatever the reason, it seems that somebody felt that the church would be the right place for this small, broken, mislaid item. It’s a lovely sentiment, but makes it rather harder to decide what to do with the thing.
Time travel
AFTER a prolonged absence, we have at last been able to visit my parents, and spend the half-term holiday in their house in France. It was a joy to watch my daughter, after nearly four years away, seeking out and fondly remembering every nook and cranny, toy and picture. Any changes were noticed, considered, and either lamented or begrudgingly accepted; but one important thing seemed to be missing. “Where’s the portal?”
Unaware that the house possessed any doorways to extra dimensions, I couldn’t help, but, eventually, she found it: a tie-dye wall hanging, with bright concentric circles, through which she and her brother had apparently enjoyed many imagined adventures while I was off doing grown-up things.
Thinking back to the places in the same house where my sister and I had once found our own equivalents of Narnia, I felt glad that some things — even if the distance is across generations — never change.
Chicken and egg
THIS year’s AGM for the Association of Christian Writers was special for three reasons. There was a celebratory feel to meeting in person again; we were launching a book, Write Well, a compilation of advice and encouragement from seasoned authors; and the meeting was part of our jubilee year to mark the golden anniversary of the association.
For me, there was an extra point of significance, because the meeting was held in Mary Sumner House, a constant landmark on the familiar streets of my Westminster childhood. It was an odd moment, standing up to speak at the book launch, in the knowledge that I have a photograph of myself, aged five, in the Mothers’ Union bookshop, inexplicably dressed as a chicken.
Points of light
WHEN did Hallowe’en become a month-long season rather than a single evening? This year, it seems to have started well before October, not just in the shops, but, in particular, on Instagram, where photographic arrangements of toothy pumpkins, golden foliage, paper bats, and cosy blankets seem to suggest that the whole thing is now synonymous with autumn.
I was mystified to see, no more than two weeks into October, someone on social media lamenting the fact that she had not yet had a chance to “decorate for Hallowe’en”.
But then this is the time of year when I like to remind my family, and anyone else who will listen, that it should properly be celebrated as a three-day season, the triduum of Allhallowtide: the light-in-darkness tropes of 31 October leading to the feast of saints and the remembrance of souls, each day with its distinct atmosphere and traditions.
As a storyteller, I love Allhallowtide for its excuse to tell the goriest hagiographies possible; more personally, I love it because it happens to include the anniversary of my baptism. Lighting my baptismal candle against the literal and figurative darkness, while remembering the community of saints to which I belong, offers a moment of finely tuned symbolism that is hard to beat. But I don’t love it when it starts in September.
Back to the future
COMPLAINTS about starting too soon are usually associated with a different festival, of course, and it seems that the panic about the probable cancellation of Christmas comes earlier every year.
Without ignoring the fact that sparsity on supermarket shelves can and will cause real hardship for people, if the pandemic has taught us one thing, it should be that the removal of associated traditions and trimmings can never cancel a religious festival. In fact, the further we get from our automatic and familiar ways of celebrating, the more we have to think about what is being celebrated, and why.
One of my fondest memories of 2020 is waking the children to watch the Easter sunrise with us while listening to ancient prayers, unhoused from church walls for the first time in centuries, and blending in a strangely perfect way with the dawn chorus.
Perhaps, eventually, all these prodigal feasts will make their way back to their church roots, and, however changed, wayward, or broken they have been, it will be as if they never left.
Amy Scott Robinson is a writer, performance storyteller, and ventriloquist.