Change of view
I HAVE now got two desks — as if one weren’t enough for the relentless admin that comes with being a parish priest these days. I sometimes envy those of my 17th- and 18th-century predecessors who collected butterflies most of the week, writing poetry and novels, even while based at the ever-bustling Piccadilly Circus.
My second desk is so that I can stand up for Zoom conversations, pace about during Teams meetings, and rock gently from side to side while tentatively opening the inbox. It’s adjustable, so that I can raise it to eye height and not jeopardise my health further by sitting down too much (is sitting the new smoking?).
It means that not only am I standing up, but I am also facing in another direction, and have a different view from the main desk, where I sit to read, and write with an old-fashioned pen. From that desk, I look out on to the church courtyard: filled by day with international food stalls; by evening, a beautiful clear space with a fountain, and trees to sit under and have a moment to think.
From my second desk, I look directly out on to Piccadilly; so I can observe the thousands of people an hour who move past the church. At this time of year, there are a lot of sleeveless-shirted, sunglass-wearing tourists, scrolling through their map apps as they move west from the Tube, hoping against hope that the flag that they can see in the distance is the Royal Academy and not the Cutty Sark — which would mean that they’re not where they thought they were.
Inside out
IN MAY, our church was the first to build a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show (News, 24 May). “Imagine the World to be Different” was a combination of the beauty and order of the past (a huge, replica-Wren window allowed visitors to look into the garden, making the inside outside, and vice versa) and the wild, healing curiosity of the futuristic counselling cabin, designed by an artist in consultation with therapists — a wonderful circular space, made of oak and cedar.
Rooted in the conviction that conversations under trees can have a different quality from those in a building, a boardroom, or even a rector’s study, the garden was envisaged as a place where the human and divine imaginations could meet: the boundary between wildness and cultivation; a symbol of human co-operation with our ever-creating God.
On the outside wall of the Chelsea garden was a quotation from William Temple, a former Rector of St James’s: “The Church exists primarily for the benefit of those who do not belong to it.” It is one of my abiding memories of that intense week in May that thousands of people saw that quotation in an unexpected place, and many took a photograph of it; I pray that they have thought about it since.
United we stand
IF WILLIAM TEMPLE’s vision is right, then using resources to keep a peaceful and light sacred space open, and thresholds low, is time and money and energy well spent. And that doesn’t just mean the historic building. I’m involved with the inspiring Quiet Garden Movement (quietgarden.org). In a recent survey conducted for us by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, a striking feature of the feedback was that what many people valued most was not an innovative talks programme, or stirring sermons, or even beautiful music, but peace and quiet in the middle of the city.
For some, of course, life is too quiet. And a long afternoon in the heat of August can be the loneliest time if no one comes to call — which is why the simplest things are often the most effective. A tea party is held in the nave of the church, in partnership with Age UK, who provide a minibus to pick everyone up. Older people, isolated and living alone in various parts of Westminster, gather for tea, sandwiches, and cake.
From all faiths and none, none of them is a member of the Sunday congregation, but they feel as if the church is theirs, all the same. Lively conversation centres around childhood memories of Goa, Kampala, Peckham, and Beijing.
One raconteur, born in Malaysia and now living in Marylebone, recounts an interaction with US border control when she took a trip to visit her daughter in New York, just before Covid. After being taken aside and questioned for far too long because, she suspected, of the colour of her skin, and her Muslim name, she was allowed to enter the country. As she thanked the border guard for stamping her passport, he asked her for the hundredth time what was the purpose of her visit. “I’m here to Make America Great Again,” she said, with an eyebrow raised for emphasis.
Her octogenarian and nonagenarian tea-party companions roared with laughter, and high-fived her like they’d won the Olympics.
Lux aeterna
IN THE centre of a city, at the height of summer, we are together. We are also alone. I watch them walk or wheel themselves past each other on the pavement, focused on where they’re going, or hoping they’re not too lost. Maybe they look up for a moment, see the sky and the church spire, and wonder when they’re going to die.
The sun sets in the west on Piccadilly, and, as it does so, it shines down that long road, gloriously, irreplaceably on every single one of them, drenched as they are, not only in sunlight, but in the grace of God, too. All of them, without exception.
The Revd Lucy Winkett is Rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, and Priest-in-Charge of St Pancras Church, Euston Road, in the diocese of London.