The parish church is a time-crash. It’s a headrush of place. It’s past and present and future bundled into one building. The parish church puts our small lives into context.
The parish church is not like a castle or a pub. It is the spiritual investment of generations.
#thread
The parish church is not like a castle or a pub. It is the spiritual investment of generations.
#thread
Not only the spiritual investment but also the artistic investment and the accretion of human endeavour.
The nave at East Hatley was built in 1217. To make their church, local people picked pebbles and cobbles out of the earth and bound them in mud and lime and sand.
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The nave at East Hatley was built in 1217. To make their church, local people picked pebbles and cobbles out of the earth and bound them in mud and lime and sand.
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What is sand but the past pulverised? It’s a mountain, a boulder formed millions of years ago, eroded down to the tiniest particle. The grains are tiny manifestations of ancient landscapes.
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Perhaps within the tiniest grain of sand in a mortar mix there is an imprint, a memory of the mountain it came from, the journey it has made, the life it lived.
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Memory is a hugely important part of the parish church. Here it is individual and collective. In these places, you can hear centuries of faith in the cold stone and feel the slow passing of time. Not only can you hear and feel it – you can see it ...
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– in the porch step worn by down countless faithful feet, the greasy marks on monuments that people have touched time and time again – either out of devotion or mindlessness – or simply because they like the way it feels...
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We deal with redundant churches. Churches the church doesn’t want. But the building goes on. Its importance doesn’t diminish. In these places is a deep sense of humanity – a concentration of shared human experience within their walls.
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Places where people silently poured out their hopes and fears, where they had their happiest and saddest moments.
Here, theirs is the song of centuries.
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This is an excerpt from a talk our Director gave earlier this month, for more:
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Here, theirs is the song of centuries.
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This is an excerpt from a talk our Director gave earlier this month, for more:
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Bonus tweet: Thanks so much to @badger_beard who supplied most of the photos in this thread - they’re gorgeous, distinctive and inspiring, as always. ❤️
