Damage

Heaven knows how Ecclesiastical Insurance manages to keep going, given how vulnerable churches, the bulk of its customers, are. The woman on the claims desk sounded weary as she took our particulars, and gave me a reference number.

Over the night of Saturday 30th, panes of glass in the vestry at Swanvale Halt church had been smashed with a brick, but more sadly the great Rood Window was attacked - not, thankfully, with a brick, but with bits of wood which have, even so, done enough damage. There are a number of holes and quite extensive cracking and buckling in the lower parts of the three lancets that make the east window up. Heaven knows how much it will cost to repair.

It could have been much worse: at Woodham in 2002 the war memorial outside the church was pulled down, the figure of Jesus ripped off it and smashed up - the pieces strewed through the woods behind the church - and every window within reach smashed in. That was especially nasty as it was a deliberate attack on the church as a church; as the vicar said to me, 'if I were a more excitable sort of Christian I would have described it as Enemy Action'. I don't think ours is of that order, being just another manifestation of thoughtlessness and contempt, but really it's just part of the same spectrum. I suppose we could take it as an object lesson in detachment from The Things of This World, but it's hard when worldly things stand so clearly for the things of the world to come, which we should care about.