It was with a jolt that I realised this Sunday morning that I hadn't attended an 8am service at Swanvale Halt, as opposed to leading it, since March. As Marion took the service - 'struggling to remember what to do', she admitted - I found myself ever so slightly uncomfortable in my seat, not due to fearing infection (I have made the point ad infinitum that a quiet, said communion service is quite the most controllable and safe indoors religious activity you can engage in) but simply because of the unfamiliarity of the circumstances. It's odd to be seated on a chair isolated by space all around without the usual oak benches to separate you from your fellow worshippers. The oddness faded quickly, but I felt the unease which some members of the congregation have described to me on venturing back into the COVID-compliant church for the first time, and which when you're leading the service it's all too easy to ignore.
One of the Tophill clergy casually mentioned in a remote conversation the other day that they haven't celebrated the Eucharist there in nine months ('If people want that we direct them to you or the Cathedral'). Even I was slightly shocked. Churchmanship is part of this - even a fairly moderate church might gib at giving up the Sacrament for quite so long - but from conversations we have had I suspect the Rector of Tophill is on the extremely cautious side and regards communion as fraught with risk which, as I say, is not my view. It's from Tophill that we are starting to get stories of congregants who are positively preferring to stay home and watch services on their computers in dressing gowns and slippers on a Sunday morning rather than drag themselves into their church building.
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