Harvest 2021

I am still on leave but I don't mind breaking into the succession of holiday snaps to report briefly on what we did for Harvest this year. In fact it was all very modest. The Infants School came to the church on Wednesday at the end of September for two short services, one for Reception and one for the older children, with no parents present, as they did last year, so it was very low-key. They sang, brought their gifts, listened to me talk in very short order, said a couple of prayers, and went away taking their gifts with them to be taken up to the Food Bank. No other organisation made its presence felt at all.

For the Sunday we kept our Harvest Festival, as such, at the first resumed Sunday Space service. Before the first lockdown last year we'd already decided to experiment with a non-eucharistic service once a month which wasn't consciously directed at children, and thus wasn't a 'Family Service', because no families had been there for quite a long time; but we'd only managed to do one when everything was shut up, and that was really the old Family Service pattern. For the resumed and renewed version, I shrunk the liturgy down to the very bare minimum which required the congregation to do nothing more than respond to the Kyrie, say 'Amen', 'thanks be to God' and 'hear our prayer' at appropriate points. We had one reading, and I talked about it. The much-reduced music group accompanied five hymns, and, for the prayers, aside from blessing the Harvest gifts, I brought the Blessed Sacrament from the aumbry in a monstrance, and placed it on the altar on the simple Step-Pyramid-like stand helpfully made from a nice bit of oak by Jack ('Just don't drop it on your foot'). Prayers done, we sand 'God be in my head' a couple of times, and back the Sacrament went. That is what will happen in the future. 

It was short, simple, and focused on Scripture and prayer, but the addition of low-key sacramental adoration adds the Catholic element I am anxious to preserve. There are two main problems: first, it's a bit heavy on contributions from me, the only other voice being a reader's: I want that to change. Secondly, we don't have anyone to serve refreshments afterwards, which I think is quite vital. That's got to be a priority!