School Day

The local secondary school, Widelake, isn't completely foreign territory to me, but I don't go there very often. I paid a visit back in 2013, and then again the year before last, when I spoke to an RE class about communion and then answered questions at a philosophy group. 'When you talk about the way prayer affects you', asked one girl, 'How can you be sure it's actually due to contact with something beyond you or is just the effect of long-term self-examination and reflection?' I felt like bringing in the politician's answer along the lines of 'That's a very good question and I'm very glad you asked me' before moving swiftly on. But now I seem to have an arrangement to offer seasonal assemblies before the main festivals. Before Christmas I spoke about the sense of history embodied in the Christmas Proclamation: 'today, the 25th day of December, untold ages after God created the heavens and the earth ...' And yesterday I delivered one of my strange discursions about Lent and Easter, fasting customs and evidence for the Christian story. We met in the sports hall, which has no heating apart from the presence of hundreds of teenagers, and a tiny projector screen at one end. Can they see it at the back? And can they hear me at the back, even if I'm quite used to projecting, myself?

In the afternoon I was in the very different surroundings of the Infants School, doing another assembly and then Church Club. The children are off on a sports day on Friday and so I decided to talk about rules and how Jesus didn't always follow them but remembered what they were there for. My illustrative material included a croquet mallet and ball from my battered old Jacques set at home. 'Oh I never come into school without a croquet mallet', I said in answer to Sandra's incredulity when she turned up for Church Club.