Call To Prayer

The archbishops have designated this second period of lockdown as a time of special prayer for the nation, with a simple weekly scheme of subjects they hope will be observed by as many churches as possible. It cannot but help to be told this, but one does hope it was what Anglican churches were doing anyway: the list broadly reflects what we've been sending out in our weekly bulletins and services to the congregation ever since the first lockdown started.

We are all intended to observe this focused prayer time at 6pm each day, and, 'if safe to do so', ring the bell of the church to announce the moment. Funnily enough I would hope that the folk of Swanvale Halt are already quite used to the church bell ringing at about 6pm as the Angelus tolls out across the village at that time, to the comfort of some (I know because they have told me) and the confusion of others. As the sacristan at Goremead, who had in her very younger days been a secretary to Archbishop Cosmo Lang, told me when I was over there and suggested I might ring it at noon when I was in the office, 'I'll understand what it means; I'm not sure anyone else will'. It amuses me to think of hundreds of parish clergy perhaps discovering what their church bell is for, or even working out where the rope is.