Chaffinches and Christians

 

The Chaffinches have begun to sing.  Loudly, early, unexpectedly and welcome outside my window this morning.  And then straight away I heard them again on Radio 4’s Tweet of the Day.  

I usually find it a frustrating experience listening to  a presenter talk over the top of most of the bird song but today he left at least several snatches of song uninterrupted.  I hadn’t twigged before that chaf-finch is simply the common finch which is seen in greatest quantities when later in the year it roots around among stubble and chaff.

So I am reminded to begin to blog (if not to tweet) again, and find being hopeful of picking things out of the chaf around me a satisfying thought.

There is a row of mediaeval churches along the High Street beneath the hill.  I can pass St Benedict’s, St Mary-le-Wigford’s, St Peter-at-Gowt’s and St Botolph’s on a straight walk of less than a mile (and in doing so would have past several more had they not long gone).  

 There are early Friends and Unitarian buildings too which predate the nineteenth and twentieth century nonconformist ones and the Catholic Church next door to me. 

St Benedict’s ceased to operate as a parish church in the 1930s, but has had a variety of Christian use since, including housing a Christian bookshop today.  

I remember taking services at St Botolph’s in the 1990s (including a wedding at which an attempt was made to abduct a bridesmaid) but it too has ceased to operate as a parish church, one of two disused Anglican churches in the city which are now the home of Greek Orthodox congregations.

I take the occasional service now at both St Mary-le-Wigford’s (its focus is on a mid-week congregation) and St Peter-at-Gowt’s (which is the one where Sunday worship still happens) where there is no Vicar and only small congregations.   

I worry for their future as much as for that of many rural churches in tiny villages.  There is extensive terrace housing off the lower High Street and two Church of England Primary Schools in St Peter’s parish – who will look after them when the local parish churches cease to be viable?

But that wasn’t the note which prompted this post, nor the one on which I wanted to finish.  In the ten minute walk back from the last service I took at St Peter’s, I walked past or near Baptist, Methodist and Salvation Army buildings. 

I actually started close to where the Orthodox worship (the founding members were of Cypriot origin).  I past two A frames on pavements announcing the presence of two independent congregations meeting at that time in the halls there (which appear to have preachers or pastors of African origin).  

I cut across near the hall in which the Church of England’s latest church plant operates what feels like a Holy Trinity, Brompton franchise (although there is more to it than that) next door to a further very substantial disused Anglican church.  

I finished next to the packed Catholic church car park (where the service I went to last Good Friday was one of the most international worshipping experiences I’ve had, being specifically aware of worshippers with roots in Kerala, Nigeria, Pakistan and Poland alongside many others).

The future of the style of Anglicanism (and commitment to the care of a parish) which has formed me feels as if might not even survive, but Christianity doesn’t look like disappearing in ‘below hill’ Lincoln any time soon,

The picture is taken from the Cathedral.  The central rectangular block of a building is the Bishop’s Chapel attached to the diocesan offices.  The church visible immediately above it is St Hugh’s Catholic Church with its adjacent hall to its left.   

And the terrace in which I live is only visible from this angle as the next thing on the left (its roof line shines a bit almost directly above the doorway to the Bishop's Chapel.  It is hard to make out the scatter of trees in which the chaffinches were singing first thing but they are there.