Dear friends

It has been a strange week as I have experienced Covid for the first time and isolated for the recommended 10 days. The virus is so prevalent now it is almost unusual to not know anyone with it. I'm so thankful for the messages of care and wishes for well being that you sent me - it really wasn't a pleasant experience, and I can only imagine how much worse the previous variants were, if these symptoms were considered mild by comparison!

I missed coming to church terribly - even though it was only just over a week! I felt it particularly on Mothering Sunday - it must be over 20 years since I've not been in church on that day, and hearing the beautiful sound of the organ and choir from the vicarage was both a blessing and an affliction! I realise how much I value being part of the body of Christ, how much I love our church community, and how difficult it must be for those who are isolated for the majority of their time.

At Morning Prayer this morning (held every Friday at 9.30am in the Lady Chapel) we all commented on how life giving it is to be able to spend time together, to grapple with scripture, to share how we're doing, and to pray together ... the coffee, croissants and crumpets afterwards are good too! We aren't meant to try to journey along our faith path alone, or to try to make sense of the world alone, or wrestle with our doubts and uncertainties alone. Perhaps now more than ever we need to find those spaces to talk, share, pray - when the world and it's needs feels as heavy as it does, and the reality of the pressures facing the most vulnerable even in our own parish are so severe, when we might feel at our most helpless: I think now more than ever our identity as the body of Christ is key.

I love that Church is the place where this can happen. Church is the place where we exist as family in it's truest form: different ages, points of view, life experiences, stages of faith ... all within an understanding of God's love for the whole world as found in Jesus. I pray that you will continue to find and know your place within the body of Christ. To know that you are needed, valued, loved and accepted. I pray that in these final weeks before Easter we can journey towards that moment where we renew our baptism vows and remember again who we are in Jesus, who we are as the body. Why not plan to come along to the various services in Holy Week, beginning with our gathering on Palm Sunday, to pilgrim together. Why not also consider coming along to Morning Prayer on Friday mornings, if you are able to do so. You are welcome in all of these places.

In the meantime we gather this week at 8.30am and 10.30am, this week with Sunday Spirit, our thriving Sunday school for primary school aged children. At 10.30 I will be with another part of our Deanery family at St Barnabas, where I will take our greeting to them.

With every blessing Becky