Out and About

Yesterday I had the privilege of spending time with the year eights from St John's School. They were visiting different places of worship to compare and contrast for R.E. It was good to spend time with them and other members of staff.

We headed to St Mary's, Little Burstead, which I must confess that I've never been in, in my adult life. It's a wonderful church and I can see why many people want to get married in it. Margaret, the Church Warden, and I were discussing church history. I find it interesting that there have been churches or places of worship for hundreds of years... why that particular spot? How did it become a church? Questions that I can't possibly answer, but I'm grateful for the people who said yes all those years ago and continue to say yes today when it comes to keeping buildings and congregations going.

We travelled through Chelmsford to Chignal to the URC Chapel - which is again in the middle of nowhere but really a great place to go to for some quiet and being away from everything. That's only been there for 169 years in comparison to St Mary's which has records of vicars dating back to the 1700's.

Finally we visited a Greek Orthodox Monastery, which I didn’t even know existed, but it’s a great place, again, in the middle of nowhere, out towards Tiptree, I couldn’t take you there if I tried! It was amazing though, the orthodox part of Christianity focuses on icons, which are paintings of bible stories and saints. I sat in their main chapel with everyone else and just felt the presence of God, it was totally different to what I have felt before. It was a shock, but a good one, in awe of what was going on around me and having so many young people excited about being in church.
We headed home to the best and longest thunderstorm I’ve seen in a while, and news that both comprehensive secondary schools would be closed for a day due to flooding and no electricity.

That’s probably the most exciting thing I’ve done this week. I’m back into school later on this week and my car is being fixed so that it won’t back a horrible noise when I drive it at low speeds!