Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna

Day 19 – Wednesday after 3rd Sunday of Lent 

To Read:

Suddenly I heard the gruff shout of a park-keeper.  I turned, and there she was, kneeling in front of a flower-bed.  I had forgotten to tell her to Keep off the Grass.  Anna would not have given way to Lucifer himself and certainly not to a park-keeper.  Having negotiated one catastrophe, I didn’t want to face another.  I ran and scooped her into my arms and stood her down on the pathway.

‘He’, she said indignantly, pointing an accusing finger, ‘told me to get off the grass.’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘you’re not supposed to be on this bit of grass.’

‘But it’s the best bit’, she said.

‘See those words.’  I pointed to the notice.  ‘They say “Keep off the grass”’.

She studied the notice with great concentration as I spelt out the words for her.

Later that afternoon, while we were sitting on the grass eating chocolate, she said, ‘Them words.’

‘What words?’ I asked.

Them words that say to keep off the grass – them words are like that church we went to this morning.’

Then it all became apparent.  Like the flower-beds the church service had been to Anna nothing less than a notice saying, ‘Keep off the grass’.  She couldn’t get at the best bits.  To be inside a church, not at a church service, but simply to be inside, was for Anna like visiting a very, very special friend, and visiting a very special friend is a happy occasion, and that, surely, is a good enough reason to dance.  Inside a church Anna danced;  it was the best bit.  Church services, therefore, like the ‘Keep off the grass’ notices, did not allow her to have the best bit.  I smiled as I pictured the kind of service that Anna would have liked.  I’m not so sure that Mister God wouldn’t have preferred it too!

From the Scriptures:

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. ⁵ Not that we are qualified of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our qualification is from God, ⁶ who has made us qualified to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.  (2 Corinthians 3v4-6)

To Reflect:

Early this century we were living in a parish which served a former Council House Estate in the North of Ipswich and we loved it.  There was, and it remains so, something so very attractive and honest about a community which was often looked down upon by other parts of the town.  Not many of the families had great possessions, but that did not matter for their greatest possession was each other.  They had built a community spirit that we have yet to find anywhere else.

During one holiday club in the church hall a group of tweenage children were given disposable cameras and asked to go around the Estate and take pictures of Anti-Social Behaviour.  Did they come back with pictures of graffitied walls and over-flowing litter bins?  No.  They had taken pictures of wonderfully mown community lawns which had signs on them saying ‘No Ball Games Allowed’, which, for a soccer obsessed town such as Ipswich is a serious offence.

How often do the gatekeepers of our society (and we need to think carefully as we might be amongst their number) keep us off ‘the best bits’ of our common life?  How often do we do the same with our places of worship?  When I am out and about the country and find I have a few moments to stop and pray one of the saddest things that happens is to go up to a church door and find it locked.

Yes, I know, as does Anna, that Mister God isn’t kept in a box (God is far too big for that).  However, with Anna I like to visit the places where people have come to meet with Mister God, to savour the atmosphere and chew the cud with God.  

All Saints’ Church Blyford is one such.  A former manoral church which sits on a crossroads opposite a lonely country pub.  Blyford village is a good mile walk away down a windy country lane with no footpath.  When I had the care of the church the churchwardens were finding it difficult to unlock and lock it every day so raised the idea of only opening it for worship.  Together we asked what there was in the church that needed locking up; anything moveable or valuable in the church having already been taken away a long time ago by Smasher Dowsing and his band of marauding Puritans.  So we decided to stop locking the church and it is now open every single hour of every day of the year.

To this day, when life is over-busy and I need Church but not a church service, I take a long drive up the Suffolk coast and find rest for my soul in an empty space which is where Mister God is at home.  

Keep off the Grass?  Church locked?  There are none of those signs in Mister God’s world because Mister God always wants to give us the best bits’.

 

Please Note:  These reflections are also published on my blog: suffolkvicarhomes.com on Bluesky as @suffolkvicar.bsky.social, and on my public Facebook page  Suffolk Vicar – Rev Andrew Dotchin.  If you would like them as a daily email please send a request to revdotchin@gmail.com

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Acknowledgements:

Quotes from the book ‘Mister God, This is Anna’ are Copyright © Fynn 1975

Illustrations from the book ‘Mister God, This is Anna’ and ‘Anna and the Black Knight’ are Copyright © Pappas 1975

Psalm Prayers from Common Worship: Daily Prayer, material from which is included here, is copyright © The Archbishops’ Council 2005 and published by Church House Publishing

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.  Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

These Reflections, ‘Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna’ are copyright © Andrew Dotchin 2025 and may be reproduced without charge on condition that the source is acknowledged.