35. The Forest Hermitage, near Warwick

How far are you prepared to go? It’s a question which occurs to me as I drive slowly down a narrow lane heading deep into the Warwickshire countryside. Farm entrances, gates into fields and even the odd splendidly secluded house all offer the chance to turn the car round and head back home to the undoubted attractions of the women’s world cup. But I decide to go on and it strikes me that this is a decision anyone exploring religion must regularly face.

At the far end of this fine country lane is The Forest Hermitage, a Buddhist retreat offering the chance to join an evening meditation session. It’s in a  beautiful setting surrounded by woods and fields, perfect for the seclusion and harmony with nature anyone heading for a retreat would be seeking. 

I’ve taken quite a few ad-hoc meditation classes over the years; at a huge retreat near Hemel Hempstead, at a Buddhist centre and world cafe in Leicester, as part of a mindfulness meditation group in a church in Warwick and once even in Hong Kong. And in many ways, that spread of try-out taster sessions all over the place rather makes the point I’m pondering. I seem to like the idea on the surface but could I ever really claim to be committed to going any deeper?

It’s a point made very well back at the Elim church a couple of weeks ago by a Pastor literally standing ankle deep in water to illustrate how, when it comes to fully immersive religious commitment, many of us seem happy to stay pretty much in the shallows.

Buddhism’s shallows are, to many in these frenetic times, blissfully attractive. There’s a series of moral rules we’d all like to adhere to; no killing, no lying, no stealing, no drugs and so on, and there’s the promise to live your life without giving any harm to others. All this backed up by a regime of spending hours in silent contemplation while the world and its many frustrations and shortcomings simply recedes into the distance leaving you cleansed, content and serene. No wonder the current self-help book generation latches onto it with such immediate alacrity.

But Buddhism is much more than that and to get at the truths beneath you have to go very deep indeed. The art of proper meditation is a case in point. The idea is simple to grasp, rather like the instructions for playing the harp - you just pluck the strings and the music will come out.

Tonight’s session is in a small temple to the side of this fine cottage. It’s led by a monk and numbers some residential students and a few arriving by car among the dozen in the room. It starts with chanting and prayers and then moves into a full breathing meditation exercise. And it’s here my problems always start. 

The practice of sitting on the ground and the concept of achieving a state of calm repose are, for me, mutually exclusive. I have never been able to sit cross-legged; it’s as much a structural problem as it is one of poor fitness and lack of practice. Constantly having to shift position and use my hands to brace my collapsing posture is anathema to the idea of any settled contemplative state. 

Practice may perhaps make perfect, but a complete lack of practice is equally certain to highlight fairly fatal imperfections. Like the would-be harpist, the simplest instructions belie the need for some real expertise. Gaining even basic proficiency takes aptitude and application in equal measure.

Following the exercise, the monk offers a gentle but inspiring reminder of the Dharma - the goals for living set out for Buddhists to strive for, attain and then adhere to. He speaks softly, patiently and not without humour. It’s a very compelling example. Why would you NOT want to live a life like that when the evidence of the million failings of modern life are so abundantly on show around us?

I love the idea of meditation and I dearly want to find myself progressing to the next echelon of ruminative study, but my limitations leave me struggling for either comfort or concentration. I have taken to inventing my own form of meditation. I get comfortable with the completely shameless use of a chair and I use my own choice of musical soundtrack to help transport my thoughts away from the here and now. It works but, given the absolute lack of comfort-denial and the obvious absence of anything remotely resembling a challenge, is it the real thing or just a gentle stroll through the shallowest of shallows.

So how far DO I want to go? And what might make me suddenly decide that any particular faith was the one for me to hurl myself into body and soul? 

I can’t answer that question at the moment. But I know that whenever I do get round to giving it the thought it deserves, I’d quite like not to be in abject discomfort and pain while that contemplation is taking place.

34. Lazarica, Birmingham

In John Berger’s still-respected book on the way we view art Ways of Seeing, there’s an essay that’s different from all the rest. Where the critic and theorist has previously made his points and arguments with well-chosen words, he suddenly opts to use pictures alone reasoning that the images can tell the story on their own.

This springs to mind today because I’m tempted to do the same in recording my visit to the Lazarica in Bournville. I usually take a couple of shots to go with my posts but, sitting down with my camera afterwards, I realise I’ve taken nearly a hundred this morning such is the visual splendour of the church’s magnificent interior. Nevertheless, I shall stick with words.

The Serbian Orthodox Church of the Holy Prince Lazar - and the worship which takes place within it - is an assault on the senses. Within its high brick walls is spectacle of colour. The deep blue of the background is covered by paintings and icons everywhere you look. On every surface from the base of the pillars to the inside edges of the soaring arches to the magnificent centrepiece high in the dome. Golden fitting and banks of slender candles just add to it. There’s the heady atmosphere of rich incense to breathe in and some sumptuous harmonic liturgical chanting from the priests and a choir on a high balcony. A wonderful mixture.

This morning is a special day in the calendar of this church. Today is the feast day of The Holy Prince Lazar, the patron saint of the church. Looking on the church’s website at all the services coming up, I noted that this day alone is marked in gold lettering. There’s a celebratory feeling all round. 

But this morning seems to want to earn its gold status by packing in even more than a saint’s day. There’s a visit from the Bishop to add a bit of pomp and the arrival from a Serbian monastery (I hope I’ve got this right) of a significant icon. This beautiful, huge ornate icon, famed for its miraculous powers of healing, is brought in and placed in its own display case to be prayed to, touched, kissed and - more often than not - photographed by anyone at any point in the morning.

The Bishop has come from afar too, much further than me I’m given to understand seeing that his parish also seems to cover his native Scandinavia. To add yet more to the packed programme for the day, he’s here to help conduct the ordination, or at least the promotion, of one of the many clerics and priests on view. It’s a ceremony rich in tradition and importance, but not without a smile and a message of good luck - this is, after all, good news.

And as if all that were not enough, there’s the normal Sunday business of worship, Gospel reading and communion to be dealt with and that - in an Orthodox church - is never a speedy or hurried process.

Orthodox services have, in my admittedly scant experience, an air of casual chaos to them even if everything is perfectly planned. There are a dozen or more priests on show, of various rank and with greater or lesser roles to play. Their ministrations are watched and helped along by others acting almost as live stage managers, constantly repositioning microphones and celebrants with equal assurance.

Add to this the tradition of wandering to the front to kiss the icons on arrival and the casual attitude to when the whole thing actually starts and there’s a sense of being part of a slowly shifting audience watching a rather unconnected but compelling drama. By the time things are reaching a conclusion there’s standing room only for the groundlings - partly due to the fact that the church has no chairs but mainly due to the steady arrival of more and more people.

Stepping outside to grab a bit of fresh air and stretch out the gathering problem of cramp in the calves, I take a stroll over to the Lazar Hall to see preparations being made for a real feast. Long tables beautifully laid and a Serbian musical duo warming up. In the sunshine outside a dozen conversations and in progress and the youngsters are doing what youngsters do the world over - racing around on the grass and inventing their own fun.

Of course the setting isn’t everything, I understand that. People don’t go to the same church each week simply because it looks so appealing no matter how great that appeal may be. But there’s something about the magnificence of this gem of a church which must add a very rare and special ingredient. Once sampled it would be difficult to cut out of your diet.

Serbians are prepared to come from a long way away to visit this church - so should you.

33. Singers Hill Synagogue, Birmingham

Singers Hill Synagogue is home to the city’s Hebrew Congregation and has been the focal point for Jewish worship and community life in Birmingham for 159 years. I’ve been keen to visit this intriguing building since starting my blog.

The pictures of the interior show a beautiful setting steadfastly holding its place as high-rise blocks and thundering ring roads spring up all around it.

Sadly, the pictures on the website and a view of the entrance through high, black railings are all I’m likely to get. I won’t be going in.

The signs were not good from the start, it has to be said. I emailed on more than one occasion to ask about joining a service. I got no reply or acknowledgment. I rang the office but was told it was closed. 

The church family has - as a sweeping generalisation - not really mastered the full online communication experience yet. I’ve signed up with dozens of churches offering to keep me updated and received next to nothing so far. And as for contacting numerous churches, vicars, mosque offices and more than one Rabbi, through their websites - all I can say is that I hope God answers your prayers a lot more efficiently than you answer your emails.

On arriving this morning I find the building locked up and closed off only minutes from the published start of the service. I’m peering through the rails at the closed doors when a high-vis jacketed man I genuinely took to be one of the city’s army of traffic wardens, asks me what I’m doing.

I explain what I’m here for but he’s already decided I’m not going in. I should have emailed or telephoned, he says. I tell him I did but I don’t get the impression my answer fits what he wants to think. A succession of people pass through all shrugging sympathy but the gates stay locked with the only way in for everyone a keypad controlled gate under the control of the security man. 

The Rabbi arrives and, although he is polite and understanding, I am not to be allowed in. I try explaining why I’m here, how I’ve made an effort to get here, what my expectations were and so on. He goes so far as to say that I seem like a genuine person to him - well that’s a blessing of sorts - but that he is not able to help as nobody is allowed in unless they have registered and been cleared by the central authority. He tells me I should email him.

The security man offers the view that the very fact he needs to be there at all is a sad comment on the world we live in these days. He seems to want to offer a lots of comments. I make the observation that the impotency of a church leader to allow someone to come into his place of worship is a far sadder indictment. The Rabbi looks uncomfortable at this.

We’ve all come across the ‘It’s not my fault mate, it’s head office’ excuse before. I’ve encountered it from shop staff, call centre operatives, train companies and more. But never from a church. 

I would have liked to ask the Rabbi what would happen if someone knocked at the door of his Synagogue in genuine peril and desperate for his help. As a patient, and no doubt learned man, I’m sure he’d have an answer, but I’m left feeling my question would have had to get passed one high-vis sentinel and a distinctly unresponsive head office before it would reach him.

The purpose of my visits has never been to judge any particular religion or congregation. I try to come with an open mind, see what goes on and try to pick out what lessons I can learn. 

But in being shown that there is literally no place for me here, am I not being shown with abundant clarity a lesson in the difference between the generosity of welcoming the world with all its faults and risks, and the mean-spiritedness of literally closing the door in that world’s face? 

These are troubling times for many churches. They can attract criticism, abuse and occasional violent action. But on this pilgrimage I’ve been struck by the constant theme of opening up and welcoming all people regardless of their background. I’ve been made to feel at home almost everywhere I’ve been and, perhaps naively, allowed that to become my blanket expectation.

I may email the Rabbi and make a second attempt to join the worshippers here, but I’m not minded to do so at the moment.

Contenting myself with a stroll to the art gallery and the bookshop before getting back on the train, I’m drawn into a conversation with a Muslim man at a stall offering information to the crowded shopping streets of the city. I ask him if he’s worried about being picked on or attacked. He says it’s part of his faith to stand up to challenges in trying to further understanding and spread a message of peace. He gives me a handshake, a huge smile and a free copy of the Quran.

32. Coventry Elim Church, Belgrade Theatre

There are plenty of churches operating away from their home. Those that have homes can end up being displaced for one reason or another and forced to find a new place to meet. This can often be a real threat to existence.

It’s a subject the city of Coventry is having to address at the moment though not in terms of its churches. Coventry City, for a whole host of internecine reasons I’m delighted to say have no place in this blog, will be playing their home games in Birmingham when the new football season starts. They’ve had to do it before and it didn’t work well then. Clearly people want a familiar base, somewhere they can trust and feel at home. Somewhere they identify with.

Coventry’s Elim Church also plays its Sunday games away from home, but not as a result of any problems. Here the need is to find a space to grow. A hugely welcome problem for any church. So it’s through the glitzy foyer of the Belgrade Theatre that I stroll for this Sunday gathering, welcomed by quite the most enthusiastic of welcoming teams. The last time I was in the Belgrade was to see a musical based on the songs of Ian Dury; a fabulous evening of hummable songs, uplifting narrative and with a message of inclusion and togetherness for us all. By the time I’m heading back toward the car, I’m inevitably drawing parallels.

Like most modern Pentecostal services, this one starts with music. There’s a nine-piece band pumping through half an hour of fine, singalong anthems. The lyrics are not quite Charles Wesley and the music considerably less complex than Stanford, but these songs work by being simple to pick up and easy to build into an ecstatic finish. And the band are top-notch. By a joyful quirk of fate I’ve positioned myself a row in front of a woman with a tremendous voice matched only by her desire to share it with the masses. Once I’ve adjusted the hearing aids to cope with the mighty volume, it’s like experiencing the whole gig in surround sound. 

As the band take a well-earned rest we get prayers, parish news on the big screen and a line-up of very young children to be welcomed into the family. It’s certainly a big family. There’s hundreds here today - there will be plenty of touring shows at this venue envious of so few empty seats - and the return to the normal church building next week will mean two services just to cope with the hundreds.

The talk this morning stems from verses from Ezekiel - the passage describing a great river emerging from the ruins of a temple, broadening to become a source of food and life to the whole area. We get to follow the words on the huge, stage-wide screen and we get videos too. In this case it’s a splendid film of this morning’s pastor bravely immersing himself in a very uninviting lake to make the point about the biblical river being a metaphor for our own commitment to faith. We’re all, he says, quite happy to go ankle-deep, but greater rewards will be ours for having the courage and the steadfastness to get right in and swim. Which he then does. It’s a wonderfully visual point, brilliantly made. The fact that he probably froze half to death and risked any number of stomach-crunching diseases to make that point, merely serves to underline how far a committed person may go. I’m still just dipping my toes of course.

It doesn’t end there. The river’s ability to contain, support and sustain life should be, we are told, a reminder to us all to take that hope and love out into the community and help feed those who are hungry, homeless, confused, troubled or afraid. As finale songs go, it’s a strong one and it’s hard not to feel uplifted as the curtain finally falls and the houselights come up. I’m reminded of the comparative hopelessness of the ‘go out and spread the good word’ message which started this blog half a year ago. This, evidently, is how it’s done.

This being a theatre I’m tempted to praise this as an excellently-crafted production. A clear message presented in a richly entertaining way by a faultless, professional cast. And it was. But it’s more than that. In the enthusiasm and sharing of the hundreds who came this is as good an example of a church working perfectly with its members as you could expect to see. By the time Elim returns to the Belgrade after the theatre’s refurbishment, the queues will stretch out of the foyer and round the block. Like the river bursting from the temple, it’ll run and run.

31. Broadgate Spiritualist Church, Coventry

This Sunday being Father’s Day I thought it would be nice to have a chat with my dad. Spend some time together to catch up on news and compare notes on books and cricket. 

The problem with this idea is that my father died almost thirty years ago. By a quirk of fate, last weekend marked the point at which I have now lived more days than he did. I’m now older than my dad. Now that would be worth talking about.

Those of us in the living world have been communing with the dead since time immemorial. Many religions - Taoism for one - still hold it as an essential part of daily worship.

Spiritualism offers perhaps the most overt claims to be able to bridge the gap to the afterlife for you; it’s not just the religion’s USP it’s its entire reason for existence.

This is - so says the wording above the door - the Spiritualists National Church. Inside there are no ministers, no religious trappings and little in the way of church goings-on. There are plain chairs, a hand-written sign asking for our £2.50 donation and a raised podium instead of any altar. It’s less like a church than a church hall really and the turnout of barely a dozen people coated up against the June downpours doesn’t help to dispel a fairly gloomy atmosphere.

Before the service starts I’m given a pep-talk about the value and values of spiritualism. In the company of three other souls who have come here for the first time, I learn such diverse nuggets as how the church doesn’t believe in Jesus as there have been plenty of mediums before and after him, how the church committee is formed and that we all have a coloured aura which our guide is able to see. Mine, she tells me, is yellow and orange. She feels that means an open mind and a willingness to learn. She asks me what orange and yellow means to me. The MCC I tell her, probably scuppering her ‘open mind’ theory in an instant.

The service proper starts with two songs and I find myself singing Rod Stewart’s Sailing to a backing track. It’s a slightly absurd start but not wholly out of keeping with what’s to come. We get a prayer, but that’s the only faintly religious element present.

There is a rather tired stereotype of the spiritual medium experience; a smooth-talking fairground faker preying on the desperate hopes of the naive and terminally credulous. The experience which fills the next hour and a half, I have to say, does nothing to shatter that image.

In the hands of the visiting medium - Daniel, from Leicester, who looks like an estate agent - the information coming from the spirit world is invariably hazy and rather indistinct in its aim. He wonders if anyone knows someone called Mary in the spirit world. Or if anyone had a male figure in their life with brown hair. Woefully inaccurate stabs and generalised drivel follow at a steady pace always delivered as if searched from some indistinct middle distance just above all our heads. It strikes me that I’d back myself to be able to do this without a shred of training. Nobody from this world or the next tells me otherwise.

And then suddenly it is with a degree of dread I realise he’s looking straight at me. He has in mind, he says, a woman of small stature. Not tall. Quite old. With her arms crossed. My grandmother, he wonders? Stunning I say (to myself). I can’t trust myself to hide my lack of belief in this so I let him flounder on until he picks on someone else.

There’s no worship here, only a disappointingly meagre showmanship. I can’t even report that the experience was life-changing for anyone else. There were no truly enlightening moments. 

The dead are always with us all the time. They’re in our thoughts and our memories. They’re in the special places we go or the daft, sentimental traditions we keep. They’re in the way we think and act and, as we get older, they’re there in the face that stares back at us from the mirror. We can reconcile ourselves to their failings, thank them for their love and come to terms with their absence and our loss any time we like. We just have to think. Perhaps if everyone searching for lost communication had the support and help they needed to realise that, there would be no need for rubbish like this.

In the end a perfect vision of my father does appear. But it’s not in the words of Daniel as he acts his oily part on the stage. It stems from a memory I have of my dad and me standing side by side in a church desperately trying to stifle our laughter about something. I can’t remember the cause but it was one of those moments when you are linked by the complete inability to control your body-shaking laughter. You can’t even look at each other for fear of starting the hysterics again. And I know that if he were to appear in flesh beside me now that he’d find this whole pantomime as batty and risible as I do. So perhaps he is speaking to me after all.

30. Leamington Baptist Church

According to reliable sources there are 1,372 coffee shops in Leamington. I may be exaggerating, of course, but if there’s a town to rival Leamington when it comes to places to get your daily caffeine fix, I’ve not been there. Among the dozens of possibilities are the big high-street chain names plus a huge range of independents offering different themes, varying ambiences, contrasting furnishings and so on. And all claiming to offer the best coffee around.

Of course a coffee is a coffee is a coffee... At the risk of outraging the true connoisseur, the range of drinks is more or less the same wherever you go and the price won’t change by that much from shop to shop. So you have to wonder what makes people loyal enough to go back to the same one time and again.

My morning tea (somehow the over-brewed syrup which passes for coffee these days never sits well with me) is taken at the same place every day. I go there for a combination of reasons, the quality of the teabag tea not being among them. I like the comfy chairs, I appreciate the light classical music they play and I enjoy the fact that they recognise me and always welcome me. It’s also pretty much the closest to where I work and opens early enough for me to get an hour’s worth of reading done. 

Coffee shops are in my thoughts today because I’m wondering if there’s a similar selection and loyalty process at work with churches. This morning I’m at Leamington Baptist Church and, although there’s plenty to explore on my first ever visit, I’m tempted to wonder what’s different, what could you find here that you wouldn’t find somewhere else.

This church is modern and very large. Its rather forbidding brick mass hides a very light, very high central space which is currently painted the kind of orange that marks out the brave when it comes to choosing paint. It’s not an overwhelming turnout this morning given that it’s Pentecost and that’s a key date for the Baptists. But there’s a splendid range of music on offer.

The church has a splendid looking organ in an alcove and we start with a 19th century hymn suited to its chapel sound. The church also boasts a splendid band and we turn to them for three modern songs. Perhaps it’s an indication of the age of the congregation but the hymn is sung with considerably more volume.

Then it’s time for the talk, and it’s here, for me, that the morning’s spiritual beverage begins to taste a little bitter. 

Disjointed and bereft of clear purpose, the presentation leads us through a clutch of bible verses read out on the spot by people directed from the front. There’s a Powerpoint backing on the big screen - images and phrases not fully-connected to the message that’s coming across and, as is so often the case with these things, utterly disrupting whatever flow the speaker intends to achieve. There’s an unease to all of this.

It seems as if the speaker’s experience the previous evening of getting up before an open mic poetry evening is a challenge to be passed on to the rest of us whether we like it or not.

In this spirit we are then urged to turn to the complete stranger next to us and share a moment from our youth or childhood when we experienced some kind of trauma. I’ve had more than my fair share of this cod trust-therapy over the years. My drama years have been full of it. I still have no idea what makes some people believe that their bald, untutored instruction to ‘lose all your inhibitions’ will succeed where countless professionals have failed. I have no firm reason to trust or not trust people I meet in a church, nor they me. But I would no more expect the person next to me to open up about some ghastly formative episode than I would expect them to trust me to give financial advice or a haircut.

Nevertheless, the brave soul who comes to sit next to me attempts to relate a story about worry and uncertainty in younger years and for a moment I’m genuinely concerned I may be about to become party to an awful secret I shall have to take to the authorities. I’d like to think that, as far as my family and friends are concerned, I’m a decent listener and someone who might offer reasonably sound advice. But I’m nobody’s instant confessional and I’m inwardly thankful that the speaker’s unstoppable desire to make the point she’s been leading up to, cuts across any chance my confessor has to conclude her tale.

Left feeling uneasy and distrustful at all this, I take the only course of action I can really take. I quietly leave. 

In the end where and how you choose to perform whatever worship you wish to perform is all down to personal preference. A more enjoyable style of music here, a charismatic leader there and so on. Proximity and convenience play a huge part too, as does habit. As does trust.

Ultimately my less-than-satisfactory experience this morning doesn’t matter a jot. I shall simply move on to the next coffee shop, and I shall take with me the thought that your favourite is often arrived at simply by it NOT being that place you swear you’ll never go again.

29. HOPE@motofest2019, Coventry

Jesus, says the Bible, rode triumphantly into Jerusalem on a donkey. Seated upright and allowing the beast to pick its careful, ponderous way through the dusty streets. It’s an image which has long been central to the gospel stories of the young and provided many artists with inspiration. 

Just pause for a moment and replace that tired old donkey - willful and unreliable - with something a little more prestigious, something that will make a statement, tell everyone who you are. Sitting atop a painstakingly-polished Harley Davidson with its chrome catching the brilliant sun of the holy land perhaps. Or behind the wheel of this jet black Aston Martin maybe even with the hood down and the heads-up display offering real-time Jerusalem traffic updates.

You can be excused thoughts like these surrounded by very expensive pieces of metal at a motoring festival and, given the nature and theme of this morning’s service, perhaps even justified in thinking them.

Coventry Motofest has been running for six years or so, closing the streets and filling the city with noise, and Sunday morning sees quite a few churches close their doors. Not, as you’d imagine, because they can’t compete with the noise, but rather to join together and take their work right into the heart of the city and its festival. This is not just Sunday worship, this is HOPE@motofest2019.

This morning’s service is conducted from the main entertainment arena stage sandwiched between a couple of fast food stalls and a converted London double decker bus now advertising a splendid range of aspirational gins and over-priced artisan crisps. From behind the stage come the sounds and the flashing neon lights of the Wall of Death. Make of that what you will.

The congregation are variously ranged on the grass or taking advantage of a few handily-placed deckchairs. The humid weather has brought many in shorts but the gathering clouds mean a few umbrellas are also in evidence. 

The service sheet for today features songs and talks as well as prayers and a blessing all conducted against the background of the festival. And what a full-throttle background it is. Not twenty seconds can pass without the shrieking roar of a revved-up engine flying past on the ring road racetrack. In between the engines you can hear any of a hundred stalls blaring out pulsating music, the noise of fairground rides, overexcited PA announcements and, of course, the noise of tens of thousands of people shamelessly enjoying themselves.

Confronted by that, worship has to be loud and the band and speakers give as good as they get. The songs are anthemic, stadium numbers. Once you get beyond the edge of the arena they probably sound like all the other musical mush pumping out of the festival. Thankfully at this time of the morning the gin bus is not yet picking up passengers and the fast food vans are mainly supplying the obligatory morning caffeine burst.

Festival director James Noble provides the link between the petrol-head excesses all around and this particular part of the event’s high-octane programme. In a disarmingly honest testimony on the stage he talks of his faith and the trust he places in God to protect and nurture the city. He even quotes chapter and verse on one of the inspirations behind the whole thing. There is, he says, a parallel between creation and the creativity of a city which designed and built itself right to the forefront of the motoring world and still has a part to play. 

The prayers from the stage which follow are tailored to the city and its motoring industry. That industry has a lot to be thankful for over the years, but equally finds itself in a position where prayers can genuinely be offered for its continued recovery from some catastrophically low times. 

This is very much a meeting of the secular and the church. It could come across as a rather forlorn and doomed attempt by various churches to take their quiet message of hope into a very noisy, alien environment. Or a concession given by the organisers with one eye on filling up a slack part of the line-up. In fact it is neither. It’s a full-on celebration.

Perhaps the lesson here is that the people of the city are also churchgoers and are also workers in the car industry. There’s no hard borders between the things which make Coventry what it is and that’s what’s being celebrated. The Kingdom of Heaven, announces the man on the stage, is just like a motoring festival with everyone coming together whether they be car lovers, music lovers or just the inveterately sociable.

For me the relentless combination of screaming noise, engines, crowds, fried food and diesel is no vision of heaven. Quite the opposite. So I don’t linger long before heading back to my suddenly rather unexciting car.

I keep my eye out for some of the more unusual sights though. And if I were to see Jesus roaring round the ring road on the back of a ton of gleaming chrome and leather, I would take it as a sign that Coventry, and its churches, have got the balance for this morning just about right.