71. St John the Baptist, Baginton

Last week’s reassurances that remaining faithful would see the storm pass were all very well, but as Ciara blustered her way out her friend Dennis was just making an equally powerful entrance. People struggling to repair fence panels blown down in one weekend must have been looking over their shoulders as a second weekend’s battering arrived. Flooded fields and roads have barely had time to subside before another two days of sweeping, heavy, incessant rain. More disruption, more destruction and more people anxious about the approach of flood waters. Plenty, then, to worry about.

I almost didn’t make it to St John the Baptist in Baginton this morning. The route to the village featured a stretch of road where a blown-down tree was blocking half the road followed by a junction which had become a most attractive, though decidedly impassable, lake. Local knowledge got me through only to be rewarded by a fair old soaking between car and church door.

St John is a small church. Only a dozen or so people are here today and, despite an attractive display of children’s work on a table at the side, I may be the youngest here. With the announcement that our vicar today is moving away into a retirement home there must be worries over how this will affect the church.

And worry is the theme for the day. The gospel reading and the sermon which follows explore the nature of worry and entreat us to trust in God and just know that everything will be alright in the end. Faith - any faith, I’d say - makes enormous demands of our trust, but this blanket sidelining of worry in favour of effectively closing your eyes and letting someone else sort it out is, for me, difficult to allow.

I worry too much, I know that. I always have. The psychologist Philippa Perry says anxiety and pessimism is directly linked to the stories you encounter all through your life. After thirty years of reporting car crashes, crime and (increasingly) flood damage, it’s no wonder if during a hymn my thoughts stray to what state my house will be in when I get home. If I get home at all of course. The noise of the rain hammering against the windows doesn’t help.

If you’re not worrying about what can go wrong, these days, you might well find yourself worrying about not having enough going right. Watching the TV I’m bombarded with adverts aimed at making me worry my phone, my holiday, my car, my funeral even should be brighter, bigger or better. Worrying, it would seem, can be big business for someone.

I think the Buddhists have the best approach to getting worrying under control - breaking down the panic, putting things in perspective and then pushing it completely out of the picture. I can’t help but note that this approach comes from within rather than by passing responsibility to someone else, however almighty that person may be. 

Service over, it’s time to brave the dash to the car and the country lanes which have had another hour to worsen. Trying from the inside not to panic while simultaneously trusting to faith, I do safely make it home - but not without having to drive fifty yards on the opposite carriageway’s pavement under a bridge when it became apparent that, for me, this mud red sea would not be parting.

70. Sunday Worship, BBC Radio 4

Having spent the night being woken by the sound of Storm Ciara tearing up the road outside, then by sweeping rain and house creaks, and finally by my own cough and pounding headache, I decided not to venture out today. Taking a look at the huge seas on the webcams for Brighton and Falmouth I hope my two are safely tucked up too, although I doubt it. Storms aren’t so scary when you’re in your twenties.

In an effort to clear the tubes and perhaps even doze in a chair I was up early and so managed to catch the BBC’s Sunday Worship programme. I’ve been secretly keen to go down this route in recent weeks since the excellent Dave finished the restoration of my 1962 Roberts radio - now proudly displayed atop the piano and offering the few stations it can still pick up on MW and LW.

There is a temptation to think of Sunday Worship as being a bit of an anachronism - a tiny segment of the weekly schedule, marooned in an ocean of world news and serious documentaries, clinging onto its place largely because of a commitment made in an earlier age and now followed only by housebound dotty aunts and ancient grandparents (plus, of course, those trying to escape Storm Ciara).

But in truth it isn’t. The music is more modern than anyone drawing up the religious broadcasting policy back in the day can ever have imagined. There are voices from all round the world offering thoughts and experiences. And storms, fears of spreading viruses and political divisions over Europe come straight from the morning news into the service.

This morning’s live broadcast comes from St Aldates in Oxford and the service takes as its focus the Beatitudes. These eight ‘promises’ are, for me, entirely central to the whole Christian ethic as well as underpinning the foundations of any secular moral life. Be humble and be rewarded; work to foster peace, be merciful and good times will come; grief and hunger will end in comfort. Look for a life with no apparent easy reward and the rewards will come to you, they seem to say. 

These guarantees from the sermon on the mount are backed up today by very modern readers with very modern problems - loss, addiction, aimlessness and so on. Faith, they say, can move any problem, however overwhelming it may appear, into a calmer, more peaceful place. Heady stuff for early Sunday morning but inspiring nonetheless. Sit tight, my radio tells me, and the storm will pass.

69.St Laurence, Ludlow

Many of the churches and places of worship I’ve visited have left an impression one way or another. Most, it must be said, have left a favourable impression either through their architecture or their welcome; some through the slightly closed nature of what they offer have left a less favourable impression.

The impression left by this visit to the depths of Shropshire will stay with me like no other for wholly unexpected and rather ghastly reasons.

Ludlow’s parish church of St Laurence is a real beauty capping this town on a hill and visible from miles around. Close up it’s less easy to see being snookered from many approaches by a labyrinth of buildings and lanes.

Inside, the church should be a glorious high, open space known for its superb windows, historic organ and for being the resting place of poet AE Housman. But today the interior is cluttered and darkened by the remnants of what looks like a major production of Becket finishing the night before. A vast stage and dangling crown, banks of scaffolding and temporary curtains masking props tables with replica swords and costume rails of historic robes - all of this must be negotiated in an effort to find a way through to the chancel and choral matins. It looks like the set of Midsomer Murders and is the horribly suitable setting for what happened next.

Moments after choosing a seat in the choir the quiet of the church was shattered by a piercing scream and the cries of a woman in obvious distress and pain somewhere back in the nave. At first I feared someone was being attacked or had plummeted from a high gallery. With others I hurried through to discover an older woman who had slipped on the stone floor and, in falling, had fairly evidently broken her hip or her leg. Her agony was obvious and awful and, given the position she was holding her leg, not likely to go away. We tried to calm her and keep her warm. 

An ambulance was called and a consultant who happened to be in the choir ( a stroke of fortune that!) arrived to give the opinion that paramedics were needed and she was best left where she was. Draped under robes from the costume rail she remained in acute pain as, I felt surprisingly, the service carried on further down the church. Just for the record, not a word was said and the poor women didn’t even merit an ad hoc intercession to the Almighty to send some sort of relief right away.

Many things can distract those at a church service from concentrating on the singing or the words being spoken, but I defy anyone to follow a psalm (however beautifully sung by a choir featuring a hospital consultant) or mutter the words of a creed when the whole building reverberates to the sound of someone in evident, vocal distress. By the time I left some fifty minutes later, the ambulance had arrived and some sort of stretcher was being assembled.

If I’m ever back in Ludlow I’d like to visit again on a less dramatic day in every sense. As it was I allowed myself to be ushered out a different way and went on to spend the day with friends watching rugby and then the Super Bowl and inwardly wincing with every crunching collision.

68. St Charles Borromeo, Hampton on the Hill

One of the motives for starting this blog in the first place (and for keeping it going) has been the excuse for going inside buildings I’ve not been in before. I’ve driven past this church on my way home through Hampton on the Hill many times and always take the opportunity to glance over the wall and see the unique picture.

St Charles Borromeo is an odd, but thoroughly pleasing sight. The church is built on the side of the house, or should that be the other way round? Google for yourself if it’s dates you’re after, the appearance in most appealing however it came into being. The house is now the Presbytery meaning the current incumbent Canon has a very short journey to work and no problem with the regular 9.00am start.

Inside is ample justification for the practice of opening doors you’ve never previously pushed. A small but light T-shaped church with a fabulously ornate altar and surround, it’s an attractive and welcoming space.

And there’s a fair few people here. Over this weekend I’ve been to the Pump Rooms for chamber music and stood behind the goal at St Andrews for songs of an entirely different kind. Both those mutually-exclusive audiences completely suited their respective event. It would be almost impossible not to look at someone and know which event he or she should be at. Here is a third audience and I find myself wondering what Catholics ‘should’ look like and how you’d go about drawing a Venn diagram to display the groupings. Uniquely, I’d guess, I was at all three which either means I belong everywhere or essentially nowhere. Fine thoughts for a Sunday morning.

The mass itself is standard and only two points raise a slight eyebrow. One is the complete absence of musical accompaniment to the hymns, and the other is that in singing hymn numbers 934, 872 and 865 I’m pondering if this is the highest aggregate number ever. There’s bound to be an app, if only I had a smart enough phone.

Tomorrow being Holocaust Memorial Day the homily inevitably touches on thoughts of those unimaginably dark times. Turning our attentions to the establishing of a ghetto in Rome in far earlier times, Canon Stewart urges worshippers to remember that Christians certainly predated and arguably trumped the Nazis in their shameful treatment of the Jewish people. He noted that when the offer was made to Jews living there to remove historic art over-zealously pressing Jews to recognise Christ, the community’s leaders declined. Such forcible attempts to impose one set of beliefs over another were, they said, part of their faith’s history and their removal would lessen our chances of understanding that history and learning its vital lessons. In a world where we’re constantly trying to revise history to suit often short-sighted attempts to ‘move on’ and improve, it’s a thought well worth bearing in mind.

67. Chichester Cathedral

A couple of the boy choristers are struggling to hide yawns. Immaculately pressed and with perfectly-combed hair they’re failing to hide that it’s an early start this morning. I wonder if anyone else had to scrape the car at -4 before driving the two and a half hours to get here. Still it was a relatively easy drive and I’m rewarded with one of those winter early mornings when the air seems clearer than ever and the low sun makes buildings like this sharpen and glow. 

Some cathedrals - Ely, Guildford, Lincoln, Liverpool - can be seen for miles around dominating the landscape. Others - Truro, Leicester, Exeter - tend to creep up on you and, depending on which way you approach, can be almost hidden from view until the last moment. Working my way from the car park to the entrance here is much like that, but the sudden appearance round the corner is still stunning. 

As a collector of cathedrals I always experience a sense of excitement when I come to a new one on my list. I expect pilgrims in the early years felt much the same way although their concerns on the journey were probably different from my worries about the never-ending nature of the roadworks on the M27.

Mattins this morning is well-attended given that it’s the relatively intimate setting of the choir which needs to be filled. It being January and an early start, it’s a gathering more of regulars than tourists. 

There’s superb singing to be enjoyed - matins (however you choose to spell it) is a service requiring little of the worshipper other than attentiveness. Chichester’s organ is also fabulous, quartered in a sort of towering wooden house of its own, sitting detached within the majestic stonework all round. It’s hard at times to concentrate on what’s being said or sung when you’re trying to count the seconds of the phenomenal reverb the cathedral offers. I make a point of trying to track down CDs recorded here if the shop is open.

Following a sermon on the gospels that was more academic than inspirational we have one hymn and we’re done. There’s a chance to look round briefly, although I’m conscious of steering clear of the stewards setting up for the next set of arrivals. I’ve always been more interested in seeing (an crucially hearing) a cathedral at work than standing in front of a set of highlights. It’s the atmosphere that I try to absorb rather than the history or the connections to great figures. Those sort of things I can get from books; the feeling that this is a light, open space still very much at the heart of this place only comes from a visit while it’s in action.

As I leave through the side door, there are plenty of people arriving at the main entrance for the communion service which follows on. The choir look like they’re grabbing a quick break and there’s a hasty re-positioning of a few chairs and guide ropes as the larger family service will be in the main body of the cathedral. It has all the visible efficiency of a roll-on-roll-off ferry operation.   Clearly a cathedral very much at work and, pleasingly, having to cope with a good volume of worshippers, whatever their state of wakefulness. 

66. St Peter’s, Leamington

A second year of visits starts with a church I always thought would be in the first ten. Strangely I’ve never been inside St Peter’s in Leamington although it’s been a background and landmark to so many years. 

The telling of the story of Epiphany takes me right back to the same time a year ago. I’m glad to be keeping up the pilgrimage - there are so many places I’d really like to visit and the curiosity is still there. 

Other than being the start of the second year, there’s not a lot to note about this communion service. St Peter’s is spectacular inside. It’s very light and very large despite not being blessed with massive windows. The service is well attended and features quite the most resolutely flat singing of a psalm I’ve yet encountered. Perhaps it’s too early in the year and things need to warm up.

65. St Barnabas, Christmas Day

Christmas Day and I’m back where I started this blog a year ago. It was while pondering a very sparse turnout for the Christmas morning service that I fell to wondering where I might find better-attended places of worship. Where were all the people going (if not here) and what was driving them to go. I decided to take a look round what I could find and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my wanderings. Just for the record very little has changed in a year’s turning. 

The church is marvelously light on this bright morning. The windows have all been replaced during the course of the year. The church had been the target of vandalism with the old mullioned windows smashed by a few stones. I’m quite proud to say that Romany Pie played our part after spotting the reports in the paper and holding a benefit evening. I can’t help remembering that we filled the pews on that evening - perhaps one of the bright new windows is down to us. Anyway, it looks fine and should last for a good many years to come. I just wonder how many people will be here to look out through them.

I thought for a while this morning we’d be in single figures but a late surge of worshippers bumped us up to the mid teens, clergy included. There was nobody on duty at the piano when the curate made a start, explaining that we’d be getting retired minister at some point who would be authorised to perform the sermon and the communion. And so we launched into Once in Royal David’s City unaccompanied and, as it turned out, arbitrarily shorn of a few verses. 

After twenty minutes or so, the curate’s increasingly plaintive glances to the back of the church were rewarded when the latch was lifted and in came the minister I normally expect to see. Spotting the vacant piano stool and noticing we were about to stumble into another carol, he sat at the keys without even the time to take his coat off and even chipped in with a decent vocal. He spent the rest of the hour racing from keyboard to lectern to altar - whatever Christmas dinner awaited him at the conclusion of such multi-tasking, he certainly earned it. 

* * * * *

It’s a quiet conclusion to the year but a homely one for all that. The experiences and encounters my last Christmas Day visit to St Barnabas inspired have been both fun and enlightening. I’ve joined services and gatherings in 65 very different places, all of which - through their nature and the way they go about spreading whatever message they bring - inspired thoughts in me and gave me plenty to write about. I’ve met lots of good people who I’d certainly visit again and learned a lot about what makes people attend the places they do week in week out. I’m by no means an expert on the religious spectrum as a result of my pilgrimage but I’ve enjoyed going into places I’ve never been and filling in some of the many gaps in my understanding of what goes on inside these buildings we walk past every day. There’s a recurring pattern of familiarity and community, reaffirming your beliefs and values, recognising change while at the same time valuing stability - all of which adds up to a palpable sense of belonging.

I’ve thought a lot about whether there’s a place to me in this process. I’m sad but perhaps relieved to report that there have been no celestial thunderbolts; at no stage has the sky parted to reveal a vision of heaven. No religious epiphany, no vision while meditating beneath a tree. But I suppose this was never about finding God, any god. It was more about finding the people who go along to meet their god and about the fascinating things they do. And they still hold a fascination. So I will carry on going - not because I’ve been convinced by any single community or theism but because the curiosity which got me started is still there. I’ll just write a lot less.