麻豆约拍

From the Reverend Richard Coles:

There鈥檚 a village near me, stone and thatch, built along a brook, picture postcard stuff, and especially in spring when the blossom is out and the ducklings hatching. Up a lane stands the church, pretty much unchanged in six hundred years, but its full of scaffolding and tools right now as the stained glass maker Tom Denny is installing a new set of windows on the theme of the light of God. I called in on Tuesday, when sun was shining after a week of storms, and the windows sparkled and glowed, in greens and golds and blues. The lightness, rather than The Darkness - gasps all round.

New wonders in an ancient place. That can be risky: my friend Chris, a stonemason, is working with Tom, prepping the stonework into which the glass is fixed. The other day he gave the tiniest of taps with a mallet on a mullion, and half the window collapsed (fortunately before the glass went in). He reckoned it had last been fixed in the year 1410, so dilapidations are not unexpected - and he made it good.

What devotion over the centuries goes into these buildings, miracles of Medieval architecture, which even in our own age of vanishing congregations and different priorities, still inspire artists and donors and worshippers and visitors.

One reason for this may be, to use the language of our own time, wellbeing. It was reported in the papers yesterday that religion is good for you, the findings of a survey which showed that religious people enjoy better health than non religious people. This may surprise many, to whom religion seems remarkably bad for you, the cause of conflicts, rife with hypocrisy, toxic with scandal. I am only too well aware of how awful religion can be, but I would make a distinction between religion and faith. Faith is the light that sparkles and glows and reveals unimaginable richness and gives you hope and joy when the world is dark and we are weak. Religion is the structure with which we try to capture it, flawed, weatherbeaten, full of cracks - and sometimes the merest tap can bring the whole thing down.聽

聽But you cannot have one without the other. The windows need the frame; and so we need to take care of it, with all our skill and tools and dedication, so the sun can still flame in golds and greens and blues, and set our minds and souls on fire.聽