19 August 2020

Rev. Irene writes:

For those watching on-line there was success on Sunday morning! We are now pre- recording so that the streamed service will go ‘live’ on social media platforms at 10 a.m. each Sunday.

It is also great news that there will be a family craft session on Wednesday 2nd September and an ‘on-line’ Alpha course starting on Tuesday 8th September. There will be an opportunity to book on-line for either of these or alternatively speak to one of the Ministry Team who will book you in.

We are delighted to be holding our first wedding this year in the Minster. So many have had to be delayed until next year however on Saturday Ruth and Mike will be married. There are many restrictions, only 30 allowed at the ceremony, social distancing and masks will be mandatory. However, I am sure that Jon Lawson (a member of our PCC) will be proud to walk his daughter down the aisle. Please hold Ruth and Mike in your prayers this weekend.

Our music group and choir are still not able to meet for rehearsals however this week I have asked Rachel Miller from the choir to write for us on her experiences during lockdown and hopefully next week a member of the contemporary musicians will share their experience. I do hope these letters from various people within the church are helping you to feel part of the Minster family and we hope before too long we will have more freedom to come together as God’s family…

Lockdown – a chorister’s view

For myself and my daughter Amy, the most immediate impact of the COVID-19 lockdown was the immediate order to ‘stop singing’. Anyone who has encountered Amy will know that she sings ALL the time (including when she should be asleep!) and she was more upset about not being able to come to the choir vestry on a Friday and Sunday than she was about school closing. Tears were shed – and not just by Amy. I joined the choir purely because Amy did, and instantly rekindled my love of both music and choral singing, which had been long buried under work, family life and other activities. In the Minster, I found ‘my tribe’ of equally bonkers (in a good way) people and I’ve made so many friends in the short time I’ve been part of the choir.

One of the best things about the Minster Choir is that we are a truly supportive team. Within a week we had various lines of communication established, including a Friday night Zoom chat to replace our rehearsals for anyone who wished to join in – featuring various choir members cooking, eating and watching Last of the Summer Wine (no names mentioned here!). As well as this, within a few weeks Mark and Katie came up with a plan to keep us singing, which everyone will have seen in the form of the weekly hymns. This was a challenge – not only for Katie and Ruth, our technical whizzes who put the videos together, but for everyone in the choir. Suddenly the safety net of other voices singing the same part around you has vanished, and you are trying to see the words and music, listen to an organ part with a single soprano voice (thanks Nia!) through headphones and record the entire thing as a video on a smart phone or tablet, often precariously balanced on something so you’re correctly positioned on screen. Oh – and remembering you really can’t record everything in running kit or PJs. Lockdown Loungewear is not recommended if you’re being uploaded to YouTube for posterity!

Then, there are the added technical hitches – a sneezing husband (Ian has nearly caused cardiac events in the past!), Amy starting a phone call with her best friend (and all the associated squealing that entails), someone starting to mow their lawn outside, realising you have a light fitting apparently growing out of your head on the video, the phone falling off its perch – and that’s before you count the wrong notes, wrong words, missing commas, running out of breath or forgetting to go into harmony! I can’t speak for everyone else, but my outtakes were many, and if Katie ever produces a compilation of them, I will feature heavily! Amy, on the other hand, took to it like a duck to water (why are nine-year-olds so tech-savvy?) and really enjoyed recording her contributions. Seeing the finished product for the first time was an incredibly moving experience – a triumph of hard work over adversity and proof that the choir can overcome most things.

Lockdown for me has felt like a very strange parallel road to many of you reading this. As a Special Care Dentist working in the hospital sector, I was still travelling to work in Grimsby every day (although most of my work was being done over the phone) and spent a few weeks on front line redeployment swabbing people with suspected COVID-19 from a tent in the carpark of the local college. Thankfully, the weather was glorious for all but my last shift, which was spent under a couple of inches of water when the tent sandbags failed. Now, we are trying to negotiate our way back to a ‘new normal’, which still looks and feels very different from our usual practice. Our service is still an Urgent Care Hub for vulnerable and shielded patients with dental pain, and the guidance is very strict on what it is recommended we can and cannot do for our patients. Anything routine is on the back burner until further notice, and any treatment that involves generating aerosol (mainly fillings with water spray) requires us to put on full PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). I have even more respect for people working in ICU than I did previously – an hour in the kit is enough for me, so how anyone does a full 12 hour shift in it is beyond me, especially in recent weather! I do worry about my patients – they are all very vulnerable and their daily routine has been severely disrupted by the pandemic, and it will take a lot of time, love and patience to re-acclimatise them to the ‘new normal dentistry’.

On the upside, though, the reopening of the Minster for public worship has been wonderful. The initial anxiety about seeing ‘people’ as opposed to patients dissipated quickly and it has been a highlight of the week coming into the service and seeing people, as opposed to faces on a screen. It’s certainly novel, as a chorister, to realise that clergy have faces – we’re used to seeing the rear view of the celebrant on a Sunday, so experiencing a service as a member of the congregation has also been a new experience. Seeing the church so full on Sunday was proof that, as a Minster, we have a role to play within the city as we all move forward from lockdown, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Until then, Amy and I are counting the days until we can be back in our cassocks and singing (I may even get the trumpet out at some point – you have been warned!)

Rachel xxx

Rev Irene concludes:

OPENING TIMES FOR PERSONAL PRAYER AND VISITORS

Thursday, Friday and Saturday 12 – 3 p.m.

Please note: Saturday 22nd closing at 1.30 p.m. for wedding

On Sunday there will be an online service at 10 a.m. and a live service in the Minster at 11 15 a.m. If you would like to be in the Minster for the service at 11 15 please book a place either on-line or by telephoning the office on 01482 224460

Readings:

The Collect for this week.

God of glory,

the end of our searching,

help us to lay aside

all that prevents us from seeking your kingdom,

and to give all that we have

to gain the pearl beyond all price