On Tuesday evening the church donation box was broken into and the money taken. Damage was also caused to equipment left in the church. The poem below was written in response.
Poem – A Redundant Church
The night was eery, ghosts in the stillness
No owls, just stars scattering their brilliance….
A world alone, alive only in memory.
No congregation in more than a century
the Location to blame, the building is guiltless,
No money, no need, no shouting peremptory
Demands, just strength and a quiet resilience,
Open to All, time’s stillness not in jeopardy
A day-time serenity, a retreat for everybody.
But last night, in the quiet a man and his buddy
Slipped through the door and crept into its dullness.
They broke open the safe and stole all the money
Stuffed in by strangers from summer to Christmas.
They stole the webcam, set to catch their treachery,
No devotion, maybe greed, the pain of their penury
But loud in the air now a shrillness
A centuries old smell of catastrophic illness
Neglect, no love, a futile hope of fulfilment
A church and its people share sorrow and darkness
Written by Christine Sanderson 24.07.20