One of the things that I have always had in my life is
constancy. Since the age of five, I have always had school to go back to each
term and a house to go back to every day. Since moving to London, completely
changing my life and my orientation, I have become more restless. I want to
vary my boring routines, do different things in the evenings, work in different
places, and meet different people. I have seen other people’s hobbies and
thought “I want to do that” countless times; I suddenly have interests in more
things than I can count. While school stuck me in a bubble of comfort and
security, London and my gap year experience has blown everything apart and
forced me to rectify things through experience, learning and a lot of faith. I
have chosen things for myself for the first time, learnt brand new skills and
discovered skills I was unaware of previously. All this excitement has been
contrasted with a job which, although extremely varied, is constant, has a
definite routine and once again, I go away to the same home.
Sometimes you just need a change of scene, and during this
month I have had the great privilege of stepping out of my usual work in a
community cafe and into the other lands that London City Mission, the Christian
charity I am working for this year, have expanded their branches to. I have
been shadowing church-based placement, a chaplain and been involved for three
days in the homeless day centre with my housemate. Since these experiences were
such a poignant part of my February, I thought it best to separate them from
the usual monthly updates and highlights and chat about each of them
individually.
Firstly, I was able to shadow a missionary at the church
that I have been attending in East London. There were huge differences to my
normal day both in the way the days ran and the people who I encountered. I
started later and the day kicked off with us waiting in a cold room in the
downstairs of the church for three men from his English class to come for
further reading, which involved reading the Bible (Mark) as an aid. Only two turned
up, but it was a really interesting experience and we did that for the rest of
the morning, correcting their English as they read aloud, answering questions
about words they didn’t understand, and most excitingly talking to them about
who Jesus was in the small passage we had been reading. What struck me most was
how, at the end of the session when we just turned to chit chat, we learned
that neither had any English friends. It saddens me that so many people who
come into London only stick within their ethnic groups and that other Londoners
don’t attempt to cross boundaries other than to order an Indian or Chinese. For
all our talk about multiculturalism, it doesn’t actually seem to involve
crossing cultural boundaries in a way which leads to understanding and deep
friendships with those around us who were not brought up in Britain. The two
men seemed surprised when we offered our friendship. I was able to invite them
into the cafe for a chat with any of our staff as it is within their area and
is accessible to them (and conveniently is where they have their usual English
class).
After lunch we walked in the rain to do some door-to-door
work, which again was completely different to what I do for the cafe. At the
cafe it is about bringing people into the space to engage in the community we
offer there, more than it is having spiritual conversations. When you are
working for a church and inviting people to church, these conversations happen
a lot more frequently and naturally and I relish in such interesting discussion
(although at points it was far more intense than I was used to!). We then ran
over to a bakery who gives the church their leftover bread to give to the
homeless in the evening. After some admin jobs, we started to set up for the
GrowTH project which runs in the area of Tower Hamlets where homeless people
are referred and they then spend a night in a different church for 28 days.
Each week, my church runs one of those nights and there are volunteers who cook
dinner/breakfast and chat to the guests. The evening also involves a short
Bible talk and an opportunity to discuss faith. While some of the 15-20 guests
eat and then run to their beds to read, listen to music, or nap, others are
really willing to chat and it was amazing to find out that many of the men had
become friends over their time on the scheme and spent their day together,
helping and protecting one another. One of the best things about the scheme is
that over half of those who come on it between November and February last year
were rehoused within the 28 days. It is such a simple idea and seems to be
incredibly effective both in terms of social action and in terms of getting
people to consider their beliefs. I am sad that the scheme is over as I only
got to help on two occasions and enjoyed both very much. To find out more about
GrowTH and their vision visit http://www.thisisgrowth.org/
My second day of shadowing was with the arts chaplain,
although he dares to call himself that as it is a role that the guy pretty much
created himself and is still developing, especially as it involves a lot of
travelling about to different theatres and galleries etc and runs off a very
flexible schedule compared to other chaplains such as those on the underground,
rail, taxi ranks or post office who have solid places to visit each day. The
day started off by visiting one of the ‘rival’ cafes within LCM, Cafe Eterno,
on Neal Street in Covent Garden. It is a lot smaller and sees a lot of heavy
traffic coming through, but still showcases art on the walls from independent
artists (the current showing was of a Turkish guy who another missionary had
met and put him in touch with the cafe to get his work up – and it was amazing
work!) and has a very strong, friendly and lively team running it. The prices
are notably higher than ours because of the location, however, and there is far
less of a community feel to the place as with such a busy area people don’t
hang about long, although they still have regular custom from people who work
around the area and enjoy engaging in healthy discussion! I was especially
please with my hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows – the most you
get at my place is some chocolate sprinkles. We then spent the majority of our
day visiting the stage door of different theatres including the Cambridge
Harold Pinter, Noel Coward and Queens where we spoke to different stage
doorman. Most of it was general chitchat but as a bit of a theatre geek and one
who formerly wanted to go into theatre, this was most exciting for me,
especially as one of the doorman had obsessively obtained the image and
signature of every person who had performed at the theatre which included
Helena Bonham Carter, David Tennant, Celia Imrie, Simon Callow and Rupert
Grint, to name a few. Oh, and he had a picture of Marilyn Monroe with
then-husband Arthur Williams signed and dated too, and the image had some
amazing nugget of theatre history behind it. How I WISH I had dared to take a
quick picture: his walls were completely full and he was now using the ceiling
(Rupert Grint, for instance, was on a pipe). It was quite a sight and surely
something I will never see again. Luckily for me, the chaplain had more
experience in art than theatre, so when it came to chatting about musicals and
plays I was really in my element!
We also went round the National Gallery in the section where
all the religious paintings from alters were. This is a section I normally miss
out because I have previously found it to be boring and reminds me of a part of
church history which makes me feel uncomfortable, where money was spent on
making a church opulent and a display of art rather than a contributing towards
a community of people reaching out to those around them. I now see these
pictures in a new way, looking to the stories behind them and the themes that
they convey rather than the time in history where they come from and the
excessive amount of gold leaf used to produce them. It was a most informative
time and this guy really knows his stuff and has such a history of working in
the arts field as a professor and curator, so I felt quite honoured to sit
under such knowledge for a few hours.
And so ends part one of this record of my explorations, into
two very different worlds which both capture my full interest and have very
different levels of glamour! Sorry that there are no photos on this post as I
didn’t take any on either days because I was enjoying myself rather a lot and
was too busy taking everything in. Photos will be included in my next post, be
assured!
Are you feeling a little restless, like me, or do you take comfort in constancy? Let me know in the comments
-Antonia
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