Sabbatical Soundings Part 5 - out of time

 I realise that I hadn't recorded anything here of a significant week at the start of my Sabbatical. I joined with 23 other clergy for a consultation at St George's House, Windsor.

Here we are on the steps of St George's Chapel.

It was a remarkable experience for all kinds of reasons but we met deeply with God in and through one another and also by virtue of our remarkable surroundings.

At our introductory session, the facilitators joked that they hoped to create a safe space for exploring personal growth, but that this safe space was also guarded by police with automatic weapons and very smart-looking soldiers in bearskin hats. In that sense, we were pretty safe in there.

We had privileged access to the Chapel, open to us before and after the castle was open to the public. It's a beautiful space and the sense of history verges on the absurd. At Morning Prayer one day, the President remarked that this was the day the Church remembered Charles, King and Martyr, "who is of course buried just behind me" (Alongside Henry VIII and Jane Seymour which is itself another story)

11 monarchs are buried in the Chapel, including of course Her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II and the late Duke of Edinburgh. Few of us who saw it will forget Prince Philip's funeral in April 2021 with the late Queen in a face mask, sitting on her own with only 30 people allowed to attend. There is something very moving about spending time at their graves, and it turns out that Windsor Castle had its own version of The Queue when it reopened following the Queen's funeral as thousands of people wanted to visit her final resting place. Interestingly, most visitors to the Castle now also visit St George's Chapel whereas before the late Queen's death, only about 50% of visitors did so.

There is therefor a sense of history and stability that is inescapable in that place.  It's in a place like Windsor that it is brought home to us that we are all part of something much bigger and many things will outlast us.

But it is also a place where the relationship between Church and State is very visible. The whole purpose of St George's is to pray for the monarch and the Order of the Garter, who are the monarch's closest companions. There are banners and crests for each of the Knights of the Garter - many former Prime Ministers, foreign royalty and members of the Royal Family. Earthly power and wealth are very much in evidence, and I couldn't help wondering what the vulnerable, utterly powerless infant Jesus in the beautiful crib scene  made of it all.

But the combination of the safe space and the sense of the importance of the place did, I think, help our group to create an openness to new insights and learning about ministry and ourselves, and it felt like we were there for much longer than five days.

One thing that only came to me on our penultimate day was also to do with the location. Windsor sits directly under the flight path for Heathrow airport and aircraft were our constant overhead companions. For my entire married life until now, we have been "under the aircraft", or at least had life greatly influenced by the demands of British Airways' flight schedule. There were times when my poor husband had no annual leave allocated during school holidays. It was impossible to plan far in advance for anything, unless he was awarded annual leave for things like family weddings and celebrations. I was a part-time single parent as his work took him away for things like concerts, assemblies, school events. All of this no longer applies since he has retired- and school concerts are not something we tend to go to any more. But it took a week of being under the aircraft at Windsor for this to truly sink in for me. 

It was a huge privilege to undertake that transition and to have space to contemplate a new phase of life in that place.

I have no photos of the Chapel as photography is not permitted inside - but there is the website where you can have a virtual tour. St George's Windsor