Winter Night Shelter During Christmas Week

This is week five of the 18 weeks that Brighton & Hove Churches operate their winter night shelter for 15 homeless men and women. We offer our guests shelter, warmth, safety, a hot dinner, books, newspapers and games, conversation and companionship, a comfortable bed, a nourishing breakfast, and as much tea or coffee and biscuits as they can consume.

In return, they offer us a tangible opportunity to meet Christ in the guise of the hungry, homeless, addicted and disturbed. Occasionally the encounter is rich and even blossoms into genuine friendship, usually it is transient - and sometimes it is disquieting. We know that we give the crumbs from our table, in return they offer us something valuable, a practical opportunity to care and to serve.

This is the Christmas Week of the shelter and we have a strategy for dinner tonight. While the other six churches in Brighton & Hove will likely be serving traditional Christmas fare, heavy on turkey and the trimmings, we will prepare a self-service buffet with a variety of foods. Importantly, we will push the boat out tonight, with decorations and fine food, to try and give our guests a memorable experience in this most important of weeks.

To start, we found an elderly and forgotten Christmas tree in one of the storerooms and Georges, backbone of the volunteers and master chef, made it look respectable once more.

At one end of our parish room we erected the guests' collapsible beds and put their bags by the beds. Seventeen beds and bags travel round the churches in a mustard-yellow van, 'Carol'. Each morning they are loaded into the van and driven to the next night's church where they are unloaded. The bags contain the guest's bed linen, duvets, pillows and wash bags.

In the kitchen Cassie is hard at work, preparing the starters. There are roast chicken legs, cooked prawns, cold cuts of salami, German sausage and ham, tuna fish rice, quiche, green salads and potato salad...and more.

There are a dozen volunteers on hand tonight - the Evening Shift is very popular, especially over the Christmas Week. After our team meeting and prayer, we scatter to finalise last-minute preparations. Chef Georges poses for a souvenir photo by the buffet tables, which now included the main courses, of which the highlights are poached salmon, turkey in tomato sauce and gammon ham in mushroom sauce, accompanied by a cheese board.

In the final minute before the doors open for the guests, the volunteers and Fr. Kevin Dring pose for a Christmas photo at the decorated tables.

Thirteen men and one woman sit down with the dozen volunteers for dinner. After grace, Fr. Kevin has a surprise gift; a parishioner has donated rosaries and prayer cards for each of the guests. Fr. Kevin has blessed the rosaries and, when he offers them, the majority of the guests ask for them. The conversation is light and the food given proper attention. Queues form for second helpings and most of the food vanishes. The dessert table has a selection of richly decorated cakes, mince pies and chocolates - but tempts few of the guests. Instead, Imelda's home-made trifle is deservedly popular and one guest has several helpings of the Tiramisu.

After dinner some guests go outside for a final cigarette. Others, exhausted by a day spent walking around in the cold and occasional rain, are ready for bed. By ten thirty the guests are fast asleep, the tidying up is done and the Overnight Shift has arrived to relieve the Evening Shift who, tired but happy, depart.

By six-thirty in the morning, the guests are stirring. The Morning Shift has been busy for half an hour, the bacon and fried eggs are sizzling in the pan, the baked beans bubbling, a smell of hot toast and coffee is in the air. Unusually - because it's Christmas week of course - kippers are on the menu. Harry has brought in a few of the morning papers and the football pages  are being studied closely, one topic of discussion is that local football team Brighton & Hove Albion's Manager, Sami Hyypia, has resigned after the football team won only one game of the last 18.

As the men are leaving, one of them turns to a volunteer and tells her that he is really looking forward to coming back next week, in fact, he would prefer to stay in the Sacred Heart Church's Parish Room for the entire week. Surprisingly, it was not particularly the food that impressed him, it was the people who made it, served it, sat and talked with him, watched as he slept and accompanied him for smoking breaks - a timely reminder that hunger comes in different forms.

Baptism at Advent time

There is always something special and happy about baptism during the season of Advent.

Today's Mass readings were particularly appropriate for the five families bringing their children to baptism. Isaiah spoke of exulting for joy in the Lord while the extract from Paul's Letter to the Thessalonians began 'Be happy at all times...' The Gospel reading was from John and - of course - it was about John the Baptist.

During the Baptism preparation class, the parents are asked what they want for their children. The answers often include reference to 'happiness,' 'protection,' 'right living,' 'knowing God,' 'doing right,' 'going to Heaven,' 'joining the Church family,' 'peace' and so on. Baptism is indeed the doorway that gives entrée to all these and more.

It was clearly a multinational gathering today. The five sets of parents together with their guests came from Poland, Hungary, Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Slovakia, Italy, Ireland, Switzerland and the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom.

Fr. Kevin made the point that, through baptism, the children were now joining a much larger family, the family of Catholic Christians worldwide who number 1.2 billion, and is itself a part of the family of Christians worldwide, a family that is not defined by race, language or national origin, but by unity of faith.

  

Brighton Goes Gospel

 

Singing carols is a Christmas tradition. Last night the Brighton Goes Gospel (GGG) community choir performed at the Hove Town hall to an enthusiastic audience of about 400. When I say ‘enthusiastic’ I mean that both choir and audience sang, stamped, clapped, hollered and swayed - it was quite an evening!

Founded in the year 2000, the BGG is ‘a non-religious (all religions and none) community gospel choir run by volunteers.’ In fact, the BGG is really two choirs; the Workshop Choir of up to 100 learners, and the Performance Choir, limited to 50 more experienced and able performers.

 Last night’s program included gospel classics, traditional carols and recent compositions. Both choirs acquitted themselves well with quite a variety of material. Very much in charge was the new choir director, Daniel Thomas, himself a hugely capable singer and songwriter who has worked with music legends like James Brown and Luther Vandross.

In fact, Daniel Thomas was as much a star as the choir. His whole body was a conductor’s baton; jerking, twitching, straining, stamping, thrusting, every sinew resonating with the music until the last quivering note, when he would slumped back and mop his brow. More, his vocal range and dexterity was astonishing and the concert concluded with a friendly verbal joust with several singers that was spectacular, the accelerating tempo rising to a dizzying crescendo.

Waiting in the sub-zero temperature for a lift home, I wondered if it was possible to truly engage with gospel music, as performer or audience, while remaining untouched by the lyrics. Certainly, carols are even more unambiguous works of praise, like the old favourites we sang, including these words from ‘Away in a Manger’:

 I love thee Lord Jesus
Look down from the sky
And stay by my side:  
‘Til morning is nigh.

 Caution: gospel singing may affect your transcendental balance.

Procession of Reparation

Temperatures - never more than five degrees Celsius during the day - had fallen to two degrees by the time the small procession left St. Mary Magdalene’s Church, shortly after six this evening.

This was the annual Procession of Reparation in honour of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was led by four men bearing on their shoulders a wooden throne on which sat a statue of the Blessed Virgin, garlanded and surrounded by small lamps. They were followed by about 80 people, led by the Parish Priest, Fr. Ray Blake (whose blog is at  http://marymagdalen.blogspot.co.uk/ ).

Stopping frequently to pray the Rosary, the procession made its way along the quiet and dark Upper North Street, then turned right and entered the brightly-lit Western Road, one of the main shopping streets. Bag-laden evening shoppers paused momentarily to gaze in puzzlement, faces peered down from passing busses, and one or two Starbucks’ customers looked up briefly before resuming their steamy coffees - this is Brighton, quirky, tolerant and ultra-liberal where the unusual is a momentary distraction.

The procession’s destination was the Clock Tower, a landmark structure in the centre of Brighton, built in 1888 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. It is the primary crossroad of the city where roads from the railway station, the seafront, the Steine and the shopping areas converge. Usually busy, it was quite subdued this evening, the chill weather had sent people home early and the few remaining shoppers, tourists and early diners were rushing along with heads down and collars turned up.

The marchers gathered around the statue of Mary and for 15 minutes the centre of Brighton echoed with melodious praise to the Blessed Mother of God, the voices at times drowned by the roar of passing traffic. Then it was all over for another year and the procession broke into chattering groups and dispersed.

Did it make a difference? The witness, praise and prayer seemed almost overwhelmed by the indifference, single-minded consumerism and self-indulgence of onlookers on this chilly winter night. It may be a fancy but the bright full moon above Brighton this evening reminded me of ‘a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.’ I imagine the procession made her very happy.