In both kinds

The news that our churches could open up again for public worship- with suitable precautions- was greeted by this church member with mixed reactions. Did I want church to open again after exposure to the best our parish,  and wider, the best the C of E, could bring into my home via YouTube channels? And before I take a service again, all those regulations to internalise and remember.....

Fortunately as a retired clergyman, I don't have to do all the risk assessments, think through all the issues; I can leave that to the young, the fit, the PCC- and I thank them for all their work. But it's strange that at our parish church, (with three aisles, and room for several hundred people in the nave and the two side chapels ) as we open again for public worship, only twenty eight people will be allowed in. 

As I begin to think about taking services again, it will need not only mental preparation to think through all the issues (distance, cleaning, hand gel, contact lists of whom came, which pews cannot be used, a list of do's and dont's to read out at the beginning of the service.....and the rest) but spiritual preparation too. It will be a new experience to be in church in these conditions. I shall be more nervous than normal. 

But at heart, I shall be glad to be there, serving the people what they have come for, even though it will be communion 'in one kind only' ; it will be for me only to take the wine. But as I have in solidarity with the laity not taken communion since the beginning of the outbreak, I know it will be for me something deep, perhaps unique. I hope it will not be long before we can all be in that privileged place of unique depth- communion in both kinds.