This short article will (hopefully) appear in Hardwick Happenings and Dry Drayton News in due course.
I don’t know if prayer is your practice, or whether time to think is more what you need, or perhaps both. If you find a place to go to do both or either valuable, then here are 5 ideas of local places to go when you need space to think:
- Anglesey Abbey – look at whichever bit of the garden is in bloom, have a coffee, then lose yourself in the woodland and grounds; think while you walk or sit on a bench.
- The churchyard at St Mary’s – walk down to the church yard and use the benches to sit in peace. There are some lovely cyclamen flowering by the gate at the moment. (And from Easter the church building will be open at weekends.)
- Hardwick woods – walk across the fields to the woods when the bluebells are out
(which won’t be long now) then meander slowly through the woods. - ‘Good Friday reflection’ – visit the church between 10am and 1pm on Good Friday, sit in a pew for as long as you like or look at the material available as a starter for reflection.
- Masserella’s café at Coton Orchard – if you get there early it’s quiet, and you can sit in the window for a while.
It sometimes helps to go somewhere particular when you need to clear your head. But of course you don’t have to go to a special place to pray. God is present wherever we are. That is, at least partly, what Christians believe the resurrection and the empty tomb is all about: that God is too big to be confined to particular times and places. And yet he bothers with us when we take time with him.
