Our Church Schools are amazing communities of children, staff and families, a place where we make connections and try to understand each other better. Here’s a reflection on our experience of prayer and worship with children in school

I wait in St Mary’s School Hall for the children to arrive.  I twiddle my fingers and thumbs, turn the ring around my finger, a gift from my mother many years ago.  It’s a habit I’ve noticed myself doing, as I turn it round and round in circles.

Some of the Year 6 pupils who have been helping to prepare the space for Collective Worship, and place chairs for the staff and their own classmates, stop to look at the visual aids I’ve brought in.  Rosary Beads of different shapes and sizes, a Jesus Rope with its tied knots, and some Muslim Prayer Beads.

They explore them, decide to order them in size.  One of the children is Sikh.  I ask him about prayer beads in the Sikh faith, but he doesn’t seem to know about them, but he is keen to show me the jewellery they wear, lifts the sleeve of his jumper to show me the bangle, the Kara, a sign of unbreakable attachment and commitment to God.

Slowly, the hall begins to fill up with lines of children escorted by staff and calming music. Most of the children sat in front of me now are Muslim, over 80 per cent.  There are Hindus too, and I see a few members of the church congregation, all recently baptized at Easter.  They smile.

It’s Monday afternoon, and I lead worship here from time to time through the term.  Over the river in St Paul’s Primary School, I also lead collective worship each week, as well as Mass with a different class each time before I scurry back to Butetown for Mass with some of the children of St Mary’s where the arrangement is slightly different. It’s the same children each week, whilst the Muslim children remain in school for their own focussed time together.

At St Paul’s, we’ve also been able to celebrate Masses with the whole school present or explored the Stations of the Cross together in classes back in Holy Week.  Different things are possible.

Each school is distinctive in its life of prayer and worship, in its religious expression and Christian identity.  Both schools embrace and respect the faith of all its pupils within a Christian environment, do it in their own unique way.  They have their own pattern of prayer, adopt their own unique school prayer.

“One day, some years ago, I had a large glass cookie jar,” I tell the children in front of me.  “There weren’t any cookies in it.  I like cookies, so they didn’t last long.  But I used the jar to collect my loose change.  Ones and twos, lots of coppers and a few silver pieces too.  Every day, my loose change was dropped into the cookie jar.  I didn’t pay much attention to it.

And then, one day, my mother paid a visit, told me I should count it.  I said, “If you count it, you can keep it.”  I returned home later that day.  She was surrounded by neat stacks of coins.   “£450 pounds,” she exclaimed.  Sometimes, we don’t realise how much or what we have until we count it!”

In his book, ‘Supercommunicators,’ Charles Duhigg talks of “an essential truth: to communicate with someone we must connect with them.  When we absorb what someone is saying and they comprehend what we say it’s because our brains have, to some degree, aligned.  When we start thinking alike, we understand each other better.”

I show them the rosary beads, tell them that counting prayers with beads is common to many different religions, that the old English words ‘bede’ actually means ‘a prayer.’

We compare the beads, different shapes and sizes and materials.  I show them the Muslim prayer beads.  “How many of you have some of these?” I ask.  Many raise their hands. I tell them a Muslim friend gave me these. 

We have connected.

That’s what we do.  We make connections, find the common ground which we can inhabit, discover some shared thing so that we can move on together.  Carve out a space of openness where we can learn from one another, communicate with one another, explore the world together, discover new possibilities, understand each other better.

I’m not an ardent adherent to the law when it comes to Collective worship in State schools.  It’s not a hill I will die on.  I don’t mind that many people think the law is outdated, non-representative, exclusive, and want it changed.  I don’t think that we as Christians can expect State schools to do our work for us, expect teachers who have no faith to teach children how to pray in our faith.  But if that’s your hill, I’m happy for you to keep fighting for it.

But here I am, in a Voluntary Aided Faith School of the Church in Wales, with a distinct Christian character embracing a diverse group of children, and staff too.

And so we try to make connections.

On Wednesday mornings we celebrate our School Masses. In St Paul’s Church there will be children from all the different faiths there.  Each child will be involved in their own way.  Some will sit towards the front and participate more openly, some will receive Holy Communion, others will read or lead the prayers.  Others will sit further back, be given the space to sit comfortably with their own identity and to grow up with what brings them meaning.

When I speak, I try to find those moments of connection, a means of beginning to understand one another, acknowledge our differences, and not make assumptions about their own experience of prayer and spirituality, their own faith and religious identity.

Last week at St Paul’s it was all about wasted gifts and talents.  I told them how I wasted one of my talents when I was younger.  I gave up running, racing, sprinting. I hold the unlit candle which they presented at the beginning of Mass, the symbol for that week’s celebration.  “What’s the point of a candle if you don’t light it? What’s the point of our gifts if we don’t use them?”  I talk about Jesus.  I can do this now – we have made connections.

Meanwhile, back in St Mary’s School Hall, we turn to our hands, count our fingers.  What things can we count? What if we counted our blessings? Would we have enough fingers and thumbs?

They share some of their blessings, from shared toys to food, from being loved to going to school, from bed time to play time. We begin to run out of fingers.

“Are we allowed one of those?” asks the Sikh lad pointing to the rosary before he leaves.

“Oh, that’s not for me to decide unfortunately,” I say.  “That’s a conversation to have with your family.”

He smiles, is content with that.

I recall a conversation with him on a long journey to London last year on a School Trip.  He told me about his hair, hidden away beneath his dastar, how long it was, why he didn’t cut it.  “It belongs to God,’ he said.  I could connect with that.  We understood each other better then.

By the way, my mother insisted that she didn’t want that stack of coins.  She bagged them up, ready for me to take to the Bank.  It was another day, like today, when I could have done with a few more fingers to count my blessings or maybe pick up the beads and just go round in circles.

We often get asked about the collection of Cargo homes at the top of Bute Street. Originally designed as temporary accommodation for families in housing need, they never fulfilled that aim.

Instead, from 2020, they provided accommodation for those in homeless provisions who had tested positive for Covid during the pandemic time, and then as emergency overnight accommodation.

The site allowed the Local Authority to have a safe space to house people with Covid to try to prevent the spread of the virus amongst their provisions and keep more people safe. In the end, they managed to make 377 placements to 293 people.

Now, over four years later they are returning to their original aimed purpose.

They currently stand empty whilst awaiting a refurbishment to bring them up to standard. Then the homes will be transferred into the Council’s Homeless Leasing Service (HLS) scheme which provides Temporary Accommodation within the community.

Welcome gifts

When the facility was due to welcome families over four years ago, members of the congregation at St Mary’s generously donated welcoming gifts although the gifts eventually made their way to service users of Ty Gobaith in their supported living projects they support.

Over the next few months, working with children of St Mary’s School and their Sanctuary Committee, and with funding from St Mary’s Church and items bought by members of the congregation, the children will help to package and present the parcels in readiness for when the first families arrive.

We are particularly concentrating on domestic items such as washing up liquid and kitchen cleaner, cloths, dusters and tea towels, fabric detergent and toilet cleaners as well as a few personal items such as deodorant, shower gels and toothpaste, along with coffee and tea.

Get in touch if you’d like to donate or simply sign up and pledge using the list in St Mary’s

We pray the rosary each Saturday at St Mary’s. As we approach Mary’s month of May we explore what it is and how we pray the rosary.

Split beads, snapped cords and chains litter my desk drawer. It’s like a rosary graveyard, the casualties of prayer. I must be too heavy handed when perhaps what is called for is a lighter touch.

So many of us find prayer so difficult that we write it off altogether, or perhaps we just make too big a deal of it, try too hard or think that prayer demands what we just can’t give. And so we fumble around, all fingers and thumbs, snapping cords and splitting beads.

The English word ‘bead’ derives from the old English noun bede which means a prayer. So every bead’s a prayer, a bidding.

The use of beads to bid is a common prayerful practice of many religions. Hinduism and Sikhism, Buddhism and Islam, Shinto, Umbanda, Bahai. All have some way of counting out prayers on beads, making us all fingers and thumbs.

The word “rosary” means a crown or garland of roses. An enclosed garden of flowers, perfect, scented, safe. A place of petals, protected by thorns. We’re so easily split and broken. We bleed in beauty’s grip, a rose between the thorns.

The Rosary’s precursor, a knotted rope held in the hands of the Desert Fathers to count out the ‘Jesus Prayer’ or the Psalms of David, existed in the early centuries of the Church. Today, the tied rope remains a favourite of Eastern Orthodox Christians. So simple, accessible, subtle.

Whilst rosary devotions deepened with St Dominic’s vision of Our Lady in 1214, some form of the prayer was known as distantly as the ninth century, as Christians counted out their Ave Marias, time and time again.

With beads in hand, they prayed the Scriptural greeting of Gabriel, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you,” and Elizabeth’s exclamation in her hill country home, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

By the fifteenth century, Scriptural sentences were an established part of the beads, the biddings, and these became fashioned into fifteen Mysteries of Faith, joyful, sorrowful, glorious, relating the story of Jesus as the Bible tells it so. They were generally unchanged until 2002 when five more Mysteries of Light were introduced by St John Paul II.

The prayers, the beads, the biddings, each rose of the garland become a means of meditating on the life of Jesus. We are drawn deeper to him through the prayer and life of Mary his mother. She is the one who first received him, welcomed him into her life. She is attentive to him, dotes on him, becomes a walking treasure trove of love as she stores up the memories of him in her heart. She meditates on the mysteries as they happen.

She wants us to listen to him, and do whatever he tells us, just as she did in that first Mystery when Gabriel touched and changed her life.

As we thread the beads between our fingers, the repeated prayers still our mind, become as natural as breathing, as we find a momentum of prayer that isn’t heavy handed but relies on the lightness of touch which comes from a mother’s love. Time to breathe. Inhale the scent. Rest in her arms.

The Rosary prayer is like the picking of a lover’s petals. “He loves me, he loves me not” except the litany here is always “He loves me, he loves me, he loves me…” A place of petals protected by thorns, the story of our Salvation comes at a cost, but sorrow’s story turns to light and the glory of what is to come.

Yes, when we pray the rosary, we are all fingers and thumbs but succumb, like Mary, to the love of her son.

We pray the rosary at St Mary’s Church each Saturday morning just after 11am and before the 1130am Mass

The prayers of the rosary

The garland of beads is arranged in five distinct groups so that each of the Mysteries can be prayed in turn.

But before we set off, there are introductory prayers. We make the sign of the cross “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” and continue with the Apostles Creed.

We recite the Lord’s Prayer, followed by three Hail Marys, and all wrapped up with “Glory be to the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And then, in turn, we pray our way through the petals of love which are the Mysteries of the Rosary. Each mysrery begun with the Lord’s prayer, continuing ten Hail Mary’s and Glory be.

Introductory Prayers

+ In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I believe in God,
the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ,
his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the 
power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the
right hand of the Father.
He will come again
to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body
and the life everlasting.  Amen. 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen. 

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen.  

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen. 

The Joyful Mysteries
The Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38)
The Visitation (Luke 1:39-56)
The Birth of Christ (Luke 2:1-9)
Presentation of the Lord (Luke 2:22-39)
The Finding in the Temple (Luke 2:41-51) 
 
The Mysteries of Light
The Baptism of Jesus (Mat 3:1-17) 
Jesus at the Wedding in Cana (John 2:1-12)
Proclamation of the Kingdom (Mk 1:15)
The Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36)
Institution of the Eucharist (Mat 26ff) 
 
The Sorrowful Mysteries
The Agony in the Garden (Luke 22:39-46)
The Scourging (Matthew 27:26) 
Crowning with Thorns (Mat 27:29-30)
Jesus carries his cross (Luke 23:26-32)
The Crucifixion (Luke 23:33) 
 
The Glorious Mysteries
The Resurrection (Luke 24:1-8)
The Ascension (Luke 24:50-53)
The Descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1ff)
The Assumption (Revelation 3:21)
The Crowning of Mary (Rev 2:10/12:1) 

Concluding Prayers:

Salve Regina
Hail! Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy;
Hail, our life, our sweetness
and our hope;
to thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
to thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping
in this vale of tears.
Turn then, most gracious advocate,
thine eyes of mercy towards us;
and after this our exile,
show unto us the blessed fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement! O loving!
O sweet Virgin Mary! 
 
Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God,
that we may be made worthy
of the promises of Christ. 
 
O God, whose only-begotten Son, 
by His life, death and resurrection,
has purchased for us the  rewards of eternal life;
grant, we beseech thee, that,
meditating upon these mysteries
of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
we may imitate what they contain
and obtain what they promise,
through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Spend any time on our website, and you’ll know that our life together as a Ministry Area has three important areas. We aim to be a creative and resourceful community which is Welcoming, Faithful and Just.

With limited resources, we often work beyond our perceived capacity, and so much of what we are able to do is about being creative and resourceful with what we have.

Even before the Ministry Area was formed in January 2022, the four churches of St Mary’s, St Saviour’s, Ss Dyfrig and Samson, and St Paul’s were working together to plan for the future but since then we also work to a common vision around those important areas of being Welcoming, Faithful and Just.

You can read our Vision Document below. We’ve already achieved so much but we want to continue and embed the ministry and work we are doing, so that we become and remain a strong and cohesive community of faith working across Butetown, Grangetown and Splott.

Our Vision

We are

a community of communities, crossing bridges, bridging boundaries, reaching out in friendship to make a difference.

We have

a strong identity as Christians in the catholic tradition of the Church in Wales but we also love and embrace difference and diversity.  There is so much to learn from each other, and we respect and value the journey others are making.

We are

part of the fabric of Butetown, Grangetown and Splott in South Cardiff Ministry Area and love to  work in partnership with others to create strong and vibrant communities.

We have much to share with others, helping to enrich the diversity and growth of the wider church and community, releasing our gifts and resources through a culture of generosity and mutual love, as we recognise and celebrate that we are all part of the one Body of Christ. Likewise, we are keen to learn from others, working together in creative ways to enrich the Church and our outreach.

We want to be a church that is creative, resourceful, sustainable, generous and thankful, and each of our aims will be done in a way that is creative.

Forty days into the Easter Season we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven. In this reflection, we move from a click to a conscience, from a swipe to a place where “quite different things are going on”.

I made a big mistake. I clicked on a reel on Facebook. I shouldn’t have done it. But I couldn’t resist. I’m sorry. I’m embarrassed to admit it.

But I clicked on a video of kittens. It was lovely and cute and, well, kind of cuddly. I’m a cat person. So I thought it was harmless enough.

And now Facebook thinks the only thing I’m interested in is kittens and cats and furry things.

Don’t get me wrong. I do like kittens and cats and furry things. I’m a cat person.

But that’s all they’re giving me now.

One click on a cat. And cats is all I get.

I’m inundated.

With cats.

I think of others who may have clicked on other things. Young people. Vulnerable people. Any people. Those who click on one thing and then the algorithms define them and send them more. And more. It builds. They become what the algorithms think they are and want.

The algorithms swell their timeline. Lure them in, flood their vision with stuff and more stuff. More unsavoury than the last. But they never take the blame. The conscience lies in the click not the commerce.

And so the experience becomes narrow. Nebulous. Narcotic.

Who defines us and feeds us? Influences and fashions us?

Perhaps, unwittingly, we have placed ourselves at the whim of others. Forgotten who we are. Been too willing to be defined and destroyed. Gaslighted and grounded by others.

And yet the Ascension of Jesus lifts us beyond the banal control of others. Sets our sights above, on Heaven. Liberates us from the narrow limits of other’s perceptions of who they think we are.

How do we measure our lives? How we look and eat and love and act. How we wake and sleep and want and need. What we believe, how we grieve. How we shop and how we bleed.

Do we need to place ourselves at the whim of too many self-help books and living guides, look up too often to the influencers and social media moguls whose minds are set on money not our mental health? Be besotted too much by the ‘Tiktoking’ quick witted, fast scrolling way of a world that think it knows it all?

But yes, of course, we learn by the lives of others, are shaped by the lessons they learned although, at times, we rarely learn. We lean in on their stories, connect ourselves to them, and try to make a new start inspired by their bravery and their very human lives. Yes, we need the lives of others and their learned lessons. There are so many waiting to be discovered. Inspired and inspiring.

When Jesus disappears from the Apostle’s sight it could be a case of smoke and mirrors. The cloud and mist embrace him. The magician’s sleight of hand plays tricks with our story of faith, contents us with the way we want it to go, makes everything so tidy. Get through the pain and this will happen, a holy moment, well worth waiting for.

And yet the mirror comes from the heights into which we look, and ‘The Kingdom’ he had come to proclaim where, as RS Thomas wrote in his poem of the same name, “There are quite different things going on: festivals at which the poor man is king and the consumptive is healed: mirrors in which the blind look at themselves and love looks at them back.”

When we stop scrolling or flicking left and right, upload the last picture of our Sunday lunch, or retake that selfie again to get our image just right, we can always simply look upwards to find another vision where love looks at us back, where festivals favour the poor, where the consumptive is king.

“It’s a long way off” continued RS Thomas in his poem, “but to get there takes no time and admission is free, if you purge yourself with your need only and the simple offering of your faith, green as a leaf.”

We live in an imaginary instant world where we have no time, and where we expect so much for nothing. Our free socialising on social media actually comes at a cost. One which we are still waiting to discover.

“Why do you stand here looking into heaven?” the dumbfounded apostles are asked by those white robed figures as Jesus disappears from their sight.

It’s a good question. On what do we set our sights? What images do we see? Kittens and cats and furry things and whatever the algorithms define, more unsavoury than the last? Our timelines give testimony to our life in the post modern world. Or do we seek or really savour other things?

There is a place where “there are quite different things going on.”

The Ascension of Jesus lifts us beyond the banal control of others.

Sets our sights above, on Heaven.

Liberates us from the narrow limits of other’s perceptions of who they think we are.

And maybe gives us another view, a different image, of how our life can be.

Traditionally, May is Mary’s month and in many churches and homes throughout the world her image is crowned with a garland of flowers. Accompanied by images of Mary from our churches, we reflect on the part that Mary plays in the life of the Church.

A teenager stands on the stage in front of a few hundred others. He holds a microphone in his hand, looks nervous.

Bishop Lindsay who stands next to him welcomes him, tries to make him feel at ease, looks at the T- shirt he’s wearing. “Iron Maiden. Sounds like a description of Our Lady,” he says. There is laughter.

Mary. The Iron Maiden.

The boy who wears the T-shirt is probably well into his twenties by now, maybe touching thirty! It’s been quite a few years since I’ve been to the Walsingham Youth Pilgrimage. Even then, ten years ago, Iron Maiden had been around for many years even before that teenage lad was born, at a time when I was a teenager too.

Mary has been around for even longer.

The Iron Maiden.

Strong, resilient, constant, dependable.

That’s the image we get from Holy Scripture. Throughout the ministry of Jesus, Mary is a constant presence, experiencing the hardships and the difficulties, sometimes at a distance but never far away. She travels with him. Moves to his momentum.

She is there when Jesus’ family thinks he has gone mad, when they are concerned for his health and well being. Tries to push through the crowd to speak to him.

She is there when he dies. She is broken but resilient. Dependable and loving. An Iron Maiden. The handmaid of the Lord. Submissive to God but stubborn and serious enough to tell the stewards at Cana’s flagship wedding to do whatever he tells them. She orders them to take his orders.

Meanwhile, that teenage lad is stood on the stage at Walsingham’s pilgrimage of the young, ready to tell his story, his own story of faith. We all have a story to tell. Stories connect us. We make stories of our lives. They help us give meaning to who we are. They make us matter.

Mary matters to Jesus. She matters enough that in his dying words he creates a covenant of love in that place of death, gives Mary and John to one another, creates a new community of faith even as his blood pours to the very ground which will envelop him.

Mary’s story continues into the new life being created from the momentum of God’s hand in the world, stirring things up, and telling the even greater story of our Salvation.

Jesus’ resurrection means that more is to come. When the Holy Spirit’s power is poured out on a praying crowd squeezed into a first floor room, she is there, side by side with the Apostles.

Her story is crowned in the life of heaven for which she and we were made.

She hasn’t gone away. Never will.

An Iron Maiden.

Made to last.

The staged teenager tells his story, talks of his life and those moments of faith which mark him, makes connections with those who listen.

I wonder what T-shirts he wears today. And if the Iron Maiden features in his life.

Stubborn, strong, resilient

Pointing us to her Son.

Images of our Lady will be crowned in our churches on Sunday May 5

It’s time for lunch and I’m off to Moorland Community Centre in Splott

As I arrive, I meet a class of school children from Moorland Primary School who have been visiting the Centre. They’ve been doing the Splott rounds recently bringing their own lively vibe wherever they travel.

They had recently called at St Saviour’s Church, chatting away and sharpening up their communication skills – although these children are not shy!

They’ve obviously livened up the Centre this morning, brought a smile to faces. “It’s been really lovely,” was the common consensus.

The Moorland Community Centre has been in its present existence for about 13 years and although COVID hit them hard, they’re still here, providing a welcoming and supportive environment for its members, and a two-course cooked meal every Tuesday to Thursday.

In fact, during the lockdown years they provided an essential service, delivering meals to those unable to leave their homes.

Costing just a few pounds a day to its members, the centre is a lifeline to so many. It’s a quieter day today, they tell me. Thursday’s roast dinner seems to pull in the crowds, and they tell me to make sure I come back soon.

But today, it’s gammon and egg with chipped potatoes and peas, and lots of bread and butter. As I place my knife and fork on the emptied plate and before I can say, “No, thank you” a second helping has been served up. It would be rude not to!

Eating so heavily at lunch time makes me feel rather sleepy. But there’s no appetite for that here. They’re straight onto Bingo, a popular pastime for this particular group of people. But there are other activities planned too, and coach trips and other days out.

“It’s lovely to have a meal cooked for you, especially when you live on your own,” said one of the regulars.

As we sit and eat and chat, the volunteers quickly scurry from table to table. There is busyness in the kitchen, as the meals are served with care and attentiveness, and those who work here are full of enthusiasm and humour.

There is a real community feel, a family feel even. They are looking out for one another, enjoying the friendship.

The site of the centre is planned for redevelopment which means it will be temporarily moved to a different site whilst a new community space, topped by 13 Council flats, will be built.

As a member of the newly constituted Board (along with two other members of St Saviour’s) it’s a privilege to be part of the journey, and to join with the likes of Clarissa and Elza and others who have poured so much into this initiative.

But whatever building it inhabits, the heart of this centre is the people.

I’ll be back soon, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to taste that roast dinner.

Check out Moorland Community Centre’s Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/moorlandcommunitycentre or email them at moorlandcommunity@yahoo.co.uk

“If you don’t have a place at the table then you’re probably on the menu” is a dictum often used by Citizens Cymru.

We’re sat at the table now, Fr Edward and I, which soon fills up with other arrivals. Corrina, Ali and Fiona from Citizens are already there, along with another Ali, the new project officer funded by the Youth Endowment Fund. It’s one of the interventions for an important initiative to help young people in Butetown and Grangetown to flourish, to keep them safe.

We’re at a meeting with other members of the Core Team at Citizens Cymru Action Centre in Loudoun Square.

A number of interventions have already begun. The guys from Foundation for Sports kick off with their updates.

Like Saturday nights at Butetown Pavilion. Sixty or seventy young people aged 13 to 22 years old rolling out sporting opportunities which are accompanied my mentoring groups and workshops dealing with issues which affect young people. The mentoring groups consist of about 9 young people but there are many one-to-ones too.

They’ve had successful Ramadan midnight sessions and for the first time ran sessions where a large number of girls attended, over a hundred.

Waz from Tiger Bay boxing club updates us on the strategy there where extra sessions for learning have been introduced. “No classes, no boxing,” he says.

“How has that been received?” I asked

He laughs. “They don’t like me.”

But it hasn’t reduced the numbers of those who are boxing. It has only served to increase the engagement with education.

Waz is well on his way to establishing a training centre for ‘Tiger Bay Security’ which will increase the chances of winning more contracts, and giving local young people the training and employment opportunities in the security industry.

Ali is engaging with some large companies, like Dwr Cymru, Sustrans and Transport for Wales. He says many local young people have engaged in their recruitment process but none have been employed.

More companies too are signing up to the local Jobs Compact, promising to pay the Real Living Wage, and a website will be launched soon advertising the jobs on offer by employers who have signed up.

This is an impressive group of people with a deep concern and care for those with whom they work.

But there is also a sombre turn of mood as they share some of their concerns and worries, anticipate what could be. We talk about the impact of the recent Section 60 periods introduced by South Wales Police, listen to the experiences of “stop and search.”

This work, funded by the Youth Endowment Fund, has a number of strands. Sports and education, policing, safe streets, mental health to name just a few. It was launched last year at St Mary’s Primary School in the presence of Huw Thomas, the leader of the Council, and Alun Michael, the Police and Crime Commissioner.

South Cardiff Ministry Area has been a member of Citizens Cymru for two years now although we’ve been involved in various campaigns for far longer. It’s an alliance of groups and organisations who work together to bring change.

This initiative is a five year project and whilst many of the interventions are funded, other concerns are tackled by engagement with decision makers, and those who have the ability to make the change needed. We engage with issues as varied as drug litter and floodlights.

The meeting is soon over. An hour is not enough but it’s enough to get a taste of what’s important. They’re already dressed for action, their sportswear emblazonedy with their logos. The table is soon empty. They’re off to do what they’ve been talking about.

For more information about Citizens Cymru visit their website

As the Spring edges us into the gardens, we celebrate some of the outdoor spaces of our churches – how they’re used, what we hope to achieve and how you can get involved.

I write another email reply. It sounds the same as the others. “Sorry, we don’t have a burial ground here.”

We receive many requests from people digging into their family tree. The reports from a century and more ago, often refer to “burial at St Mary’s” but what was really meant was a funeral service here followed by burial in Cathays Cemetery which took the dead of the ancient parish of St Mary’s.

I point them in the right direction, wish them all the best as they dig around their family archives. History and heritage clings to our churches like the ivy which climbs their walls.

Whilst we don’t have any burial grounds attached to our churches, we do have gardens and grounds which often take more maintenance than the buildings. The seasons don’t hold back.

The Seasons of St Mary’s

The lockdown years lent themselves easily to gardening, but as life sped up again, time spent digging around and cutting back became more sparse, and the work of those months has now again succumbed to nature’s rhythms. Time to cut that ivy.

During this time, St Mary’s Wildside was fashioned, a place to care for nature. We created QR audio trails too, one for children, the other for adults, taking you on a reflective journey to consider our responsibility as Christians to care for God’s creation.

Years later, our Wildside needs a little taming, and the area at the front of the church awaits a spell of dryer weather for a slight revamp as we clear areas for raised beds. Time to grow.

A steady stream of people make their way along Bute Street, pulled by the sea and Mermaid Quay with its clutter of cafes and restaurants.

Some are surprised by the church which seems to sneak up on them as they pass the Salvation Army’s Homeless provision next door.

They pause for a moment. Many are struck by the huge crucifix which dominates the gardens, a memorial to the men lost in War. They take a pic and then they’re on their way.

In the Summer, this will become a place for barbecues with the “Great Get Together” Barbecue at the end of Refugee Week, and the Assumptiontide celebrations in August. The gardens are a space to gather.

Meanwhile, a quick scurry away to the other end of the church, characterised by tarmac and parked cars, we’ve reclaimed some space for nature, each year adding more plants which bring in the bees and bugs and lift the human spirit.

From here, you can look across the city’s landscape as cranes pierce the sky. The city builds up, builds out. Slick apartments rise as millions of pounds of investment is sucked up. We take a breath, try to care for what we can’t afford, but which we can’t afford to ignore.

The gardens and grounds and the buildings we inhabit always need some work. The seasons don’t hold back.

A Splott of Colour

Across the way in Splott, a splash of colour brings nature’s touch to Splott Road.

The gardens at St Saviours were first enclosed by railings in 1893, five years after the church was dedicated in 1888.  Two years later the grass lawns were laid. 

The lawns serve us well, and provide a great gathering space for events and activities and, on a sunny day after Mass, the doors are open and children play.

Just like St Mary’s, a central feature of the gardens is the Calvary, the gift of “a good friend’. The original plates containing the full list of men from Splott were unveiled by Lord Tredegar on November 11, 1921. Sadly, more names were to be added from future wars and conflicts.

Whilst it’s not a large garden, we make good use of it, with open lawns for gatherings and events, parts set aside for wildlife with bug and bee houses, and two shrines of Our Lady and St Francis which were installed last year. There’s even a hedgehog home, as we await the first resident.

At the same time, during the “Churches Unlocked Festival,” children from Moorland Primary School planted a living larder with us, a collection of herbs available for anyone to use.

The children also discovered something of the history and heritage of Splott, gazed up to the stained glass windows and the stories they tell, discovered treasures hidden in the walls.

Yes, our churches are places rich in history and heritage, with archives and records and remnants of the past. The human stories are part of our landscape, tell us who we are.

But we are rich too in our natural heritage, and the sense of worth we find when lingering in the garden, when we lean in close to nature, dig around or rest awhile, and wait for that hedgehog to arrive.

If you’d like to contribute to our garden spaces, either by volunteering to help or donating plants and pots and other items, then do get in touch.

St Mary’s first Gardening day take place on Saturday May 11 from 10am to 1230pm