Sundays

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton,_West_Sussex

Today we went to church. We manage to get organized enough to do this most Sundays and the whole family likes it. To be honest church wasn't a big part of my life growing up in England. We occasionally went to church with my Dad or as part of a school function but we certainly were not members. Church was significant to my childhood memories as a place that you visited as part of a Sunday afternoon walk or to see some interesting old gravestones or a kissing gate. The church we liked best was Clayton Parish church (see link) which was really really old - about eleventh century and had the double benefit of having a park on one side and the rolling South Downs on the other where my imaginative sister and I (not so imaginative) used to play dragons by an old tree which really did look like a dragon.

Nominally my English family was Church of England and my hybrid British-American family is Methodist so today's very short talk with the kids was to describe a service I attended once as a student at Christmas time at King's College, Cambridge. Now this is not an ordinary C of E church by any stretch of the imagination but I think they liked the fact that they could imagine what it looked like thanks to the first few minutes of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie which features the chapel. Child #3 lasted perhaps 30 seconds into the memories of angelic alto voices bouncing off the Medieval gables of the roof before going off to play cars but the girls sat out the full minute and a half quick recollection of describing being in a place which has heard so much music and so many hopes and prayers over hundreds of years before they went off to more interesting diversions!

Perhaps had better stick to English cake for a while and watching Harry Potter or Avalon High for our daily dose of Englishness!