Page 61 - Phonebox Magazine September 2008

Churches Together in Newport Pagnell
Moderator’s Letter
I want to begin by extending a very warm welcome to Fr Joseph Williams who comes to us from Biggleswade to Our Lady of Lourdes and the Church of Christ the Cornerstone. At the same time we say goodbye to Fr Andy Ollard, who is leaving Milton Keynes to spend some time in reflection and retreat in the States. We wish him well as he continues his journey further afield, and pray for both Joseph and Andy as they begin new stages of their ministry.
During the summer I had the pleasure of accompanying Fr Andy to visit the Villa Savoye in Poissy, just outside Paris. Designed and built in the twenties as a summer villa by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier for the Savoye family, it stands in glorious grounds and is now protected as a national monument. The curator described how the villa tries to express something of Le Corbusier's thinking of a home as a ‘temple domestique’, which lifts and inspires the life and living of 'modern man'.
I was very struck by what I saw, and came away asking myself in what senses our own homes these days have become ‘domestic temples’. When I look around my own home, I find that I have candles in some of my rooms - in the hearth in my living room, in the dining
room when I have guests, and even in the bathroom. Many of them look very much like religious candles, and, it seems, I have in one sense brought the environment of the church into my home. I have been interested too to think about some of the music which many of us play in our homes: at one time Gregorian chant was something heard in a monastery, but now, thanks to technology, we listen happily to such music as we sit on the sofa with a glass of wine in our hand. When I was a child, I attended a church where above the cross was a stained glass window with the words ‘Peace, be Still’, suggesting to me that peace was something which belonged to worship in church. Now most lifestyle magazines talk easily about the need for creating ‘peace’ in the sitting room. Although most homes nowadays have no space for a family Bible on display, nonetheless, with the privatisation of spirituality, we have brought the paraphernalia and ‘feel’ of the worship- space into our homes.
The most extraordinary thing for me about the Villa Savoye, however, is the striking resemblance it bears to Our Lady of Lourdes Church! (See picture). Our Lady of Lourdes was built in the 1970s, some 50 years after Le Corbusier's masterpiece, and the architects of the building in Coffee Hall must have had the villa in mind when Our Lady of Lourdes
was bult. The dimensions of Our Lady of Lourdes are the same as the villa, the church is built on stilts, the floor tiles are the same size and colour, the rooms interconnecting. In following the design of the villa, the architects of the church in Coffee Hall may well have had a sense of designing a home for the church appropriate to lifting and inspiring the life and living of the population of Milton Keynes.
Their use of a ‘home’ as a model for a church building invites us to ask how homely our churches are, and how homely it is appropriate for them to be. Perhaps the removal of old pews from some of our older churches in favour of comfortable chairs is one indication of the way in which we have tried to make our churches more homely and accessible – not to mention the installation of toilets, carpeting, heating and lighting! But underlying the whole of this question is the one about the connection between our buildings and our behaviour. How do our buildings shape us – as communities and as people? And how do they help us encounter the God who is with us in every place, even in the darkest corners? The next time you light a candle on your hearth, or you enter your place of worship, ask yourself the question!!
Mary Cotes
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Phonebox Magazine 61