Welcome to the Garden Congregation RU-vid Channel!
Thank you for joining us!
This is a recording of a service at which Dean Robert preached on the subject of the resurrection and the most obvious sign of its authenticity. Fletcher and Robert would like to thank Fr Justin (sadly away taking a baptism in another of his six churches that morning) and Fr Ian, who took the service beautifully, as well and Lord and Lady Plymouth, Ivor and Caroline Windsor-Clive (on whose estate the church sits), for their hospitality.
The Garden Congregation:
When the Archbishop decided to close all churches to their clergy because of the Covid pandemic in March 2020, in addition and separately to the closure of churches to their congregations - which did make sense to stop the spread of the virus - the then Dean, Robert Willis, although not governed by the Archbishop (Deans of medieval cathedrals are crown appointments and sit outside of the church and are effectively on the same level as their bishop to serve as a check and balance to them), decided that out of loyalty to his fellow clergy he would also stop broadcasting from inside the cathedral. Instead he and his partner Fletcher held a daily communion inside the cathedral each day in a rotation of different chapels to ensure the tradition of a daily service which dates back to the time of Augustine was upheld and unbroken and also took to filming daily services and book readings in their garden through to May 2022. Usually joined each day by at least one of their cats (Monkey, Lilly, Tiger or Leo) and a whole host of their own menagerie from pigs and chickens to hedgehogs and newts and whilst sitting in the gardens through all seasons, this is a wonderful way to switch off and meditate whilst listening to a mix of poetry, recitals, current affairs, music - and of course the daily psalms and readings from the bible which are then explored and unpicked by Dean Robert. The original intention by Fletcher was to connect with "one or two members of our community who might be feeling lonely" and they could not have known that they would in fact connect with hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths and none from every part of the world who named themselves the Garden Congregation. Although initially the broadcasts were all on the cathedral website and other platforms, when they were unexpectedly caused to leave Canterbury, Fletcher transferred their approx 950 films to this new site so that they might still be enjoyed by anyone in the future.
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28 сен 2024
