Blank canvas

After a morning spent polishing and dusting in the newly-renovated Holy Trinity Church, Dunoon, I chose this picture of the narthex to symbolise what I see as the chance to start again with our worship spaces. We haven't had services in this area for a while, but the sight of its bare walls, with the scabby plaster and rotting woodwork all gone, made me think of tiny Orthodox chapels in the Cretan countryside and of the basic dignity of the stone without our efforts to civilise and tame it.

The dingy plasterwork was depressing. This is not. And I think it says something about how I see the purpose of places of worship, and what it is we worship in them.