Religious Freedom Prayer Vigil World Cup: ACN-NW: 6 Apathy: Nil

ACN NW Regional Planning Meeting

My first prayer vigils for Religious Freedom aren’t until the end of November (thank you to Wrexham Cathedral and St Francis, LLay--22/23 November--and the Parish of St Mary of Eden in Carlisle--29 November), but I am already making lots of plans. I’ve contacted about twenty venues and most of these are thinking about dates at this point—people seem to be keen to participate. By the time everyone has come on board we are likely to be talking about between fifteen and twenty Prayer Vigils—that’s a lot of prayers being offered all over my region to ask that others be given the chance to worship however they like without fear of punishment. I’m looking forward to these events; they will help to raise awareness and, in a purely selfish way, I will have the chance to meet lots of people and hopefully to forge lots of links between the various parishes and ACN-NW. By the way, my timely (and witty) world cup reference reminds me: have you watched the ACN World Cup themed video on our website? Go on, it won’t take long and is definitely worth a watch!

I promised a bit of a recap of this week in this blog, so here goes. On Monday I touched base with one of our ACN Board Members, Lord David Alton of Liverpool. Lord Alton and I have known him for several years now. We had a very informative meeting—lots of exchange of contacts and ideas—just the sort of thing that I love! Several new ideas for the North West emerged in the course of our hour-long chat; you will hear more about these in due course.( I can’t give everything away all at once—I need to leave some things out or you might not keep reading this blog!) Tuesday was a catch-up morning and the monthly Regional Marketing and Fundraising Meeting that I mentioned in my last post.

Wednesday I went to Scotland to visit Scottish Lorraine to firm up some more details concerning…wait for it…here comes the actual name of our initiative for primary schools…for the first time EVER in print…yes, you saw it here before anyone else…PRAYERS FROM OUR HEARTS! Worth the wait, I hope—we like it and we hope that schools across the North West, North Wales and Scotland will love it!

Yesterday and today were spent on PRAYERS FROM OUR HEARTS (I’m going to continue to capitalise this until my initial excitement begins to wear off!). It’s time to firm everything up, to make lists for the designers and printers, to write and proof all of the texts and to double check the details to make sure that we’ve thought of everything (Scottish Lorraine and I are nothing if not thorough). Yesterday, among other things, I wrote out easy step-by-step instructions for weaving hearts, the craft element of the offering. Later on today my helpful teenage force of volunteers is going to pose for photos to accompany said instructions; my daughter and her friend may well be upstairs doing their nails in preparation even as I type this. I’ll let you see a sample in one of next week’s posts.

I have also begun work in earnest on some new initiatives. I am thinking about various ways in which ACN-NW could work with Farid Georges, a Syrian Orthodox painter from Homs in Syria. Farid is currently living in Germany and he has recently completed a series of paintings inspired by his difficult experiences living as a Christian in his native city over the past couple of years. His images are visually extremely powerful, and coupled with his explanatory texts, they tell a truly heart-breaking story. Can we bring the paintings to the UK? Or maybe create an exhibition that could travel around the North West region? Or maybe a booklet about them? Then there is the Angelus Angels project; how might that work? Will it work?  See what it’s like to be inside my head with zillions of ideas floating around all of the time? Thanks heavens that I am not in this alone—my colleagues at ACNUK HQ are always there to help me think things through. Stick with my blog to see how these ideas (and, no doubt, lots of others!) develop over the coming months. And let’s not forget the Seminarian Challenge and next year’s Prayer Vigils for Vocations and opening up dialogues with universities in my region …

Job done!

Two computers are better than one

Three (yes, three!) pictures accompany this entry. All come from my meeting in Scotland on Wednesday. My favourite is the final one that sums up our meeting: we had jam donuts and chocolate and crisps AND Lorraine gave me some pens to take home (the ACN-NW staff goes through pens like nobody’s business!). The Scottish office puts on a much better meeting than ACN-NW. I must raise my game in future!

Thanks for reading!  Caroline