The last Benedictine departs
Most folk take dogs for a walk, some take cats… but very few take life-size model monks.
Passers-by smiled incredulously today, as ‘Brother Luke’, temporarily resident in the Priory for Lifepath, was carefully but unceremoniously trundled through the churchyard, firmly strapped to a trolley. He was returning home to his summer residence, in Malvern Museum (the original Priory Gatehouse and well worth a visit), which had kindly loaned him for the week.
Other than the odd bead wedged between the floorboards from the Good News Bracelets and the wonderful display of children’s prayers written on paper leaves and petals and the prayer loom in St Giles’ Chapel, you wouldn’t really know that Lifepath had even been in the Priory.
For as soon as the end of day briefing and prayers were over yesterday, the Team, fuelled by six varieties of homemade cake, tea and coffee, started the mammoth task of putting everything back into its usual place.
Many hands made light work. Kneelers were shifted in wobbling piles, plants carefully carried to cars, chairs unstacked and laid out in the nave, the floor vacuumed, the piano returned to its place, mounds of habits (black and white ‘don’t wash them together!’) taken for washing, craft activities packed away, the Monastery Kitchen bowls carefully stacked and the Lifepath Control Centre table dismantled.
Amazingly, in around two hours everything was back in place…except for Brother Luke, who stayed just one more night in St Anne’s Chapel where he’d been contributing to the Mediaeval Monasteries Activity.
