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Assessing Risk or Fearing Failure?
Claire Turner
As people arrive, they notice that the space has been set up
differently. Gone are the tables which are normally laden with
colouring pencils and in their place, set on a square of foam
playmats, sits a paddling pool whose base is covered in two inches
of warm water.
As people arrive, there is a sense of anticipation – something
different is happening, the lack of tables to sit behind means we
are exposed. We can see each other. We are together. There is also
some confusion, and a lot of noise. It is unclear if all the people who
have signed up to be baptised are present or have changed their
minds. Godparents are missing. Godparents need baptising. But
we, thirty-six people who, two years ago were not a worshipping
community, sit in the round, we breathe, we smile at one another
– all will be well.
I introduce the service – the roller banner outlining our liturgy,
the moments when we seek to reach down to root ourselves in
the deep rhythms and practices of Christian tradition, stands
quietly in the corner. We muddle through the declarations and
the affirmation of faith which together, we have been practising,
learning, repeating over the last weeks and months. I kneel by the
inflatable pool, I raise my hands, and I pray. Using the authorised,
traditional words of the Anglican liturgy, I pray in hope that the
water held by this ordinary, everyday object, on the floor of a
rundown community centre, on an outer estate becomes for us a
sign of all God has done, is doing and will do in the lives of those
it touches. Children cry, more people arrive, someone perches on
the snooker table filling in baptism certificates, the smell of baked
potatoes drift across the space.
And then a child, vulnerable in all the ways, takes off their
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