Nicene #1: Oldhaven

After Mass,

Margaret

stays behind.

Beyond the church windows,

the harbour at Oldhaven

lies beneath a low northern sky.

A handful of fishing boats

rise and fall with the tide.

The North Sea stretches beyond,

grey as memory.

The church settles into silence.

She gathers the sacred vessels

from the altar

and carries

them into the sacristy.

The chalice bears the faint marks

of a hundred hands.

She polishes it carefully,

the way Mrs Donnelly taught her

more than forty years ago.

Mrs Donnelly is buried now.

Most of the women who taught her

are buried now.

Above the safe

hang rows of photographs.

Parish fêtes.

First Communions.

Coach trips to Walsingham.

Tom appears in one of them,

dark-haired,

broad-shouldered,

grinning as though the world

might never run out of good days.

Around him,

children in choir robes,

young families,

faces carrying futures

still unknown.

Margaret studies them.

The little girl holding the banner.

The altar server

with ears too large for his head.

The shy one who sang like an angel.

Where did they all go?

Do their grandchildren

know the prayers?

Do they know why people kneel?

Last Christmas,

her youngest grandson asked her.

Not mockingly.

Simply curious.

As though the answer belonged

to another country.

Margaret tried to explain.

Something about reverence.

Something about mystery.

Yet the words felt awkward.

Like translating a language

she once spoke fluently.

Outside,

the fishing fleet is smaller now.

Another young man died from drugs

during the winter.

The doctor’s surgery

never answers the phone.

People seem tired.

Anxious.

Angry.

As though we have learned

how to argue

and forgotten how to hope.

She places the chalice in the safe

and turns the key.

Then stands for a moment

among the photographs.

Among the dead.

Among the living.

Among all those faces

who prayed,

laughed,

buried their loved ones,

and said the Creed.

Soon enough,

the congregation will stand again.

The old fisherman.

The Polish family.

Margaret.

And together they will say:

I believe in one God.

The Church says I.

Yet every time she speaks it

she hears her mother’s voice.

And her grandmother’s.

And Tom’s.

And all those voices

caught forever in the photographs.

The solitary

‘I’

opening into something larger.

A hidden ‘we’.

Outside,

the tide is turning.

The gulls circle above the harbour.

And in the sacristy,

beneath photographs

of saints and sinners,

pilgrims and parishioners,

a small red lamp burns

before the tabernacle,

holding its ground

against the dark.

Next week,

another priest will lift the chalice.

Another wafer will be broken.

Another fragment of heaven

placed upon waiting tongues.

And the same Christ

who fed her mother,

and her grandmother,

who fed Tom,

who fed the children

smiling in the photographs,

will give himself once more

for the life of the world.

—-

Rev’d Jon Swales, June 2026

Nicene #1

Photo: St Peter’s Balsall Common,

tweaked using prequel.