A day in Manchester

10.00-11.00

Tom: Tom arrives in Rainbow Haven, a project mostly for refugees and asylum seekers. Some kids are messing around with Tom’s shoelaces while he sorts out a doctor’s appointment for an Iraqi refugee. Tom spends a while playing with the kids – he’s just a big baby at heart, but only the other children notice.

11.00-12.00

Sarah: The Welcome Centre rents a church hall for two days a week. I and 8 other volunteers get all of our equipment out of storage and set up the tables, chairs and information stalls. The Welcome Centre has a lot of volunteers. Most are asylum seekers living locally. They are not allowed to work. Some have been waiting to hear the outcome of their asylum applications for seven years or more. In both my placements I have noticed that the dividing line between volunteers, clients and staff is very thin – and owes a lot to chance and circumstance.

Aura: People are excited today – they were talking about the TV show where there was15 minutes of fame for Loaves & Fishes and for some of our clients. They showed our new kitchen and a millionaire who gave it to our drop-in centre. One and a half an hour I spend in a kitchen by serving tea, coffee and washing dishes.

Julia: I arrive to the Prison Visitors’ Centre before 10. It will be my first working day there because of all the police clearences, which needed two months to be done. I have some induction and read some leaflets about drug problems, the effects of drinking on unborn babies, and having a family member in prison. Nearly nothing is happening because in the mornings there are only legal visits

12.00-13.00

Julia: Lunch (a nice tuna and salad sandwich), and some socialisation: a volunteer has her 70^th birthday so we even have some chocolate cake, too.

13.00-14.00

Sarah: Visitors are wrapping shoeboxes in Christmas paper and filling them with gifts for children. Every child who visits the Centre in the week before Christmas will be given one of these boxes.

Julia: The gate has been opened for the family members. I sit at the reception desk with another volunteer and watch how the booking process is going on. When nobody is coming I write some new information into the Visitors’ Handbooks, and read the booklets about prison life.

14.00-15.00

Aura: There was one woman who quarrelled with another client. Helen calmed them down. It emerged that woman got angry because she was on a TV yesterday and none behaved with her like with a star. :)

We decided to sort donated clothes in a clothes store. There were some clients who wanted to buy some clothes.

Tom: Tom and a young refugee from Africa eat a late lunch and chat. They play a bit of basketball with  a refugee from Iran who also volunteers at the project. Tom is not good at basketball, and loses the game.

15.00-16.00

Sarah: A manicurist, masseuse and mendhi (henna hand painting) artist are at the Centre today and I am offered (and accept!) a neck massage and a henna painting on my left hand. I can’t bend my left hand until the henna dries so I go and help out in the café, making hot drinks for visitors. Some regular visitors, who I helped to enrol their children into a local school in previous weeks, arrive and I chat with them for a while to see how things are going.

Tom: Amanda (a staff member) and Tom talk with a woman from Somalia who has been given refugee status in the UK. She’s located her three missing children in Ethiopia, but the UK government has refused to re-unite the family. She is very upset, and doesn’t understand why the government can be so cruel…

16.00-17.00

Sarah: The Centre closes at 4.30 so I help clear up then catch the bus home. There have been 65 visitors today.

17.00-18.00

Julia: The others ask about the “prison” (which, in fact, I haven’t even seen), and seem to be a bit satisfied when I tell them that it was pretty boring. They all have had boring days already, unlike me.

Tom: Tom looks up a recipe for dinner, after seeing that nobody has been shopping and the random ingredients that we have are not going to make a “nutritious and tasty meal”. He settles on some new Indian food with lentils and rice, but out of compassion for Julia and Aura he will remove every trace of chilli or spice from it.

18.00-19.00

Sarah: I knit and pray. Not at the same time!

19.00-20.00

Julia: Dinner together. I like it. J Even the cleaning after makes some fun if it’s done together.

20.00-21.00

Sarah: Thursday evening is set aside for faith sharing. We sit down in the living room with a fresh pot of tea and our pudding. We only eat pudding on faith sharing days or when the community partners bring it. During sharing we each have an opportunity to tell the others what has been going on for us over the last week, how we have felt about things and whatever else seems appropriate at the time. This is one of my favourite things we do together. Although it can be hard, I find that it fills me with love and compassion for my community.

Julia: We have sharing tonight. It begins quite slowly, nobody wants to start but then we just come into practice, and talk about things we found good/bad/interesting etc. during the last weeks. I slowly realise my ‘complaining mood’ – the recognition doesn’t make me happy but at least helps to cope with it.

Tom: Faith sharing: the best part of the week! This is personal: I usually don’t know what I’m going to say until I open my mouth, and often I talk a lot more than the others because I ramble lots. It helps me to think, and it helps the others to get bored! I find it very frustrating when we hide our feelings in community (I am very much to blame), because it’s only on Thursday that I actually discover what someone was thinking on Monday! But for me, the sharing is a time of real community and communion: we can talk, share, break bread (or ice cream), and really connect.

21.00-22.00

Sarah: After talking we pull a question out of the box – these are discussion topics relevant to faith-sharing. Today the question is ‘What is the biggest obstacle in your relationship with God at the moment?

Aura: We end up with ‘Our Father’ and a hug when I had to tiptoe for taking as much comfort as I could from our hug.

Julia: I find the “question of the week” difficult but still want to speak – and shortly after it turns out that it was worth trying to answer. The others are really sympathising and it already makes me feel better.

22.00-23.00

Julia: Evening ritual: two or three of us are usually brushing their teeth at the same time. I like it.

A Community Somewhere Else by ALAN SMITH

While all JVC volunteers are expected to experience and come to understand the value of community through the community in which they live in, I am perhaps in an unusual situation since I also have the opportunity to experience it through one of my two placements. I spend three days of my week working in a rather unusual Methodist church which is entitled ‘Somewhere Else’, situated above a radical bookshop called ‘News from Nowhere’. Set up around six years ago by the Reverend Barbara Glasson to provide a Methodist presence in Liverpool city centre, it has aimed at creating a fresh expression of church: worship is primarily based around the making of bread with whoever turns up. A very simple and rather odd idea, but having been there for two months now I have found that it does provide a genuine alternative form of worship, and has given me insight into a different expression of community.

My role at Somewhere Else is primarily as a facilitator for the bread-making: in between making rolls for lunch and loaves for orders and extra bread to take home to my first community, I have to welcome people when they start coming in; whether just a handful trickle in, or a couple dozen descend upon us en masse – whoever God sends that day – and try to guide them through the process of making bread through to them receiving the finished product. As well as this, I and the other volunteers and workers attempt to keep the group moving along smoothly. We try to make sure everyone is included, and to look out for any potential conflicts arising, as in any community there can be some more volatile personalities, or people who do not understand social cues – and there certainly some of these at Somewhere Else.

Bread-makers – our congregation – start arriving at 10:30. They can include people with learning disabilities and their helpers, homeless people, lonely people, people on the fringes of the church, abused people, young adults with problems, and those who are simply curious. The dynamics are constantly changing, which adds to the interest and the challenge of my role. Maybe after a quick cup of tea they will come to the table – we all work around the same table together– with their ingredients. They put honey, yeast and water in their jug, and have flour, oil and salt in their bowl. Waiting for the yeast to activate provides one of the convenient moments of calm when people can begin to see who is around them. Then they add the yeast mixture to the flour, and after mixing in some more water, can start kneading their dough. The interesting thing at this stage is that while you concentrate and put effort into such an activity with your hands, you feel comfortable to talk to whoever is working next to you at the table, or opposite you. It takes the pressure off. Working with your hands is in itself therapeutic (and receiving the fruits of one’s labours also gives satisfaction at the end), but it also seems to take your mind off worries or nerves you might otherwise have, and so frees you to interact. If I were just thrown into a room with all these completely random people, who I would be unlikely to meet elsewhere, I myself would cower away in a corner. I suspect many people who are apparently more confident would stick to more superficial conversation. But in such an environment you don’t have to say anything, and that too is fine – if you don’t feel like talking, if you just want to concentrate on your dough alone, you do not feel like you are standing alone in the middle of a room full of people. At the same time you are not invisible: you are still there, and part of the group.
After kneading the dough for a while it is ready for the proving oven so that it can rise. This provides another break often necessary after the exertion, then it is back to kneading before the dough is moulded into the desired shape, is put in the proving oven for a second time, and then baked. I can feel a little tense when I have to keep track of what is where, and for how long, so our bread-makers have another break. Those who wish to can go to prayers, which I have led on a few occasions now, and can be quite touching at times, but it is entirely optional. After prayers we all have lunch together. Often a few extra people who turn up for the lunch rolls that have been made along with a bowl of home-made soup. By 2 o’clock everyone has collected their bread and left.

So at Somewhere Else I am part of a community, and a very enjoyable one. It is a Eucharistic Christian community in that we share the bread and worship together. While highly unusual, in many ways it is a far more authentic realisation of church than many “normal” churches. It is certainly far more welcoming, especially compared to other churches in Britain, which can quite often seem cold, and have little community to speak of in spite of the fact the model of early church was precisely a communal one. It is also very inclusive and non-judgemental.

It is, however, a transient community: everyone leaves at the end of the day; people are merely passing through. I will be gone in eight months time. At this level it is obviously a lot less demanding than being in a JVC community, but it wouldn’t work if we were always together – to some extent coerced – vulnerable people simply wouldn’t risk taking part. However, the transient nature is part of the purpose of Somewhere Else: people can spiritually re-charge there to the extent they need before moving on with their lives. We do not want to mould people to the bread-church model; rather, it is moulded by those who visit and does not make any claim to being the one true model of church.

So how can Somewhere Else help us to understand community? In its essence what goes on there is incredibly simple: it is about being together in a safe environment. Whether one chooses to talk to others or not, one is there, and is acknowledged. You help constitute the collective, but are not sub-ordinate to it – you genuinely own it. Somehow – I don’t think I could explain it, or it could be explained – in the middle of the madness of the bread-making, and calms during its pauses, you start to see people as they really are – as valuable, as loved by God, in spite of whatever “disabilities” they may have, or how different from you they are.

Of course, while I have heard other people talk of the energy they gain from our community, I come from a particular position of working there. But this can tell us more, I think. While I might be considered to have authority, and I have the knowledge which others do not – I do not feel myself to be above anyone there; I feel like a member of the community at the same level as everyone else. I probably gain as much from being there as a member of the community as anyone else does. This egalitarian nature of Somewhere Else is especially clear to me in comparison to my work with asylum seekers: while there I am far less important, and can feel like a small cog in the machine, I also feel that I am in some respect set apart from the clients. So my work in the bread-church is very much as servant ministry, and I think this is a sign of a true church.
And at the same time as having said it is so enjoyable, it is not something which comes without effort: it is a constant effort on everyone’s behalf. There are many conflicts and challenges to be surmounted. A safe environment must be maintained, and we need to stop people from over-stepping lines which they might not even have noticed. However, at the same time, even when this is done, the eventual outcome is not something one could predict would be achieved. Perhaps this can be taken as a sign that God is in our presence, leading us on our way.

While I hope I have given a good impression of Somewhere Else, I don’t think that I could ever do it justice, so I hope JVC volunteers can all have the opportunity to come to Liverpool and visit it at some stage, and see what an amazing community it is.

Alan Smith volunteered at Somewhere Else from September 2006 till July 2007 and went on to live in a L’arche community in Liverpool