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At Watchet Harbour on the north coast of Somerset stands possibly the smallest Police Station in the world. Certainly I’ve never seen one this tiny before. It’s just a door and a small window wide and has the grand title ‘Watchet Harbour Police Post’. If you know of a smaller police building anywhere in the world, please let me know in the comments section below.
However, a quick Google search turned up an even smaller one in Trafalgar Square, London. So Watchet has already lost its brief claim to fame! Read more about the Trafalgar Square example. However, the London claimant is no longer used by the Police, so Watchet might still claim to have the smallest working police station in the UK.
International claimants
Florida also has a claim to the smallest working police station and it’s certainly much smaller than the police post in Watchet. Like the London version, Florida’s is sheltered by a tree.
I suppose it’s possible there’s a smaller one somewhere else in the world, but if so it must be so tiny that you’d need a smaller than average police officer to occupy it.
This is a bit different. You can’t measure a church in terms of how wide or long it is. Churches are measured in terms of how many people are meeting. Jesus once said, ‘Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I’ll be there with them’. So the smallest church must be a meeting of two people (three if you include Jesus). That’s because church is not a building at all (although we often call a place where followers of Jesus meet ‘a church’. Is it still a church if the people have all gone home? No. Why? Because church is a community, not a building. Two people is the smallest possible community. We don’t always think of church as a community, but we should. If it’s not a community can it really be church at all?
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click to enlarge
This is the same river as the previous post, the River Great Ouse. That previous image captured a view from St Neots in Cambridgeshire; this one is from further upstream in Bedford.
The swans you see here are doing what swans do. They pair for life, but they also congregate in larger social groups (known as a bevy). When a swan dies and leaves a lonely partner, the remaining swan will often bond with a new mate.
In this sense swans are very like humans; we usually form lasting male/female pairs and in the same way, if one partner dies, the other will often (sooner or later) find a new partner. But there is a significant difference: swans act on instinct. We do too, but in humans there are additional layers. I can think of at least two – culture and reasoning.
Culture
Human culture is habitual behaviour; it may differ greatly from population to population. It’s easy to find differences between a Western wedding, an Indian wedding, an Afghan wedding, and a Japanese wedding. We could easily extend that list. There are also differences (though more subtle) between a French wedding, a US wedding, and a Polish wedding. And there will be still other differences between Anglican, Catholic, Baptist and Pentecostal weddings. Swans have nothing remotely like this, in fact they don’t have weddings at all. All of the foregoing is cultural; it’s a human layer overlying the instinctive animal processes of bonding, producing offspring and helping them grow safely to adulthood. There’s some evidence for elements of culture in certain birds, and some primates, and in some whales and dolphins – but well below the levels seen in human populations.
Reasoning
This is another layer but again, it’s mostly limited to human populations. It’s reasoning that enables us to have governments, science, technology of almost unlimited variety from farming and construction to ships, railways, aircraft and computers. Reasoning involves observation, drawing conclusions, finding ways of persuading others, differentiating between what works and what does not, making choices, and planning ahead. Again, you can see glimmerings of reasoning in some birds, some mammals, and in the octopus.
Faith
Faith seems to have no place whatsoever for swans, chimps, or any other creature on the planet. Faith draws on elements of both culture and reasoning, yet it’s not defined by either and is not dependent on either. It’s unique to humans. You’ll find quite lot on this website concerning faith one way or another; I won’t write about it further here, but I’ll leave a few suggested links below.
Conclusion
From observing a group of elegant birds on a river, we have thought about things that groups of people and groups of animals have in common, and how our abilities rise to at least two higher planes above the level attained by almost all other animals.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.
Click to enlarge
Before moving to Cirencester in April 2017, we lived for many years in St Neots, Cambridgeshire. One of the things I miss most (and there are several) is the River Great Ouse passing right through the centre of the town. This photo was taken from the town bridge; while looking ninety degrees to the right would reveal the Market Square, just a hundred metres away.
I like this photo because it has so much interest packed into one scene. You might not see the geese at first; they form a small in-line flotilla at the bottom right. The reflections in the water are lovely, and the surface rippled enough to add a sense of movement. The willow on the bank is typical of the trees in the Riverside Park which is out of sight but stretches behind and to the left from this position. The tree also divides the buildings along the river bank; they stand where the medieval priory once was, and the modern building to the left of the tree is ‘The Priory Centre’, the town’s major meeting and activity centre where Open Door Church used to meet on Sunday mornings. In the far distance you can just make out the Marina.
From priory to a new church building
While we’re thinking about the medieval Priory and the modern Priory Centre we might also think about the way church has changed since the year 313 AD. Prior to that year, the expectation was that church meant people gathering in homes without formal leaders like bishops, deacons, elders, pastors, popes, priests, rectors or vicars. There were informal leaders, confusingly with some of the same words being used to describe them – apostles, deacons, elders, evangelists, prophets, shepherds and teachers. But Christianity was illegal, persecuted, and therefore often hidden from public view.
When Christianity was legalised in 313 AD, and made the state religion in 380 AD, everything changed. It’s possible that by that time, burgeoning, even explosive growth in Christianity had reduced worship in the Classical Greco-Roman temples to a low ebb. The buildings were expensive to maintain, and the solution would have seemed obvious, legalise Christianity, hand over the buildings for Christian use, let them modify them for their new function, pay the maintenance costs, and manage the administration. Problem solved for the Roman state.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
Journeys of Heart and Mind 