Orison

Orison's second Celebrating RE Month event was a week at The Littlehampton Academy. We worked with the Chaplain at the school, as well as a fantastic team of volunteers, including Jon Jolly who writes about the week on his blog:

Here are some of the prayers and questions written by pupils visiting the Orison room at Kings of Wessex School, Cheddar

The prayer space is a converted geography classroom. RE classes from years 9 and 10 visit the space. The bubble tube and surrounding chill-out zone is in the middle, with Sorry, Image and World zones around the edge. As the room is smaller than we've had in the past, the classes come in half-groups for half a lesson, while the rest of the pupils spend the time in the classroom discussing the questions they would like to ask God, and then the ways in which he might answer. We've also welcomed visiting year 3 and 4 classes from local first schools.

Following our week at St Peter's, this report was published in their termly newsletter. You can read the report below, or download the newsletter from the school website.

The prayers on the bubble tube reveal the depths of what's going through these young people's minds.

• that when my mum drinks, she won't get aggressive towards me.
• that my grandad will survive his operation
• that my grandma will finally agree to come and live near us
• help my two friends who are really struggling
• can you please help me get some money before Sunday
• take away her pain please lord
• why does things like this happen? Make it better
• how long will it take for me to learn how to listen to your amazing voice?
• please may you tell me why I am unique
• I wish my mum would listen to me more. I also wish that I could spend more time with her in the week, not just at weekends
• help me to forgive as readily as you have forgiven me
• help me to get over what has happened in my life and help me find out what is wrong with me

These are just a small sample of what's written on the hundreds of post-it notes in here every day. It's an amazing privilege to be able to offer space for these kids to think through this stuff, in a safe place .