This time last year I was preparing to ‘love bomb’ the villages in which I lived and served as the village vicar. It had been a difficult time to minister, to be the parish priest: lockdown and pandemic had limited our ability to do church. People were still craving contact and affection and the affirmation that they were loved. People, parishioners, who had struggled with isolation, or had been ill, or bereaved of a loved one, still needed us to be church.

I also knew that I would be leaving before the year was out, although this was not yet public knowledge. My heart was beginning to break, just a little, and with Valentine’s Day looming I wanted to do something which would bring a touch of love and joy to those who would otherwise find the day quite demoralising.

I began to fiddle with scraps of fabric, odd buttons, and pieces of ribbon whilst binge watching the latest Netflix offering with family, and managed to create some rather passable hanging hearts. I approached some of the more creative members of our church family and the local knit and natter group, and together we created over 300 hearts.

This was to be my farewell gift to the villages who had shown such love to our family over the years. We’d had some difficult times too, some differences of opinions, some frustrations, some times of not feeling heard… such is life in ministry. We had also been on the receiving end of such generosity and kindness too.

Between the late hours of the 13th and the early hours of the 14th, these beautifully hand created hearts were hung from gate posts and trees, doorknobs and hedgerows, packaged with a copy of the Father’s Love Letter. I had such positive feedback from people who had needed a pick-me-up and these made-with-love hearts were the very thing.

A year on and I have found myself making hearts again, even using the same cardboard pattern which somehow made it with us when we moved out of the Rectory.

These hearts are part of a new adventure though, not a farewell thanksgiving for what has been. Each Petite Retreat finishes with a small gift for each of our guests, and what could be more perfect for our Live in Love retreat than a homemade heart?