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Phil Mercer
BBC Radio Berkshire, Phil here with Sunday Breakfast Show. Thank you for tuning in.
Now, if you're a new boss, how do you get to know all the teams that you lead? Maybe you can pop in for a cuppa, but I can imagine that's quite difficult to do all of them, especially when there are something like 180 places to go to. The new Bishop of Reading has come up with a rather different way of learning about her teams. And she joins me now, the right Reverend Mary Gregory. Very good morning to you. Thank you for coming on. You enjoy a bit of crochet is that right?
Bishop Mary
I really enjoy making things. So I did learn crochet once, but it's not a regular for me, but I knit. I do bit of cross stitch, but my big love is making quilts.
Phil
Wow, okay.
Bishop Mary
I'm somebody who loves color, I'm not really a person who wears very much black at all and that translates into my love of quilts. I love the process of choosing colors and designing quilts. Quite a few of my friends have got quilts because I've made many more quilts than I've got beds.
Phil
Fantastic. Okay, now you've come up with a scheme which is, I think, ambitious.
Bishop Mary
So I have 180 churches on my patch. So I thought, what is a way of representing them in a quilt? And the answer is I'm making 180 fabric hearts, which will tessellate, they'll join together. And I'm going to arrange them in the kind of the long thin shape that is my area. So 180 hearts, one for every church that I care for and I'm getting to love.
Phil
Wow. How big are we talking? A few centimeters or...?
Bishop Mary
So I reckon each heart is two and a half inches high. This is going to hang on the wall in my office, and I reckon it will be about a metre and a half.
Phil
That's still quite impressive. Is this going to take many years to achieve?
Bishop Mary
It'll take a few months because it's all hand stitched. The hearts are of different colors so that together they make kind of what I hope will be a beautiful impression. I have to say that one of my colleagues, the Archdeacon, is kind of a bit mystified by me doing this. I think he's probably not going to make the quilt anytime soon.
As I make these hearts, I am praying a bit for the people that I'm working with and getting to know because, you know, these are people who are doing amazing things in their context, often facing really big challenges. So in a way, it's a way of me kind of thinking about them and praying for them as I make it. But I don't want people to think I'm being ultra spiritual because I often do this watching telly as well.
Phil
Even bishops watch TV.
Bishop Mary
So I'm kind of three quarters of the way through it. I can send into the radio station a picture when it's done.
Phil
Yeah, okay, I look forward to seeing that.
Bishop, just very quickly, thank you. We had our Make a Difference Awards ceremony this week, and you were one of our judges, and I have to say it was a place that was a little special to me.
So you chose The Engine Shed, a community-run group. It's got a massive train set. It's got more than one. It's got lots of train sets. But the idea is that children and parents of the children, I think, with various neurodiversities and challenges, can go there, and they've just got one thing in common which is they quite like trains, and then it just this magic happens around that - a chance to talk, just to not worry about the stresses and strains and things like that.
Thank you for picking The Engine Shed. It was a wonderful, wonderful day. It must have been quite a difficult challenge I think to pick one though out of the many, many nominations you had to face.
Bishop Mary
It was really difficult. And you know how in award ceremonies it becomes a bit of a cliche when people say, well, everyone would be a worthy winner and it was really hard to choose. But actually, in the little video I made, I found myself saying those things because every single one of them had something wonderful to commend them.
But in the end, The Engine Shed, it just appealed to me. It's so quirky in a way and unexpected that train sets would make space for people who live with neurodivergence and bring so much color to the world through their neurodivergence actually. And I just love the fact that it's a very local community project, but I understand that it's caught the imagination of somebody in America who's donated things to it.
It feels to me so human. And I love the fact that people who have this vision just went out and did it. And now, It's a place of sanctuary for young people, their parents, their grandparents. And I really want to visit. So if anyone's listening from The Engine Shed, would you please invite me?
Phil
Sarah's listening, who runs The Engine Shed, she pays great attention at the moment so probably the invite will be in the post, I'm pretty sure.
Bishop Mary, thank you very much, good luck with all the the stitching. Did you say three quarters of the way in? That's not too much further to go.
Bishop Mary
I'm about three quarters of the way in, so just a bit of technical working out how to hang it and then I'll send you a photo.
Phil
Thank you very much, Bishop Mary there. It's BBC Radio Berkshire.
