A poem by Stephen Jackson:

There is a kind of knowledge that’s a feeling not a fact –

and maybe now you know what you have long since known:

a church is just a box.

But then, there are so many forms a box may take:

a jewellery box;

a tool box and a lunch box

that set you on your weekday way;

a musical box,

a theatre box,

a goggle box, or even just a bird box, 

matchbox and dispatch box –

an incubator or a coffin; 

maybe a fight, bare-knuckled or with gloves and rules;

a plant that gardeners may cultivate and shape,

or set in lines to raise a hedge; 

Jack-in-a-box;

time capsule,

Bible box,

camera obscura,

sentry box and penalty box; 

a box-you-in squeezebox; 

a think-outside-the box box,

or just a chatterbox.

Now our church has been a locked up, lockdown-empty box

so long you hardly miss it, or miss it very much,

each Sunday while we sit, as 1s and 2s 

in spreadsheet rows of flat and tiny cells,

don’t you now know what you have long since known:

our church is not the box, it’s us –

and yearning, now swelling like a symphony,

to reach out hands beyond each box,

to search, encounter and embrace?