Location, location

I was talking to a friend who is setting up a new Secular group in a cafe in the middle of Manchester. I must confess, I looked a bit askance at her (metaphorically, because we were on the telephone) when I heard this. Half an hour of silent prayer is a must for Secular meetings - how would you do that in a cafe? But then it turned out that there is a church five minutes walk away, so that they can have part of the meeting there. The church is known as 'the Hidden Gem', it is St Mary's and it has been there since 1794 - a time when the building of churches was beginning to be tolerated for the first time since the Penal Era, but they had to be 'out of sight'. The organiser is thinking strategically about how people can get there, and the city centre is ideal because of transport links. Then the co-founder of my own Secular community reminded me that the first meeting (before I myself joined) was held in a pub: and now we are starting a new group in Northampton in a bookshop - however, after the shop is closed, so we will have no customers to worry about. Sometimes we need blue skies thinking, as they say ...