Catherine Ogle, the new Dean of Birmingham writes:

I can’t imagine a kinder or warmer welcome than the one we have received as we settle into our new home in Birmingham.  The Cathedral staff and congregation, clergy and people of the diocese and our new neighbours have all made the task of settling in so much easier.

Two Services of welcome have been held, the first focussed on the formal and legal requirements of my taking up the post of Dean, and the second was a celebration of the Christian ministry in which we share.  But I hadn’t realised that during the Saturday service, when the Zimbabwean Mother’s Union choir sang and danced their joyful Gloria, I would be expected to join in!

Really, I should have expected it.  The theme of ‘joining in the dance’ was part of my first sermon as Dean.

I told a story about one of my friends in Huddersfield, an older man, who said that he’d only been to Birmingham once in his life, but what an experience it had been! He was here on VE day and he was trying very hard to get home to West Yorkshire.  As he made his way across the city he came upon a huge party going on in a public square.  My friend was in army uniform, and on that joyful day of relief and delight, he was dragged into the party.  He told me that he realised that the only possible way to cross the square and get to the railway station was to join in.  So that’s what he did, he danced his way across the square.  It’s a wonderful story of joy and of freedom.