Songs of Grief and Hope; Contested Monuments; Mayflower Legacy

In October 2019 the LA-based musician Natalie Bergman was about to go on stage at Radio City Music Hall New York for a career defining concert with her band Wild Belle. Then she took a call the San Francisco coroner - her father and stepmother had just been killed in California when a drunk driver crashed into their taxi. She cancelled the tour and went into a hibernation of grief that led her to rediscover her faith on a silent retreat at a monastery in New Mexico. Her album Mercy, tells the story of that time.The Church of England has a long and sometimes complicated history. This year more than ever, church communities worried about memorials and statues with links to slavery or other distasteful events of the past. This week the Church of England published official guidance for parishes and cathedrals to help them deal with the problem. We hear from Novelette-Aldoni Stewart who worked on the new guidelines, from former Lord Mayor of Bristol Cleo Lake who has had to adjudicate on such issues in the past and from Val Potter, a church warden in Dorchester whose Parish has spent years trying to deal with a conspicuous memorial to a slaver-owner who brutally supressed a rebellion. Has your parish got a memorial or statue you are not sure how to deal with? Or have you found a good solution - tell us how you did that. Email us [email protected]