At Your Service: Love divine

TWO days before St Valentine bestowed his annual blessing upon the greeting card industry, the Durham diocesan Mothers' Union held a service to "celebrate and affirm" marriage and family life.

Two hundred attended the magnificent parish church of St Mary and St Cuthbert in Chester-le-Street - and ate wedding cake afterwards in the Church Centre - the slightly curious thing that at least two-thirds of them were female.

Perhaps it was because the women folk live so much longer, bless them, perhaps because Sunderland were simultaneously playing Tottenham Hotspur and the old romantics had stopped home to watch it on Sky.

Pity, they'd have loved it.

The inclement weather would have been familiar to many newly-weds - "Mind," someone said "it hasn't half come down" - the thermostat so high that the service was one of much warmth (and doubtless much passion, too).

The Mothers' Union may have an image problem. If the Women's Institute is perceived as jam and Jerusalem, at least by members of the Press, then the MU is coffee, cakes and Canterbury.

The reality is much different, even men in the Mothers' Union now. There are three and a half million members in 76 countries, many of them African, involved in tackling poverty, promoting literacy, fighting for the family.

Kathy Webster, the Durham diocesan president, has been married for 47 years, her husband Geoffrey a former Vicar of Hamsterley and Witton-le-Wear.

The secret was give and take, she said, supporting one another in what they did. That meant he was always right, said Geoffrey.

"There's so much diversity in what we do these days," said Kathy. "Things are going very well indeed, growing throughout the world."

Last Sunday, part of the Union, accents ranged merely from the sand dancers of South Shields to the more rural refrains of the high dales.

Kevin Dunne, Chester-le-Street's rector, urged them all to attend the reception afterwards but to be careful crossing the road to the Church Centre. "It's a bit of a race track," he said.

His parish is among the region's biggest: three curates, ten licensed readers, 100 Mothers' Union members, Sunday services in schools at either end of the town and four at the 13th century parish church where a facsimile of the Lindisfarne Gospels is on display.

The service begins with Love Divine and, most effectively, the lighting of 12 cruciform candles - for engaged couples, married couples, the divorced, those separated by bereavement and many others.

The reading is of water into wine, Jesus's first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana; the sermon is by the Rt Rev John Pritchard, the Bishop of Jarrow.

Bishop John, as possibly these columns have observed before, is both exceptionally able and greatly admired. Whenever a Church of England see becomes vacant - as presently at Birmingham, following the translation of the Archbishop of York - the ecclesiastical Honest Alfs have him firmly in the frame.

His sermon reflects the reading - "Cana was about transformation, that's what Jesus was about" - but also allows a white ribboned vehicle for the sort of gentle humour for which, right occasion, he rocks them in the aisles.

There is, for example, the story of the chap who, having forgotten his wedding anniversary, is told by his angry wife to have something in the drive next morning that can go from 0-200 in less than seconds.

Next day she opens the door and finds a pair of bathroom scales outside.

Then there's the preacher who asks anyone in the congregation who's perfect to raise his hand. After some time, an arm edges gingerly heavenwards.

"Are you really perfect?" asks the preacher.

"No," mumbles the poor chap, "but I'm here representing my wife's first husband."

Since such things are in vogue, Bishop John also recalls a letter to The Times from a chap whose pre-nuptial contract had lasted 54 years. "We agreed that if she ever left me, she have to take me with her."

It's possible that Anglican clergy are issued with a book of such anodyne anecdotes when consecrated to high office; more likely Bishop John just buys the Reader's Digest. Profoundly entertaining, anyway.

More seriously, he reveals that just 35 per cent of marriages now take place in church, that 40 per cent of children are born out of wedlock - it was ten per cent in 1974 - and that four in ten marriages end in divorce.

It can't always be champagne and roses, he says - " my wife gets tired of them" - but has to be worked upon. "Marriage gives stability, and that's what our children need.

"Marriage seems to have become almost trivial in some people's eyes. God wants our marriages to be a sign of his glory."

Mr Dunne's clearly impressed - "but I couldn't help reflecting," he tells his congregation, "that if I turned up with champagne and roses, she'd want to know what I'd been up to."

John and Wendy Pritchard have been married for 33 years. It's about good communication, he says over the wedding cake, about listening, common focus, making time for one another and about treats.

"I believe in always having a treat in the offing. At the moment there are three nights at the Sage and another at the Theatre Royal."

A treat for the absentees, Sunderland have not only scored a goal but a last minute equaliser. The organist seems at once to put his foot down; those are the marriage lines, anyway.