In our transient and largely throwaway culture, there is an increasing hunger for things that last. The longer something exists, the more precious it becomes – think of artefacts in the V&A or the Ashmolean, little domestic objects grown heavy with significance because they have survived to connect us to a distant time, and sometimes to a specific person.

An intriguing example is Jane Austen’s modest turquoise ring, fairly inexpensive in terms of its material makeup, but priceless because of its associations – so precious, in fact, that when it was bought at auction it was prevented from leaving the country, with the Culture Minister imposing an export ban and the public rushing to buy it back for permanent display in Chawton House.

This is true of places, too. Some buildings make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up the moment you walk in. Ancient churches are often like this, prompting some to talk of genius loci, the ancient Roman idea of the spirit of place. St Mary’s is no exception: priceless in terms of the physical objects in the church and the fabric of its walls, but even more so because of the countless people who have walked through this place, and prayed in it.

I don’t put much faith in genii loci, but I do feel a little prickle when I look up at Newman’s Pulpit or run my hand over the 15th-century choir stalls in the chancel. We are so lucky to inhabit this space. The wonderful thing is that the story hasn’t finished: we continue to add to it as we engage with the daily life of the church, both physical and virtual.

In Chinese there’s a verb, baocun, pronounced “bao-tsun”, which means “to preserve”. “Bao” on its own means to maintain or protect, but it’s also a homonym for “precious”, even carrying the same tone. “Cun” (“tsun”) means to store or keep, but it also means to live, exist, survive. I may be taking a linguistic flight of fancy here, but when I hear baocun, I always imagine a church specifically, and the act of nurturing it as one would a living thing. It is a symbiotic relationship; in caring for the church, we are in turn cared for, and receive spiritual nourishment, whether through receiving holy communion, or a kind word over coffee, or a moment of precious sunlit silence at the end of the day