Soft holding crosses

Someone with a big pastoral heart is Viv Hutchinson in the New Forest, who has taken the idea of holding crosses for frail older people and adapted it. Since she and her minister, the Revd Ian Gill, took part from Dibden Purlieu, Hampshire, in our Zoom conference call on 'An Introduction to Anna Chaplaincy', Viv has made a selection of soft holding crosses roughly the size of pincushions.

She writes: 'I thought you might like to see what I have been up to. I made some end-of-life soft holding crosses today. Sometimes a wooden holding cross is a bit hard, whereas these can be put into the hand of someone bedridden and, as they are filled with rice, they can be gripped and held. I was certainly thinking of my mum's last few days and what she would have liked when I was making them.'

You might also feel inspired to make some, or adapt the idea in yet another novel way?