"Impact" leading articles

"Impact" is the magazine of the parishes of St. Mary's, Gillingham and St. Simon and St. Jude, Milton-on-Stour.

August 2009

The sound of bells ringing out in celebration, cameras clicking and flashing, ladies in new hats of all colours, shapes and sizes (the hats, that is, not the ladies) and confetti fluttering in the breeze. Yes, all this tells us that the season of weddings has been upon us for the last couple of months. And what a glorious season it is, too, especially with the warm sunny weather we have been recently experiencing.

Anyone who has arranged, or is currently arranging, a wedding is only too well aware of how much work and planning is needed. Four years ago, two of our sons were married within four weeks of each other; what a year that was! Nowadays some weddings are booked and in the planning up to two years in advance.

Weddings are a special time for families especially now that many family members are scattered around the country or even abroad. They are an opportunity for a family celebration and a good excuse to have a really good time. And when the wedding happens to take place in church, it is also the opportunity to have a really enjoyable act of worship, too. For many people this may be their only experience of a church service of any kind. How important it is, then, that we do all we can to make people feel welcome. Many years ago I decided that I would never start any act of worship by telling people what they can't do. So, for example, you won't hear me begin a wedding service by saying "don't take photos" or "don't throw confetti". We risk reinforcing many people's stereotype image of the Church and the Christian faith as a 'thou shall not' faith. So it is important to make sure our regular acts of worship are also welcoming.

But what of the many people who don't even get the opportunity to experience a wedding service or perhaps have had a bad experience somewhere (but not here I hope)? This is why we must make sure that we create every opportunity within our styles of worship to welcome and inspire those who attend. I wouldn't be at all surprised if our new priest-in-charge has some thoughts about this! And then everyone, young and old alike, can discover that weddings are not the only excuse for having a really good time in church – yes, even without buying a new hat.

With every good wish and prayers to you all.

Honorary Assistant Priest

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July 2009

One thing leads to another! The Town Carol Service last December included two musical items by the Gillingham Arts Workshop, a local group of some 30 years standing. This was followed in January by a St Mary's production of the pantomime "A Lad in a Manger", thanks to the initiative of my retired colleague, Jeffrey Hall. Now, the stage (or rather the church) is set for a joint production bringing together St Mary's with the Arts Workshop.

At the end of July there will be three performances of the Gillingham Miracle Plays from Friday to Sunday, July 24th - 26th. Please see separate notices for details. Sub-titled "From the Creation to Doomsday" and directed by David Bryan (following his pantomime achievement), the ten short plays will together span and reflect the total outline of the Bible 'story' from the book of Genesis to the life of Jesus and on to the end of the world.

Such Miracle Plays (or Mystery Plays as they are sometimes called) became very popular in England in the Middle Ages. Before they were translated into English (from Hebrew and Greek) and widely available, Bible stories and events were offered and presented in dramatic form usually by travelling bands of players. They were as much religious education as Christian entertainment, rather like Nativity and Passion plays are offered today. It so happens that the most well known of the Miracle cycles of plays originated in the North of England in such places as York, Chester and Wakefield, where they continue to be presented from time to time. David has very skilfully adapted and edited much of the available material resulting in the Gillingham Miracle Plays. Rehearsals began in May. Since then, Tuesday evenings have seen much excitement and the proclaiming of more polished speeches as the weeks have gone by.

By way of further introduction, just like the development of stained-glass windows depicting Biblical scenes (another early form of today's visual aids!), the mediaeval Miracle Plays interpreted the Bible in a very literal way - the virtually unquestioned norm until 19th century biblical criticism (as it is called), which sought to offer a less literal view of the Scriptures in the light of developing scholarship and scientific discoveries. It is an interesting co-incidence that we in Gillingham are presenting our plays during the 150th anniversary year of the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species", which created much controversy concerning the truth of the Bible - undermining (for example) the 'fact' that God created the world in six twenty-four hour days. While there are many Christians who still today set great store by such a conservative and creationist view of the Bible, most Christians will now stress that scientific discoveries of evolution and resulting theories need by no means destroy faith. Indeed, religious faith (the "why" of life) can and often does enhance scientific explanations (the "how" of life). The Bible sets forth deep-down truth concerning God, Jesus and Christian life within the Holy Spirit - often in what we have come to see as poetic language and form. Science sets forth what we might describe as everyday truth as determined by one or more of our five physical senses in the light of present day exploration and discovery. While Darwin's Christian faith on his own admission was never strong, he himself saw nothing in his science and anthropology incompatible with religious faith.

Besides their literal presentations, the Miracle Plays (ours included) were as much captivated by the Devil (in the actual Creation and Doomsday scenes), even to the extent of underplaying the overarching power and enfolding love of God. It would be true to say that, far from consigning or directing folk to hell or heaven (with damning or soothing words to match!), contemporary insights into the ways and nature of God have emphasised the love of God rather than the wrath of God. As F.W. Faber's 19th century hymn "There's a wideness in God's mercy" puts it:

"For the love of God is broader Than the measure of man's mind And the love of the eternal Is most wonderfully kind"

With these Bible "health warnings", the Gillingham Miracle Plays will be well worth coming to both see and experience. Tell your friends and bring them with you! And discover (and be surprised by) who is representing which Bible characters!

Whoever said that parish interregnums were dull and uneventful? Our new parish priest will, we trust, be glad to know that we have not been standing still before he arrives!

With good wishes and prayers for you all.

Honorary Assistant Priest

June 2009

Midway

As we become more and more dwellers of towns and cities, are we loosing our contact with the natural world, and with the rhythm of life? Have we become immune to the different seasons and what they mean to us and our world? Perhaps the changing seasons do still have an effect, but we view them from our air-conditioned security rather than experiencing them in the raw too often. So many things are now available all the year round, there is not a month of the year when we cannot eat fresh beans, (although I am sure I am not the only old fogey who remembers with affection salted runner beans!), and our houses are warm and cosy. But we are told that all this comes at a cost to our world, and of course it is not just our world but also that of the homeless in Darfur, the widow in India, the Aids sufferer in Zambia, and those living with drought or deluge throughout the world. How do we salve our conscience and continue to live life as we prefer? And can we make any difference?

But those beans perhaps illustrate some of our dilemmas. They are grown in third world countries and they bring into their economies much needed revenue. The sale of beans supports their national budget, but these are the same countries very often that are struggling to provide food for their own people. The fertile land is growing cash food crops for export. If we don't buy those beans will things change?

Sometimes it can seem that even the simplest pleasure is surrounded by dilemmas. Should we light a barbecue, or by doing so are we increasing global warming? To eat a meal out of doors, relaxing with family and friends is such a natural thing to do, but again we are being asked to make decisions, that, at the moment, with all the discussion about climate change, can feel earth-shattering.

June is midway through the year, the month with the longest day. We are half way from this year's and next year's resolutions, and perhaps this is the right time to make a summer resolution or two. My first will be that I will not take all the cares and dilemmas of the world onto my own shoulders, but that I will read and try to act responsibly. By doing this I shall free myself from total despondency every time I go shopping, I shall make a decision about whether or no I buy beans, and I shall stick with it. I shall think carefully about issues, make decisions and stick with them, until new evidence comes to change things.

But my second is even more important, and that is to accept God's beautiful creation, the world in which we live, to value it, to enjoy it and to care for it as best I can. Now this means caring for myself, as part of that creation just as much as I care for the world and the people around me. There are times just to enjoy our existence, and when is it better to do that than in the Blackmore Vale in the early summer?

May 2009

Visiting any of the great cathedrals of England can be both an enjoyable and awe-inspiring experience. Within a short travelling distance from here is the splendour of Wells, or our own great cathedral at Salisbury with England's tallest spire. Travelling further north and east are Norwich, Ely and Peterborough, or in the north of England, York, Ripon and Durham. The cathedral I have a special affection for is Lincoln, where I trained for the priesthood. It was when visiting Lincoln for the first time, one traveller described the "few heart-stopping moments" when its great cathedral appeared ahead. They are all reminders of the faithfulness of those who built such magnificent structures to the glory of God.

With the 64^th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War in Europe coming this month, think then of the sadness of those who experience the destruction of their great public buildings in times of war and conflict. One such building, all but destroyed during the Second World War, is Coventry cathedral. Amid the ruins just the tower remains; it stands as a silent witness of mankind's misuse of power.

But think again of Coventry Cathedral; the cross of nails found in the smouldering ruins the morning after Coventry was bombed; the way its ruins speak of the defiant victory of love over hate and new life out of destruction. Prayers of forgiveness and reconciliation are to be found on its broken walls. And walk through the ruins to the new cathedral and you find a place that continues to speak of the glory and love of God in the face of human hatred, violence and destruction. Whatever people try to do to God, he rises again and lives. The crucifixion and the events of Easter are evidence of that. People may abuse and kill others but they can never kill the love that Jesus showed when he died on the cross and rose to new life.

I know that Easter was last month, but for Christians, every day is Easter Day, every day is a reminder that each one of us has a particular and unique significance to God. This is borne out in the Eucharistic sacrifice, celebrated daily or weekly at the altar. It is where we prepare to celebrate, on the last day of this month, the birthday of the Church at Pentecost. So may each day be your own personal celebration of Easter, your own personal reminder that come what may, Jesus lives. Alleluia!

With love and prayers to everyone.

Honorary Assistant Priest

April 2009

The “credit crunch”, the human poverty and deprivation in places like the Sudan and Zimbabwe, and the shootings surrounding the Sri Lankan cricket team are but three illustrations of the subject matter of many a news broadcast or newspaper headlines these days. We could go on. It so often seems bad news all the way. That 1960s Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse show title “Stop the world, I want to get off!” might even have become the exasperated thought and prayer of many of us as we perhaps wonder, “What next….?”

That must have been the sort of reaction of those disciples of Jesus to the events of what Christians call to mind each Holy Week (April 5th-11th this year): the joy of welcome to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday only to be followed by the growing public controversies as Jesus taught in the Temple, culminating in the horror, chaos and brutality portrayed in Mel Gibson’s 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ”. No wonder those disciples ran away – unable to take all this in!

God-given human life and human nature are programmed for good having been made in God’s own image. (Genesis chapter 1). Because this is so, when things are “not good” we have a problem with it. Why, O why………? We have what is called the “problem of evil”, especially that of undeserved suffering. We cannot understand why “the good God” apparently allows the chaos, sin, sickness and the evil of the world to go on, even 21 centuries later. No problem with goodness – we expect no less than that, especially if we try to lead a good life. But day to day existence? Stop the world – give up – that is ever the temptation, even for Christians. We are caught up in just the same sort of situation that faced those twelve disciples.

The Christian story of Holy Week leading to Easter Day (April 12th) is that of not “getting off” the problematic world, but of “sticking with” the world and realising God’s light still within it. Christian faith tells not of a way round suffering but of a way through suffering. And that way is (very?) simply not just to behave as Jesus did (loving and forgiving his enemies) but to believe that the continuing love of God would “see Him through”. It did not always seem like that. “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Psalm 22) was Jesus’ natural human cry in those most extreme moments of brutality. But we recall that in the Garden of Gethsemane it was Jesus’ prayer that “Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done” (Luke 22 v 42) and that His last cry from the Cross was “Into thy hands I commend my spirit (Luke 23 v46). If we will see it this way, it was God who “loved through” Jesus on Good Friday. Jesus, as the human life of God, ever sought to do “my Father’s business” (Luke 2 v 49) and that business was to seek (and find) the love and purposes of God in every situation and circumstance of human life. God’s love was all-too-present at every twist and turn of those events. Even the ending of Psalm 22 concludes triumphantly that “the Kingdom is the Lord’s”.

In this way, the Easter resurrection was on the brink of becoming that “Jesus is risen” reality for even those running-away disciples. Those biblical references to the empty tomb and the appearances (in the garden, the road to Emmaus, the upper room, the sea-shore) tell us that Jesus was present to those same disciples and others in a new way and body beyond the world of space and time. Jesus’ post-Good Friday “body” was there in a now gloriously “I am with you always” way. Their faith and trust that this was so is that invitation to us to see these events with our eyes of faith 21 centuries later. Whatever happened between those historical (for everybody) certainties of Good Friday and the growth and spread of Christian faith and the life of the Church is for Christians and would-be Christians to reflect upon the continuing and continuous love of God for His world.

The Christian hope that Easter brings is not hoping for the best (but fearing the worst) but of realising that the love of the God of the Bible never ever ends to bring us through “the changes and chances of this mortal life” through being drawn again into His orbit, His business and His love personally and politically – perhaps as never before. Sydney Carter (hymn writer of the 1960s) put it this way:

“They cut me down and I leapt up high
I am the Lord that’ll never, ever die
I’ll live in you if you live in me
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he”

Wishing you all a prayerful and reflective Holy Week and a joyful Eastertide.

Honorary Assistant Priest

March 2009

Blowing Clean

I have just pegged a sheet on the line on a blustery, bright morning. I love the smell of laundry washed and dried outside, and then returned clean and dry to the bed – it is one of life’s luxuries.

Lent is here, and this is the time to clear our minds and take stock of our lives. During Christmas and Epiphany we had the opportunity to renew our wonder at the incarnation. But now that we have accepted this again as our story we must prepare ourselves for what comes next.

My sheet has a warp and a weft. The warp threads are those that are stretched onto the loom, and the weft threads are those that are woven in to create the fabric. Our warp is our DNA, our human make-up, and the weft is our life’s experience - our family, our growing up, our experiences, the people we meet and the things we do. They create each of us as a unique individual. Even twins born with identical DNA will develop independently as they experience one another and experience life from their individual viewpoint.

As we grow and develop, the weft that is woven in may gather dirt and fluff and there may be some poor, rotten strands woven in. These need sorting out and now is an excellent time to do it.

So what is our fluff, and how can we deal with it? These are the extra things we impose on our lives which cause us stress and anxiety. For example, it is good to keep our house clean and comfortable, but we also have to live comfortably in the space, so if the floor has to be so clean that people are afraid to walk on it then the stress is excessive. Or, it is lovely to have a beautiful garden but it is there to be enjoyed and the need to care for it should not make it impossible to do anything else. I am sure we can all think of fluff areas in our own lives and we need to see how much these affect our lives and whether we should be changing.

The dirt: this is our bad moments, times when we have been unkind, unreasonable, unthinking, bad tempered or selfish. These we need to accept and then deal with, apologise, or put things right as necessary and then apologise to ourselves for our stupidity. These need to be washed away.

And the rotten threads – well, these need pulling out. We are better off without the grudges, prejudice and remembered hostility that can sometimes become woven into our lives. I used to be fascinated when I watched my grandmother darn, carefully selecting the best thread for the task. Then with quick, neat stitches she would repair the hole with more strength than before. If we have the courage to draw out these threads then we can be sure that our faith will help us remake ourselves in a stronger better way, healthier than before.

So Lent is the time to see the dust and dirt and deal with our rotten threads and to let the power and strength of Christ remake us. So we pray that we may have the courage to allow Jesus Christ our Saviour to blow through our lives.

February 2009

A well-known television newsreader some time ago provoked a national debate on what constitutes news. He said that news broadcasts focused too much on bad news and not enough on good news. In the debate and discussions that followed, many people asked, ‘What is news?’ Is it only when something out of the ordinary happens, so that commonplace things are not worthy of comment? Is news the description of events and a commentary on their significance for society? One critic of the newsreader said that to balance the bad news with the good was to intervene to an unacceptable degree in the reporting of the world as it is. So, who can say what good news is and what is bad? Quite often, what is good news for one person or country can be bad news for another.

Christian good news is quite distinct. The Gospels show Jesus proclaiming the good news from God; that God’s will for the world was being fulfilled. Jesus gathered people around him and transformed their lives. They were sent out to make known that good news to everyone. So, how do we recognise good news from God? Jesus’ preaching of good news was accompanied by forgiveness of sin. His good news restores broken lives, gives hope, drives away fear, promotes true peace and destroys evil. It is concerned for the well-being of others and the building up of all that is good. This good news is centred on Jesus because he himself was and is the good news. So, our Christian life is to recognise the good news in our own lives, to give thanks to God and to bring other people to receive this good news with joyful hearts.

The lasting legacy left by Jesus has not diminished. It is a legacy which carries us with faith, hope and courage into 2009 and beyond. And it is with that same faith, hope and courage that we, too, can spread that good news within our own families and communities.

In the article ‘Lesser-known Saints of the Church’ for this month, I have chosen Janani Luwum, martyred in Uganda in 1977. This shows that the spreading of the Gospel is sometimes at great cost, but continues now as at any time in our history. Now is a good time to reflect on our part in proclaiming the good news of Jesus. Evangelism is not only telling others about the good news, but also living out in our lives the story of God’s love, the Good News of the Gospel.

With love and prayers to everyone.

Honorary Assistant Priest

January 2009

A very Happy New Year to all readers in both our parishes with good wishes and prayers that we shall all "travel safely" through 2009.

Following the Christmas Festival celebrated in our churches, homes and communities, many a conversation this month will tell of life getting back to normal! As if human life could get back to normal following that event above all events - God sharing with His human creation all that He was, is and will be in terms of coming alongside us as "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" for human living. What should now be normal is that Christ-like normality the Babe of Bethlehem was born to live.

Having savoured that great Christmas event with all the worship and seasonal joy and goodwill that will have uplifted us, the post-Christmas calling for Christians and would-be Christians is that of going forward and building on that God-given faith and truth that Jesus came to show and share.

May I suggest in three main ways:-

First, building personal faith.

Christmas worship and out-going giving helps us to recover something of our best selves. We have perhaps been reminded when Christian faith shone brighter in our hearts at earlier stages in our lives. Now is the time for Christian New Year resolutions - to keep those Christmas cards and pray regularly for those who sent them; to find a helpful booklet that seeks to relate the Bible to daily life, to devise those quiet times at home with that lighted candle in the corner to remind us that God is with us - in joys, sorrows, difficulties or future hopes - all to remember (with the 14th century Mother Julian of Norwich) that "all shall be well; all manner of things shall be well” as we take in and try to come to terms with all that the news media has to tell us.

Second, building relationships.

Life goes best when we are in good relationships with those close to us. Life can go even better if we go beyond to seek to relate to those whose life-styles are perhaps very different from our own. Love is that quality that takes into ourselves (myself) the very being of others (the other) especially those who are "not quite like us (me)" in income, background, tastes or personalities - whether they live in places or conditions which are far removed from our own; whether they worship at another church or have a way-into God that we have not experienced; whether they vote for other candidates at election-time. If we say (and pray) that we are making "room in our heart for thee" at Christmas, does not this involve making room in our hearts - with sensitivity, graciousness and even forgiveness - for all God's people within families, communities and nations every day after Christmas?

Third, building our "Kingdom" involvement.

Jesus was far more interested in the Kingdom of God than the Church! God's kingdom was evident when lives were lived not only in harmony but fulfilment. The "Kingdom Issues" before us today include matters of justice, war and peace, wealth distribution, and financial responsibility, climate change, inter-faith/cultural issues, political extremism, crime and terrorism, responsibility for children and young people. Not simply matters for politicians - matters also for Christian prayer, Christian action and Christian giving in all kinds of ways. In this way the Church (and individual churches) are, I believe, called to become signs of God's Kingdom, in the ways that we worship and in the ways that we "go out into the world to your praise and glory."

When I was young, we used to sing in Sunday School "you in your small corner and I in mine". Now I am older, I sing at many a primary school collective worship these days "round the corners of the world I go...” I would like to think that our post-Christmas Christian understanding of faith and life has far wider promptings and implications for us in the 21^st century than ever we thought it had even in the 20^th!

With love and prayers for you all,

Honorary Assistant Priest

December 2008

Signs and Symbols and Portents

Now that the daylight is short and the winter is here, the shops and town centres gear up for Christmas. And I wonder if many of us will be able to say on Christmas Day that our feast then is our first Christmas Dinner of the year!

As Christians we also need to leave ourselves time to savour the meaning of Advent, the season of watching and waiting. I have no wish to be a killjoy, and we have to be realistic about the society in which we live, but if Christmas is to be relevant to everyone, young and old alike, then the Sundays that precede it are important to prepare our thinking. These Advent Sundays, following on from the four preceding Sundays of the Kingdom season are those during which we explore the Kingship of Christ, the power of God and our hope that we shall see Christ in his kingdom now. It is in this hope that we are waiting, and it is for this hope we prepare ourselves by fasting and praying, and this is our theme for the first two weeks of Advent. It is not until the third and fourth weeks that we start to look away from the hoped-for Kingdom and instead start to remember the incarnation at Christmas with the forerunners, John the Baptist and Mary, the Mother of the Lord.

Advent is the start of the Church’s year and it is good to start the year with the lighting of candles. The Advent candle wreath has become very much part of our tradition. The four outer candles of purple, or three purple and one pink, signify the four Sundays of Advent, with a white candle in the centre to be lit on Christmas Day. These candle rings may be decorated with greenery, but no flowers should be included until the flowers for Christmas are prepared. The pink candle, if it is included, should be lit on the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday when the Advent fast was traditionally eased, a refreshment Sunday very much like the Sunday in Lent that we celebrate as Mothering Sunday.

These candles represent:

1. The Patriarchs, those men of the Old Testament who discovered what it meant to walk with and wrestle with God.
2. The Prophets, those who had the courage to speak and act for God even when the society in which they lived was doing otherwise.
3. John the Baptist, Elizabeth and Zechariah’s son, who prepared the way for the Christ immediately before the start of his ministry.
4. The Virgin Mary, Jesus’ Mother, who had the courage to obey God’s wishes.

As we light these candles Sunday by Sunday we need to ask ourselves, do we have the courage to walk with our God? To speak out in His name even when things are difficult and to do so will be against those around us who might find such an expression uncomfortable? Are we prepared to work to prepare a way for Christ so that He may be active in this world through us and others? And can we find it in our hearts to obey His will?

These are big questions demanding our faith and our courage, but in searching for an answer we shall be preparing ourselves for the incarnation, to receive the baby, born as our Saviour, and to truly wish one another a Happy Christmas.

November 2008

The Parish Office

Gillingham

Following what we know will be a memorable October “last weekend” for them, we assure Alan and Margery Gill of our love, good wishes and prayers as they set off into retirement in Salisbury. After 33 years of full-time ministry in the Diocese – all of this time in Dorset where each of their parishes has been – they are off to neighbouring Wiltshire and to the Cathedral city itself! May their retirement be long, happy and fulfilling.

Although Alan is still legally Rector until December 31st, our two parishes are now entering what is generally called an “interregnum” until a successor arrives. This somehow assumes a perhaps rather old-fashioned notion of parish ministry where everything comes to a complete standstill until a new king comes to reign! That however ought not to be the case and hopefully will not be the case during the time we await our new parish priest here. If only because a “vicar vacancy” is just the time and opportunity to realise the real meaning of the word laity which in everyday (but mistaken) speech usually refers to those folk within the life of the Church who are not ordained. Not so! The Greek word laos is that inclusive word meaning the whole people of God. From New Testament times, all baptised Christians have made up the laos; those who are identified and ordained as clergy do not cease to be part of the laity – we are all in God’s laos together. A recent Church of England Report puts it like this:

“The clergy belong to the Church and are not apart from the rest of its members. The New Testament models of the Church are characteristically relational and imply mutual belonging. Collaborative ministry is essential both in principle and practice.”

It so happens that in the case of this local Gillingham and Milton-on-Stour vacancy and in the absence of full-time assistant clergy, those of us who happen to be ordained (and therefore able to offer particular public ministries) are volunteers just like everybody else who offers to undertake one or more of a multitude of parish and community tasks to keep the wheels of total ministry turning. In church law, during a vacancy it is the churchwardens who are the leading (and legally responsible) ministers of a parish making it very publicly obvious that the laos (laity) are in charge! Laos-ministry is nothing if it is not a shared ministry. So particular prayers, please, for Mary Sargent, Philip Gray, Sam Woodcock and Wendy Braithwaite, together with their respective Parochial Church Councils, as they continue to undertake their respective roles, privileges and responsibilities, now added to which are their important roles in the appointment of our new parish priest. And our prayers, too, for those in the Diocese with their own part in the process of discernment and nomination.

My own role (at the request of the Bishop of Sherborne) is that of sharing responsibility with the churchwardens so far as worship and the “spiritual side” of things is concerned and so to draw together the ministries of fellow-clergy – not least during the forthcoming Advent and Christmas period – without, hopefully, too many cries of “if only we had a full-time Rector!” In the course of my Rural Dean days in both the Southwark and Bristol Dioceses, I have always tried to re-assure churchwardens and others in vacancy situations to watch for and encourage all those aspects of parish life where new gifts and skills identify themselves in a variety of ways – and perhaps to keep a scrapbook noting all the surprises! And later, as Dean of Blackburn with ten Lancashire parishes under my “patronage”, I gained a bit of experience in helping to appoint new parish priests. Again, that might come in useful here.

An interregnum “health warning”! Between us all, we must not play the “expectations game” too severely. The (volunteer) clergy must not expect to be able to do all that they would if they were full-time. And churchwardens will not expect to have the answers for every question that can be asked. But we may be sure that the faithful, efficient and good-humoured Carole in the Parish Office will keep us all on track.

While we wait upon all that will lead up to an appointment of a new parish priest sometime in 2009 and then to welcome our new leader, may we all be able to realise just how much we have not only shared together but also grown together during the Gillingham and Milton-on-Stour vacancy – however long or short this will turn out to be.

With love and prayers for you all.

Honorary Assistant Priest

October 2008

From the Herd to the Word

Thirty-five years ago a young man, his wife and three children, left this Deanery for Salisbury. The young man was Alan and his wife was Margery and their children David, 9, Stephen, 8 and Susan, 5. They set off from the Parish of Stalbridge where Alan had been herdsman at Spire Hill Farm, Thornhill; he was about to begin his training for the priesthood at Salisbury and Wells Theological College. Life training for the service of the “Word” was to begin in earnest.

We travelled to Salisbury, or at least the furniture did in a cattle lorry – that was the way farm workers moved in those days. Imagine the speculation and the sheer amazement of some of the other students; a farm worker training to be a priest!?

The children settled into Salisbury schools. Margery did some housework and some sewing for people to help supplement the student budget. Financially life was difficult with a young family. The course of study was completed in 1975 and I was ordained Deacon in Salisbury Cathedral.

I served my Curacy at Wimborne Minister for two and a half years, followed by the Incumbency of the Winterborne Valley, five village churches, for nine years. I was then Vicar of Verwood for fourteen years before coming to Gillingham in 2000 as Team Rector, and then Rector of Gillingham and Milton on Stour, 2004. My Ministry has been totally served in Dorset and has been rich and rewarding in so many ways.

There have been opportunities to serve so many people in all sorts of pastoral situations. This has been a great joy but also very challenging. I am so grateful to God and to so many parishioners over the years who have been a source of blessing and inspiration to us.

Ministry in every parish situation has, of course, been different with varying opportunities to do God’s work. I have enjoyed immensely working with children in schools. The great privilege of building three schools has played a big part in my ministry. Another rich blessing has been recognizing and encouraging vocations to the priesthood. I have sponsored fourteen men and women successfully for ordination. The training of Curates has been a major role over the last twenty-five years. Spiritual Direction and the Healing Ministry have been such a rewarding aspects of my priestly life. Teaching, preaching, and celebrating the Eucharist have been at the heart of everything in my ministry for God. I have, however, so enjoyed ministry to young couples at weddings and young families for Baptisms of their children. I have been overawed on many occasions when ministering to the sick and bereaved, especially in tragic circumstances.

It has been very apposite that my last nine years of Stipendiary Ministry have been here in Gillingham and Milton-on-Stour in the Deanery from which I was called thirty-five years ago. We have achieved much together and I believe the life of the churches here to be in good heart. There is, however, much to be addressed and achieved as you go forward in the future.

Margery and I would like to thank all of you for your friendship and support over these last nine years and we wish you every blessing for what God has in store for you. I hope that you will all be able to join us on Sunday 26th October at 10.30 am for my farewell Eucharist, or at Milton-on-Stour at 5.30pm for their Patronal Festival.

As St. Paul said to the Corinthians, “Finally, farewell; heed all that I have said to you, agree with one another, live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you.” (2 Cor. 13. 11) So now with thanksgiving for the past and looking to the future in the company of Him who holds together all things in heaven and on earth, I commend you to God the great Giver, to Jesus the Living Word - the Bread of Life - and to the Holy Spirit all powerful, to build you up.

Once again Margery and I move on from the Blackmore Vale Deanery to ‘Erznmine’, 1 Cheshire Close, Salisbury, this time not in a cattle truck but in a proper removal van. You are all very welcome to visit us and we look forward to welcoming you.

Yours with every blessing

September 2008

Who is in our family?

I very rarely watch East Enders, but I have had family staying and some of them watch the programme regularly. I walked into the room recently as one character said in a sad voice, ‘’All I wanted was for us to sit down and enjoy a family meal together, in peace.’’

Words, I am sure, that have been said countless times in many families down through the ages, and perhaps this is a wish for our Church as a Christian family. From the time of the early Church, as we have sought to find our way in the world in the steps of Christ, it is inevitable that we shall at times disagree, as we apply our human intelligence to the situation. Our response to situations is governed by our history and our own cultural understanding; we see things in the light of our own experience, and we lack the greater understanding, the full view, which is with God. Every time I read the story of Joseph I am struck by two things. Firstly, what would have become of the Israelite people if Joseph had not been sold by his brothers into slavery, and then made a name for himself because he could interpret dreams, and so was in a position which made it possible for him to provide food for his people when they were struck by famine in their home land Secondly, I am surprised each time I read the story that I really do have sympathy for the brothers and their jealousy; it must have been tough to know that this one brother was given favours above the others and was allowed to be different.

The Lambeth Conference is now over, and most of the delegates have returned to their homes, to their local churches and communities, where each of them will begin to assimilate the discussions and lectures they have participated in, and to reflect upon what was said and discussed from within their own community. And this is when the real work of that conference begins, as the results of those meetings are opened for wider discussion. For me one of the low points of the reporting of the conference came one morning as I listened to the radio before breakfast and heard a well-known broadcaster say, ‘’I don’t see why the bishops are going off to meditate; surely they would do more if they were talking to one another.’’ I realised just how irrelevant prayers may seem to those who do not express belief. For, as Christians, surely the most important thing for us to do is to listen in prayer to God our Father. As his family, how can we know his will for us unless we are willing to spend time listening for him?

In the years ahead there may be splits and divisions within the Church as individuals and groups try to work out how they are being called to live out the Christian life. Just as within families, there are always differences of opinion to be accommodated, so it will always be within a Christian communion as diverse and far reaching as ours. There will be times when the tension will be intense, and there will be times when some will separate from the others and we will all wish that we could all meet and share a quiet happy family meal together. However it is by experiencing and working with those things that separate us that we shall grow into the strong family that can stand as the people of God in the world. We also have to have the courage that God can see the whole picture, and that includes our human frailty.

August 2008

In the Beginning God Created the World.

Are we his guests or his tenants?

At the beginning of August we celebrate Lammas – ‘loaf mass’ – the offering of the first fruits of harvest. As most of you know by now, I believe the next most sacred thing to God is the earth or soil. It is for this reason that I believe all humanity should celebrate the created order and be for ever grateful for what God has made and we are privileged to share in his continuing creation. In the light of current concerns over food production and consumer practice, together with the ongoing debate on global warming, we Christians need to continually address the way we live and celebrate the graciousness of God in creation.

Writing in the Church Times some years ago, David Edwards says: ‘We need a new celebration of faith in God as the Creator. It ought to be global, in every sense.’ He continues that something more is needed than the traditional Harvest Festival and says:

There is still a need for a festival intended to reach the whole population – which in many countries is now largely urban – and having its focus in a single weekend, not on Sundays chosen by churches locally. Such a thanksgiving for the season’s harvest would stress the creation of all things visible and invisible.

It is the tradition, in rural churches in particular, to have services to pray and give thanks for occasions in the farming year: Plough Sunday, Rogation, Lammas and Harvest Thanksgiving. Plough Sunday is the first Sunday after Epiphany and traditionally a plough is brought into church. A farmer or farm worker offers the work of the countryside to the service of God. Forgiveness is asked for the misuse of God’s gifts: ‘When we ill-treat the land, and forget it is the splendour of God.’ Thanks are given for God’s gifts: the rich soil, the skill of the ploughman, the beauty of a clean-cut furrow and the sweep of a well-ploughed field. The plough is seen as the sign of all labour in the countryside, and as the foundation of the farmer’s work it is blessed, together with work and workers on the farms of the parish. A typical prayer includes:

Let the ploughman’s hope be fulfilled in a plentiful harvest. Let thy people be fed with the wholesome food of their countryside. Let town and country, united in gratitude to thee, be drawn nearer to the understanding and true service of each other.

Verses from John Masefield’s ‘The Everlasting Mercy’ are apposite and underline the connection between the land and the Eucharist as a focus for God’s gifts, symbolized in bread and wine.

O Christ who holds the open gate,
O Christ who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughter
Of holy white birds flying after,
Lo, all my heart's field red and torn,
And Thou wilt bring the young green corn,
The young green corn divinely springing,
The young green corn forever singing;

And when the field is fresh and fair
Thy blessèd feet shall glitter there,
And we will walk the weeded field,
And tell the golden harvest's yield,
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.

from The Poet's Corner website

Rogation Sunday, the Sunday before Ascension Day, is traditionally the time for prayers for God’s blessing on the land, farm animals and crops, in fields and gardens, in the hope of a good harvest. Rogationtide has elements of rightful pride in and concern for our patch of land – our territory. It also recognises how precarious are livelihoods derived from that land and how much we rely on the weather, control of pests and diseases, the specialist expertise of others, and a market for what we produce at a price that reflects the inputs made. By the late spring, traditionally the main crops have all been sown and the care needed in early stages of growth given. So we thank God for the state of the crops and the livestock and the promise they hold, and pray that all the circumstances will combine to lead to a good harvest. The next seasonal celebration is Lammas: it has been observed in England since Saxon times and throughout the Middle Ages. It is a time of thanksgiving for the first crops of the harvest and, traditionally, a loaf made from the first ripe corn is blessed.

It is said that Harvest Thanksgiving came from the revival of Lammas, when on the first Sunday in October 1843, the Vicar of Morwenstow used bread made from the first ripe corn for the sacrament. These seasonal services can be very meaningful in the rural situation today although very industries. It is also an opportunity to contrast the difference between the affluent West and the Third World. Local supermarkets sell food from all over the world, often with little benefit to the producers.

Lammastide, 1st August, comes as a timely annual reminder of our dependency on God and our responsibilities as human beings to care for and sustain the land. It also reminds us of the importance of offering back to God the first fruits i.e. the best of the harvest, in thanksgiving. Symbolically, the first grain is taken and milled and that flour baked into a loaf of bread. This is then offered in thanksgiving at the altar; taken, blessed and broken becoming the body and blood of Christ, thus reminding us of our dependency on God, the creator and sustainer of all life.

Lammas is a powerful reminder to us that the world does not belong to us and that we hold it in trust from God on behalf of those who will come after us. We all need to learn the fundamental point that we are here to protect not destroy or endanger the earth and all it contains. The earth is indeed the Sanctuary of God.

July 2008

Every night I kneel and pray,
Let tomorrow be the day
When I see the face of someone who
I can mean something to.
Where, where is love?

So sang the young workhouse boy, Oliver, so movingly towards the beginning of the film version of the Charles Dickens-based musical that bears his name. And why? Because he yearned both to love and to be loved – he yearned to belong.

You and I were all created to belong – and so to live out our lives in the spirit of enabling others to belong – to live happy and fulfilled lives wherever in the world we happen to be. Each one of us began life belonging to those two parents whose love for one another (whatever the circumstances) loved us into life. Family life at home was (and still is) the bedrock of belonging. As we grow up we come to belong to wider groups – school, church, communities, organisations, our country and so on. Ideally, we come to realise that each one of us has a “belonging relationship” with each and every other person who is like us, a fellow-human being. (There is also much modern emphasis on our being in the right kind of belonging relationship with the ecology of the planet and with the animal kingdom).

It is all too true to say, that ever since Adam and Eve were dismissed from the Garden of Eden and Cain killed his brother Abel in those early chapters of the Book of Genesis, the occupational hazards of being human are all too clearly either actually or potentially there. Not least in this day and age in which we live. Unlike life in this country during wartime when, looking back, there was a sense of “all pulling together”, nowadays there is a very great deal of fragmentation in our society with individual behaviour, life-style and choice seeming to be paramount. The more we have come to know about the world in general through the media in all its forms, there is a very real sense of individuals, groups and nations having little or no sense of belonging to one another and sharing the planet together. Indeed, even many former closest relationships seem to be disposable, the fashions and pressures of life being what they are. It is not that there is no sense of belonging in today’s world - organisations for crime and terror, passionate football supporters around “their team” and richer nations operating restrictive trade practices to protect “their own”, indicate that much modern belonging to one another has an all-too-obvious short-termism and “limited liability” about it.

If it is true that we have lost a sense of the “common good”, it is, I believe, that we have lost that sense of a common God in whose image we are all made and whose great yearning for us is not only to love Him, but to love our neighbours as ourselves. That haunting sceptical response to God “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis ch 4, v 9) is one that ought to come back to haunt us time and time again. St. Paul’s great model for the Church as the Body of Christ with each body part dependent upon one another (1 Corinthians 12) is a model for the world too. As I write, there is taking place that world food conference in Rome. “O Lord, the world belongs to you…” is the title of a song that many of our primary school children sing these days. O that there might be more love and a sense of belonging among its people and of caring for one another – and that ever challenges you and me.

In this month of July, there are two “church events” here in England where that sense of God-based belonging to one another cries out to be heard. The first is a debate in the Church of England’s General Synod (which is bound to attract wide publicity) concerning our Christian relationships and attitudes among our fellow-citizens who are Muslim. Any strident (even perhaps confrontational) voices raised in the name of evangelism may well not be as Christ-like as Christian opinion as I believe it ought to be. Muslim faith at its best tells of God who is merciful and gracious with great respect for Jesus as a prophet. The fact that Christians believe that Jesus (at one with God) shows the fullest way of human living ought to lead to a “belonging relationship” of gracious prayer and “truth-seeking” dialogue more than a misunderstood “truth-declaring” relationship.

The other need for love and belonging concerns the Anglican Communion itself where issues of human sexuality will attract wide attention. If ever there was a time for Anglican leaders to simply be with one another and hold their different (and indeed our different) responses towards those whose conscientiously-held prayerful, scriptural or psychological beliefs differ from one another – it is now. However else will fellow Anglicans – let alone the wider church and the wider world – know that we all belong to one another under God?

For all the national and international attention that these matters will receive, just like “charity”, a sense of belonging to one another importantly begins “at home”. In a far more modest – but no less important way – local community summer events, like this month’s Gillingham Festival and this parish’s Family Weekend as part of it, are practical local opportunities to take part in. In such a way, we are reminded that belonging to, being with and loving our neighbours in all kinds of ways in God’s world is the reason you and I are here!

With all good wishes and prayers

Honorary Assistant Priest

Footnote: Since writing this letter in early June, I have discovered through the Church press that the General Synod debate to which I have referred has been postponed. The subject, and the way it is approached, is no less important because of this!

June 2008

Time for Action

I write this a few days before Pentecost and by the time you read it we will have celebrated all the major festivals which mark the Saving Actions of God through Jesus Christ. We are now called upon to ‘get on’ with living our ‘Christian Life’: living the life of Jesus Christ.

Relentlessly, the media pump out images of achievement and success or bemoan the lack of them. The creation of wealth and financial prosperity are an obsession in today’s world. Compassion and loving action are not ‘good news’. The enthralling world of beauty, grace and human emotion has been replaced by market forces and a secular culture which has lost its soul. The sheer grandeur of the world around us is often overlooked: as the hymn says; ‘Craftsman’s art and music’s measure for thy [God’s] pleasure all combine’.

The astounding thought that, every time we look into the eyes of another person we look at Jesus Christ, is far from most people’s thinking. Or the thought and reality, that every time we engage in an act of kindness we are serving Him by caring, is again far from the experience or thinking of so many. What a difference it would make if all Christians behaved as though they believed in the presence of Christ in each person. As Mother Teresa once said, referring to her community, “Our works of love reveal to the suffering poor the love of God for them.” This applies to us in our daily lives.

The Pentecost experience of the first Christians is intensely relevant for us. They shared their faith and everything they had with each other and with everyone around them. The divine energy they had received, they shared. The church grew because of the reality of God at work in their lives.

We are sent out at the end of every Eucharist into a broken world to bring healing, hope and love; to take the life of God to the world. It is so easy for us to think of the world as dead or without hope because of the harsh realities of life today. There’s ‘nothing new under the sun’ and the bible stories of our salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord are as relevant today as they have always been.

The Old and New Testaments tell us about the making of the world in goodness and love, its unmaking through human pride, sin and destructiveness and about its re-making through obedience, suffering, love and exultation. We often miss the point by not seeing all that as the hidden heart of the present day.

‘The Fall’ is now and always. ‘The Incarnation’ is now and always. ‘The Redemption’ is now and always. ‘Pentecost’ is now and always. The whole drama of the human race is ever present. Whether we like it or not, whether we realise it or not, we, in our day, are part of the greatest story ever told and lived.

In Ordinary Time, (between Pentecost and Advent), and throughout our lives, we Christians are called upon to re-fashion the world to make it a better place. Christ Jesus wishes constantly to live and work through us to change the world. First we have to learn and understand that God loves us just as we are. He loves you. He loves me. We then have to remember that our Christian calling is not just a passport to a future heaven. Our Christian calling is to commitment to this divine love and an acceptance and readiness to share this love with others. That is a demanding and all-consuming passion, in which self and self-interest have to shrivel and die.

Through our baptism we have a life to share, the life of Jesus Christ.

It’s Time for Action.

Yours with every blessing

May 2008

Visions and Views

I am writing this as I am preparing to travel to Turkey to visit six of the seven Churches mentioned in the Book of Revelation. To prepare I have been rereading the book and I have been struck, as I always am, by the beauty of the language and my mind is filled with the amazing images it conjures. So often we read scripture in small pieces, failing very often to fit the parts together into the book, or part of the Bible to which they belong.

We live in a time of the instant view. Our news programmes are filled with ‘specialists’ telling what a news item means, and how it will affect us, and in the process it can be all too easy to lose sight of the larger picture, to see just the incident that has caught our imagination and to view it in isolation from the full story. I am writing this on a day in April when the yellow forsythia is unrecognisable under its coat of snow. It would be easy after such a weekend to say, “What global warming?”

But the story beyond our island is much clearer. It is harder to estimate how much that is the result of our human behaviour, and how much the result of changes in our world. However there is clear evidence that how we care for our planet does create long-term changes. I have only to look at my own dustbin, after recycling everything possible, to see that the disposal of our modern-day garbage is a problem that continues to increase year by year.

There are so many things we take for granted, our washing machines, our fridges and freezers, our warm houses and our easy transport. How will our planet survive when everyone on the earth has these benefits, to which they are undoubtedly just as entitled as we are? What will we be willing to do without to make the life of someone living far away, where we do not know them and cannot see them, better? It is so easy just to let it continue, especially if doing something will mean making changes, changing our own ways of doing things.

Another news item at the moment is the troubled travels of the Olympic torch. It has become a highlight for protest against China, but the torch does not symbolize China, it is the symbol of the Olympic movement. Is it right then to use the fact that the Olympic Games are being held in China to protest against China, or in protesting is the intention of the Olympics being damaged? How can we work for a change in China but still hold true to the Olympic ideal, given that the games are set to take place in China?

In the Book of Revelation the Church in Laodicea is described as neither hot nor cold. As Christians I think it is very right and proper that we are thinking and praying about the many issues in our society that need to be seen as part of a long story and not simply as the five minute wonder of the news broadcast, known today and forgotten tomorrow. I believe we should be passionate about what is right and wrong in God’s World, and that we should have the courage to debate and share our ideas with one another – those with whom we agree and those with whom we do not agree.

I have enjoyed my journey into the Book of Revelation, it has stirred my imagination, and my excitement, and made me wish to be more excited about the world in which we live – God’s world.

April 2008

We live by and through relationships. From the very moment of our birth, we depended upon the love of those whose own love for one another had loved us into life. We discovered too – long before we could talk and explain – that our love and response to their love gave them the greatest of human fulfilment. After realising our capacity to love and to be loved, we realised too that we had the potential to think about and wonder about our very existence. In a word, we became “philosophical” about life and its meaning.

Christian faith is all to do with our relationship with God – the “Lord and giver of life” as the Creed puts it. And this relationship is sustained and developed by what we call worship and prayer – that capacity we have of being drawn out of ourselves into the love and relationship with the “other”. For Christians that “other” is God, and Christian prayer is all about becoming part of that love of God through Jesus Christ our Lord who leads us into God as The Way. The Truth and the Life for human living and relating not only to God also to all who are about us in God’s world.

Worship and prayer for Jesus Himself was all to do with consciously entering into and relaxing into the love of God with a view to realising and understanding “Thy will be done”. That is what led Him and sustained Him, not only in His ministry of healing and teaching, but through His death and Resurrection. And it was through experiencing all of this at first hand as Jesus’ disciples that following His Ascension and that unforgettable experience of what they called the Holy Spirit (Acts chapter 2) that they continued their relationship with Him – and their companionship with one another – in “the breaking of bread and in prayers” (verse 42).

So, how might you and I think about our worship and our prayers in the light of Easter and beyond? Here are just a few thoughts that might help.

The capacity to worship and pray are gifts we are given. St. Paul told the early Christians that they could not do this were it not for God “putting His Spirit into our hearts whereby we call “Abba, Father” (Romans 8 v15). Just like those disciples-now-apostles this is most reassuring and helpful when we do this together. Praying on our own (at home or anywhere else) really comes out of praying with the whole Church rather than the other way round. To feel and be surrounded by all those others who are bringing to God their joys, sorrows, hopes and fears is companionship and encouragement itself. And that goes for public worship through radio and television if, for any reason, we cannot “make it” to Church.

While we can worship and pray anywhere, this will not happen unless there is at least somewhere! (Just like human love!) Our church buildings provide that place and that focus for realising the presence of God within the life of everyday. So, at home, that favourite armchair, that corner, that picture, that lighted candle, that five, ten, twenty minutes (or whatever) can be our “church places and times” when we are on our own.

Just like a good square meal, worship and prayer ought to have all the best ingredients!

Thinking of the young Isaiah’s experience (Isaiah chapter 6) there will be that sense of wonder and thanksgiving “Holy, holy, holy….” Leading to that sense of unworthiness and sin, “Woe is me….” (Not the other way round - God first, ourselves second). Then we shall have that realisation of God’s love, acceptance and forgiveness as we realise that (following the well-known hymn) “I nothing lack if I am His and He is mine for ever”. It will be out of such realisation and joy of forgiveness that reflection and resolution may well come – that letter to write, (or e-mail to send!), that apology to offer, that forgiving word, that news-item to understand, that journey to make, that donation to give, even that time to give to prayer itself as we begin to see the world, our family and community and ourselves as God sees us and them. No wonder that it has been said that those who pray the most do the most. It may well be that amid all the aches and pains of life, a bit more consciously “lingering and loitering” in the presence of God – either in Church or at home – may lead not only to deeper meditation and contemplation, but to more positive and purposeful living. In any event, if we can somehow see that “THY will be done….” is a more satisfying outcome rather than “MY will be done…..” Although we might be beset by the many aches and pains of life, God’s life can then come more and more into our own.

Again, just like recipes and cooking, prayer books, and suggestions for prayer abound! Make changes and discover new ways of praying as life goes on. Never be afraid to ask the clergy (or any fellow Christian you trust) for help or advice. Believe it or not, that’s what the clergy are there for! The great thing is to worship and pray as you can and not as you can’t. Silences are often far better than the “right words”. God knows our innermost thoughts and feelings and is pleased to accept even our “little prayers”.

Archbishop Tutu once said that for him to pray is like coming into a warm room and sitting in the glow of a lovely fire…..Don Camillo (the priest of Italian fiction) said that prayer for him, as he looked up at the crucifix, was simply God looking at him and him looking at God. However we might regard or describe worship and prayer, heaven and earth come closer together when we do – the angels and archangels included!

“If you don’t worship, you’ll shrink” That’s what the psychiatrist told the boy in Peter Schaeffer’s play “Equus”. That is true for all of us. To turn our prayers in upon ourselves is to misunderstand – not to say misuse – God’s gift of Himself.

The New Testament’s “Easter people” came to know what it was to worship, break bread, and pray together. Nothing as fundamental as that will need to change for the likes of me and you. Then, having together re-captured the vision and purpose of Christian life those early Christians were able to “pray without ceasing” (as St Paul bade them do) to bring the life of heaven into their daily living – sometimes amid persecution - as they continued their earthly lives. For us that means that prayer has everything to do with the world of the newspapers, the doctor’s surgery, the supermarket, the family, the neighbours …….wherever we happen to find ourselves. In the words of the hymn “Give us grace to persevere” realising, with St Augustine, that “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee”.

With all good wishes and prayers

Honorary Assistant Priest

March 2008

The Good Life – The God Life

As I write this in the first week of February, I can see from my study window snowdrops and crocuses in bloom and daffodils that will soon be out. I love to see these early signs of spring as it cheers my heart and lifts my spirit. Once again this year, there is the annual debate going on in the media about spring coming early, the effect of frost on young buds, too much rain, etc., etc., and this is all because of climate change we are told. There is nothing new under the sun and spring does not have a fixed date for arrival. Praise God we cannot control the elements, switching them on and off like a light switch.

We do, however, have a responsibility to be good stewards of all of creation (Genesis 1.28) and in Deuteronomy 11.12 we read “It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.”

As a farmer and herdsman I well remember winters that went on until the end of April, or longer, and the joy of early, or late, springs when we could at last put the cows out to grass. Let us rejoice and be glad in what the Lord has made. We must remember our responsibilities to creation for the next sacred thing to God is the earth.

We glory in the life of God and in the life that earth gives us, most especially so in Spring and at Easter. Every Lent, Passiontide and Holy Week I have to remind myself that this Holy Season is not about denial and deprivation but about the discipline of learning to live. It is about coming alive to the richness and magic of existence. I have learned to savour with real understanding these words of St. Paul: “we are God’s work of art, created in Christ Jesus to live the good life as from the beginning he had meant us to live.” (Eph. 2.10) This is a truth that can transform us. This fact should lift us up. At this time of year we should praise God because He affirms us in our humanity through the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As we faithfully observe Holy Week and Good Friday we are reminded that we reflect the beauty of God’s Word in whose image we are made. This Holy time reminds us that in the depths and reality of our fallen human nature we encounter God who speaks to us face to face as a friend. Good Friday challenges us to seek God in the very heart of our being and in the suffering around us. God is to be found in the pain of the world and in the darkness of the human soul. We can find Him in the silence, emptiness and rapt attentiveness of our prayer and worship before the Cross on Good Friday. In our thirst for life we return to the spirit of life which is within us and can be freed at the Cross. The purpose of our existence is to live the good life - the ‘God Life’. God’s plan from the beginning was to share His life and love with all creation. We are part of the process of His creation, to work with God in our faithful living of the good life. We are called on to be natural and fully human; this is the very essence of life eternal – life with God.

When we human beings make ourselves the centre of the world then we fragment and destroy the unity of all that he has made. Nevertheless no matter how we behave we can never utterly destroy God’s masterpiece, his work of art. Our Christian endeavour should really be to let the divine craftsman and restorer reveal the original beauty of his creation, including our lives.

This, of course, is what Lent, Passiontide, Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter are all about.

May we all seek to let the Good life – The God life, shine through our human weakness and we will then become fully human. We will have learnt to live as Easter People who are in full bloom.

May Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter be a time of blessing and reawakening of the life of Jesus Christ in us all.

February 2008

The Festival of Candlemas (February 2nd) recalling Simeon’s recognition of Jesus as the “light to lighten the Gentiles” (St. Luke ch 2 v 32) concludes the worship of the “Christmas season”. There could not be a greater contrast this year when – only four days later on February 6th – we come to Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent.

If Christmas and Candlemas tell of the universal message, hope and light brought to the world through the birth of Jesus, the season of Lent gives the Church and the Christian world that sharp annual reminder of just how the implications of God’s love for His world are to be worked out and hopefully fulfilled by His human creation. Those temptations experienced by Jesus during those “forty days and forty nights” (St Luke ch 4) are all to do with Jesus wrestling within His human self to discover what was (and always will be) the will of God for human living. Jesus rejected (as of the devil) temptations for self-satisfaction through turning stones into bread; temptations to go for short-term, quick-fix and sensational publicity and leadership through jumping (albeit safely) from the temple; and temptations to give allegiance to all that was not of God through throwing in His lot with the Devil himself. “Get thee behind me, Satan…….thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve” Single-mindedness indeed. Little wonder that Jesus’ consequent public ministry was (and is) all to do with explaining, living out, and bringing about all that was (and is) meant by the will of God and the kingdom of God - “GOD RULES OK!” in graffiti terms! This is the subject of the Wednesday Lent gatherings this year.

What the Lent journey sets before Christians and would-be Christians leading to Easter in annual terms is really all to do with Christian worship and living in lifetime terms. How can we take hold of that single-minded Christ-like response to all that the “darkness” of the world we encounter? What would Jesus have us be and do……..?

Within the life of the Church? Christians often seem to have more issues that divide them from one another as the years go by! Even the most casual reader of our newspapers cannot fail to learn that the Anglican Communion – often regarded by those of us who are proud of those three strands of bible, tradition and reason that are its hallmarks and its model for church order – is very publicly divided as to whether homosexuality is “of God” or not. Some Dioceses in the Unites States have broken away from the Episcopal Church. The gathering together of Anglican Bishops due at the Lambeth Conference this year is bedevilled (if that is the word) by who will or who will not be there. It was Professor Herbert Butterfield concluding his book “Christianity and History” in the 1930s who wrote “We can do no worse than remember a principle which both gives up a firm Rock and leaves us the maximum elasticity for our minds: the principle: Hold to Christ, and for the rest be totally uncommitted.” The Archbishop of Canterbury has more than once urged conscientious, prayerful and thoughtful Anglicans – not least bishops and archbishops – to listen to one another in a common quest for Christian truth. A recent address by the Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon, near Oxford to American students training for the ministry included: “Perhaps recognising that whilst we all know what the Bible says, we struggle to agree on what it means, Yet if we can become faithful, open, spiritual struggling communities of interpretation,…the wider (Anglican) Communion has a chance….seeking only the way of Jesus, that leads us into the truth, charity and wisdom that God longs for his Church.” I believe that, in our present circumstances, the mind of Jesus so often comes about best more by listening and reflecting than by concluding.

Within the life of the world? Many thoughtful commentators at the present time are making the case for Christian faith to regain its public face – at least within the European and Western world, In a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society, in the name of tolerance, the practice of religion has become a feature of private life rather than public life. Tony Blair’s reported words about the Government “We don’t do God….” sums this up. Yet, we have a situation where some current legislation seeks to force Christian and other faith communities to “toe the line” in such matters as the placing of babies and children for adoption. Ethical policies of Government, for example, in matters of embryology and fertilisation are causing some real Christian concern. What has happened to legal and moral “conscientious objection”? Individual “human rights” (often thought of as the basis of secular society) are fast becoming the two watchwords that may well be overtaking the other two traditional words “common good”. Those who follow the faith of Islam are not afraid to declare that faith and daily life are bound together. Christians surely need to assert more publicly that “Thy Kingdom come on earth….” that even political daily life and Christian faith are also bound up together – seeking that same will of God. And not be afraid to say so!

Within ourselves? Jesus spent those forty days and nights in the desert – on his own thinking, praying and generally wrestling within His own heart and mind as to how he would go on to tell of and show His Way, His Truth, and His Life. The season of Lent is that special time for just that, realising that on life’s journey we not only have Jesus as our great example but Jesus as our great companion on that same human road upon which he journeyed. It could well be that the greatest need for “ordinary Christians” in “ordinary parishes” is for the likes of you and me to take more time that we generally do, to do more thinking, praying, worshipping and reflecting on the Bible both alone and together to so cultivate and water the deserts of our hearts that what is inwardly local becomes outwardly universal so far as Christian living is concerned. Remember that the longest journey of faith is so often from our heads to our hearts.

With good wishes for a challenging and rewarding season of Lent.

Honorary Assistant Priest

January 2008

I am writing this while the affair of the working teacher in Sudan naming a teddy bear Mohammed is still recent news, and it has reminded me again of how much we depend on our background and the culture in which we are raised to assess what we see and understand.

At Epiphany we look at the Wise Men arriving to see the baby Jesus. We are told that they had travelled from afar. They had first visited Herod in Jerusalem in their search for the baby and, although Herod held power, he was feared rather than revered by the Jews. He had secured his position as their king by the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, but he was not considered to be truly Jewish, and his Edomite ancestry was held in contempt among the Jewish aristocracy. The wise men had expected to find the new King among this king’s retinue, but any local Jew would have known the politics and known that any leader born in the Palace of Herod could never be a true leader of the Jews. These outsiders, the Wise Men, had looked in the wrong place.

They then followed the star again and it led them to a humble house, where they found a young woman with her baby and her husband. This family were not royalty, they had no obvious wealth, and I wonder what the Wise Men thought as they bowed down to worship the baby, a baby that filled them with awe. They must have wondered what it was all about, and what it all meant. In normal human terms it did not make much sense.

We do not have any written records of these wise men after they leave, but it would be fascinating to know how they retold their story when they returned home. I wonder what sense they made of it. I wonder if it was relevant for them in their lives afterwards, and in what way they related to the experience. I wonder if they knew the Jewish scriptures and if they could relate what they had seen and experienced to those writings, or did they use their own faith system to relate to the events they had experienced.

In our own multi faith, multi ethnic society it is very important that we think about how we tell our stories and how we listen to the stories of others so that we are not directed in the wrong way by making false assumptions as the Wise Men did when they arrived in Jerusalem. They thought in the terms of their own culture and searched for what they expected. Luckily they were redirected, and valued the far deeper truth they then discovered. But perhaps this divide is also there intrinsically within society as the Christian story becomes less well known. We must then ask ourselves if we are telling this story in a way that engages with our society.

This great story of our redeemer, our incarnate Lord, should be shouted across our land.

December 2007

Advent

Advent is not, as many people think, the season of waiting or preparation for the festival that comes at the end of December. Advent is the season in the Church Year when the church waits for the coming of the Messiah at the end times. Advent is a season, a time, for all of us, and Christians in particular, to meditate on the great themes of death, judgement, heaven and hell; a season of penitence with stark, strong language. Advent is Christianity at its most counter-culture in a society where decorations and preparations for the Festival at the end of December start in September or even earlier.

The themes of Advent are very important for our modern lives which are so full of diversions and entertainment. In the words of Jesus, it is “watchfulness, keeping awake, reading the signs of the times” that we must wrestle with in Advent. This season is one when we should be asking big questions of ourselves and our church community, like “Why are we here?” and “What happens when we die?” These questions are answered by John the Baptist and Jesus the Son of God, who give us a way of life that is non-violent, hopeful, peaceful and true.

Right up to the last Sunday of Advent it is important that we do not move too quickly to the celebration of Christmas. We prepare ourselves and wait right up to the last moment as it increases our joy and relief at the birth of the long awaited Messiah at that first Christmas; and his birth in our hearts and minds today if we have prepared ourselves properly.

Jesus Christ spoke again and again about ‘the coming of the Son of Man’
(Matthew 24.37) and St Paul says that, ‘our salvation is closer and the day is drawing near’ (Romans 13.11) when the Lord will set up his rule and flood the world with light and peace, drawing all people to live in love and harmony. Advent calls us all to throw away our deeds of darkness and put on the armour of faith, hope and love. Advent calls us to wait and reform our lives “for the Kingdom of God is at hand”.

Christmas

We must remember that in the tradition of the gospels, it was angels, shepherds and wise men, in other words, the holy, the humble and the expectant, who pointed out and experienced the moment in history that changed things for ever. When we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Day, we must make sure that we deliver to the world the full Gospel message of God’s love in Jesus Christ for all humanity today. This message, of course, is not just for one day’s celebration but for a lifetime.

Let us all surprise the world with Christ Jesus born and alive in us.

With best wishes and every blessing for the great seasons of Advent and Christmas

November 2007

Remember, remember……Not only the 5^th of November with its annual reminder of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605, but also a significant cluster of other November dates that bid us "Remember".

Remembrance Sunday this year, coincides with the original November 11^th 1918 Armistice Day which brought to an end the First World War. Earlier this year, my wife and I spent a half-day (during a short break in Bruges in Belgium) visiting one of the sites of the Battle of the Somme, the “In Flanders Field” Museum at Ypres, and the impressive Menin Gate memorial bearing the names of many thousands of British servicemen who gave their lives for King and Country. For many families up and down the country, the loss of loved-ones between 1914 and 1918 is still keenly felt, remembering too the Second World War 1939–1945, the 1950s Korean War, the 1980s Falklands War, and other military loss of life including (as I write and as you read this) those who have given and are still giving their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We will remember them" will echo in Acts of Remembrance in every parish and community throughout the land in pride but also in great sadness.

Although deaths on military active service are rightly given special public recognition, all those near and dear to us who have died have not only a place in our own hearts, but a particular place within the life of the Church. November 2^nd each year is All Souls' Day when the names of particular loved ones are remembered at the altar either in silent or public prayer. As we loved and prayed with them and for them during their lives here on earth, so it is right that we have a particular opportunity to go on doing so now that their earthly journey has ended. A special service will be held at St Mary’s at 3.00pm on November 4^th, the nearest Sunday in All Souls-tide, when those who we know to have been bereaved locally during the last year will be invited by the Rector to remember their loved-ones by placing a "candle of thanksgiving and remembrance" in the place specially arranged.

And all in the context and back-drop of All Saints' Day which comes first (and foremost) on November 1^st. To pass from earthly life into the closer presence of God is to take our place with "the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven." As we continue to journey onwards in our lives, we can think of that phrase in an old Scottish Catechism that tells of the purpose of life being "to know, love and serve God here on earth and to enjoy him for ever in heaven." St Paul tells us that we are all "called to be saints" (1 Corinthians 1, v 2).

Sainthood is all to do with holiness - "specialness" for God. Each one of us has that potential, and destiny, to reflect something of the holiness of God Himself in whose image we are made. We give thanks for those particular Saints whose "days" are celebrated on particular dates each year. We remember with joy their distinctive lives as apostles, martyrs, gospel-writers or otherwise Christ-like men and women down the Christian centuries and across the Christian world who are recognised as "lights of the world in their several generations" (1928 Prayer Book).They are what the Letter to the Hebrews calls that "great cloud of witnesses" (ch. 12 v 1) who, as it were, cheer us on, pray us on and generally "root" for us as we seek to live out our Christian lives.

To remember is to bring into the present - that occasion, that person, that hero, that role-model, that loved-one. To remember in the context of Christian faith is to have ever in our hearts and minds that Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life for human living leads us through His Good Friday death (as horrible as any battle-zone death) and Easter Resurrection to that closer presence of God for which He has prepared "a place for you" (St. John 14 v 2). That same love of God that Jesus lived is never, ever exhausted. That is the basis for what we call our Christian "hope", (a word - like charity - sadly devalued as we speak of "hope for the best") where hope in the best Christian sense is that promise that of "all that You have given me, I shall lose nothing"
(St John 6 v 39).

It is within Christian worship, that we remember and make present the reality of the love of God, the life of Jesus, and their on-going nature and life we call the Holy Spirit. We remember that we are ALL members of God’s human family, Christian or not-Christian, living or departed "Do this in remembrance of me…." commanded Jesus in the Upper Room. (St Luke 22 v19) But for Christians and would-be Christians, not only on November 11^th, November 2^nd or even November 1^st, but, by God's love and grace, every day of our lives!

With love and prayers

Honorary Assistant Priest

October 2007

Theology

"Now if it’s theology we are talking about then that must be your business," said the lady. "Why must it be my business" I asked. "Well, because you have been trained," came the reply. And this conversation has been repeated many times in the years since I was ordained. However, this lady's understanding does not seem to agree with the dictionary definition of theology which is:- 'dealing with knowledge of God as gained from his works by light of nature and reason, and based on revelation'.

Now I would say that I have no more knowledge of God than any other Christian. I would also say that I have no more experience of living and walking with him than the many other people of faith I meet day by day, and I am sure much less than many. At college I was privileged to study the reasoning of earlier great Christian thinkers, and was made to think through some of the complex issues raised. But that is not a privilege available only to ministers in training, it is open to everyone to explore and consider, and that is not all that theology is.

Our information of our faith and our knowledge of the teaching of Jesus come from the extraordinary, ordinary men who surrounded him, and then in faith told the story. They were not chosen for their academic ability nor for their prior knowledge, but because they were people who could see God and live his ways. That is, live the theology. As Christians, we are living that theology each and every day as we live out our lives walking with God in faith.

We always achieve this better if we are willing to open ourselves to new ways of thinking and of understanding, if we are willing to discuss and listen to others as they talk about their lives in faith. This must be a truly non-judgemental process; there is no hierarchy, though some are privileged with more information than others, they may well not have the same life experience of living the faith as those with whom they meet.

The gospel is meant to be lived out in our lives, but to do that we do need to study and to think about what it says. This can be done locally in house discussion groups, it can be done through the diocesan schemes enabling individuals to chose to study to greater depth a chosen subject, it can be done by preparing each Sunday by reading the lesson and then listening to the sermon, and thinking how what is said relates to our own lives. But however we do it, theology is about us living the Gospel in our lives in the most informed way we can, not just those of us who are priests, but every one who claims Christ as Lord.

September 2007

Witness of Disciples

Learning to be Disciples

Many of us are bewildered with the changes and challenges of life today. Things unimagined a few years ago are now part of life and if you don’t keep up you are left behind.

We also live at a time when the almost casual destruction of life is a daily occurrence. The use of embryos for research and experimentation is discussed and to some extent accepted. Family life and marriages too often end in divorce. Almost daily we hear of a fatal stabbing or shooting on our streets; terror stalks our towns and cities. Too many human lives are desecrated.

All around us the beliefs and values of our Christian inheritance are questioned and ridiculed, not only by agnostics and the unprincipled. We could be witnessing the destruction of our civilisation, or living through the birth pains of a new generation and culture. Death and resurrection are of course the rhythmic pulse of God's dealings with his world and his people. We Christians believe that ultimate victory is assured but never painlessly and always through death.

Who then, will be the prophets and apostles of a new age? Who will turn the searchlight of truth on the pretensions and the falsehoods of those who peddle new solutions to ancient problems? We have to learn from history, from other times of deep crisis and the collapse of communities, the way in which new communities were built by salvaging the treasures of past and applying them to contemporary life. Not to take us back, but in order to move forward with integrity, respecting and loving all that God has given us to care for, including human life and the environment.

In these days a gigantic new effort needs to be made in understanding what it means to serve and be served. This applies in a special way to Christians and the Church. We need to re-learn, or discover afresh, the way of being Christ's Disciples in the world today.

The seeds have been sown; in each one of us the life of Christ is to be found. We have been called by God at our Baptism and Confirmation, and empowered to go out as whole-hearted followers of Christ. We Christians are the upholders of whatever is good, just and righteous. When we were confirmed we consciously accepted the responsibility of standing up for the truth of the gospel and all that it stands for in valuing human life.

If each of us is faithful to our Baptism and Confirmation promises, if each of us receives Jesus into ourselves regularly at Communion every week, we are in a strong position to overcome, with the Light of Christ, the dark forces of evil in the world. We Christians could have a stunning impact on world affairs but this means mobilising all our resources and seeking God's will with specific reference to our present Witness and Discipleship. The Church has a commitment to build the Kingdom of God. Does anyone notice we are here now?

The Church has to be revitalised, if the people of God are to be prophets and witnesses to Christ; we each need a new experience of conversion. We need to learn again the art of "Discipleship", of following Jesus. In this Diocese a new Programme of Learning for Discipleship begins this autumn. I have invited one of the Diocesan "Learning for Discipleship" Team to come and talk to us on this subject on Wednesday, 3rd October, 7.30pm in the Vicarage Schoolroom. This is an open meeting for all Church members. The PCCs of Gillingham and Milton-on-Stour will be there and we extend a warm welcome to you to attend. Please come, so that we can take the first steps in learning how to make the Gospel our own and become alive as we learn to relate the Good News to an unbelieving world.

This is the Challenge before us, we have to learn about Discipleship in order to encourage others to come to Christ Jesus and change the world for God.

Yours with every blessing

August 2007

August is the month when, traditionally, many people “go places”. The school term has ended, local organisations have a summer break, the pace of life is that bit slower and thousands of folk take to the roads, the airports, the railways or the Channel Ports to “get away.” For those unable to go away for one reason or another, there will be those memories of former years. For “places” play a very important part in our lives – the place where we grew up; the place we made this or that decision; maybe the place of that unhappy episode. Places are the milestones – even the “pauses” along life’s way. My wife and I have recently spent the inside of a week in Bruges in Belgium. Another great place (for us) of Christian worship and heritage.

No wonder, whether regular churchgoers or not, a very great number of folk always make a point of visiting the churches they find when they are on holiday. For, as often as not, they somehow “define” the place or region It is perhaps no surprise that, all in all, our churches and cathedrals are among the most visited places of all. And the same goes for those churches and cathedrals on the mainland of Europe and beyond. We know that “The Church” is a company of people. But what is it about our church buildings that draws folk literally in their thousands?

First, it will be their very history and beauty. In a fast-moving world when there are so many changes in life and in which so many of life’s features are “ordinary”, the very stones, structures and art-work in a variety of forms within our church buildings point us beyond the present – even above the present. We may well have come across those lines of the poet Wordsworth written “above Tintern Abbey” (on the banks of the river Wye):

“And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime…”

It is not only a lovely view from a hilltop that causes us to exclaim “ Gosh – wish you were here!” Our church buildings can (and do) have the same effect. And this is very much a “way-into” worship – to be drawn out of ourselves into something (or rather Somebody – God). Lovely places raise our spirits and can give us that sense of our total dependence upon God, the Creator. Those who designed and built our churches had that “Greater glory of God” as their ultimate motivation. We all need to recapture and experience that sense of awe and wonder. It was the great scientist Albert Einstein who wrote “Whoever is devoid of the capacity to wonder…whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life.”

Second, our church buildings can help re-kindle that vision for a “different” world – where people and situations ought to come together in a coherent “whole”. The integrated structure of the building stands in stark contrast to a disintegrated world. That is why, for Christians ands would-be Christians, our churches, chapels, cathedrals and abbeys not only “lift us up” but (please God) “send us away” with renewed hearts, minds and wills to make the world a more Christ-like place. Church buildings (as well as church people!) ought to bring to life “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. It was George Fox, the 17th century founder of the Quaker movement who also prayed “O God, baptize our hearts into a sense of the needs and conditions of all”.

Third, our church buildings, great and small can and do give that sense of security, trust and “waiting upon God”. (Psalm 62). As we explore all that a church building has to offer, we might well recall the hymn-writer’s words “….here might I stay and sing, no story so divine.” One of the saddest features of life today is that there is so little trust – there always seems to be someone or something to blame for this or for that. Within many a place and community is our church buildings that proclaims above all that “God is….” and that “God is faithful….” (1 Corinthians 10 v13). Not everybody will see that in Christian terms, but for those of us who do we are reminded each time we pass or enter a church that “God is our help and strength” (Psalm 46) is all our joys, sorrows, hopes and fears throughout all the “changing scenes” of our lives.

All in all, our church buildings beckon us to “come in”, to be refreshed and renewed in a variety of ways whether by “taking in” the spaces themselves or through the formal worship and various events that take place within them so that we might “go out” with a renewed spirit in our hearts. Our churches help us “go places” in our thoughts, words, prayers and actions. This month (August 6th) sees the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. The Christian faith is all to do with our “transformation” into the very likeness of Christ Himself. May our churches – great and small – play no small part in drawing us deeper into worship and more generous in our Christian witness.

With all good wishes and prayers

Honorary Assistant Priest

July 2007

The Life of God is in Everything

This month Gillingham will reverberate with life as the community of Gillingham comes together and celebrates the Gillingham Festival. A very imaginative programme of activities and entertainment has been planned by the festival organizers. As a part of these celebrations we have St. Mary’s Flower Festival. This is a celebration acknowledging the hand of God in the beauty of flowers and through our worship.

I stand in awe as I look at the beauty of a single flower. Then I feel humbled by the artistic skill of flower arrangers, as they bring so many varieties/species of flowers and foliage together in an arrangement and display. Each arrangement is part of the whole, expressing our reliance on God the ‘Creator of All’. ‘God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good.’ (Genesis 1. 33) At this time of year we cannot get away from the ‘grandeur of creation’; although, of course, each passing season brings its reminder of the grace and skilfulness of God.

The Book of Genesis is absolutely clear that the world, humanity and all of creation is created by God for his glory. Creation is celebrated again and again in the Old Testament and gives thanks for the breath of life that animates all creation. This is nothing less than the ongoing presence of the same Spirit that brooded over the waters at the beginning of creation.

Creation is not a far off once and for all event; God did not light the blue touch paper, stand back and let the rocket soar. Creation is, creation continues, creation is perpetual. Far from being up there and out there, God is at the heart of all that is; he is best imaged as the inmost part of all that is. We look beyond the created and behold the Creator. He is everything, in everything, one God, maker and Father of all. As Christians we compress billions of years of creation into the bare phrase of the Creed……”Creator of heaven and earth”. The endless diversity of all that exists is in reality the single pulse of divine energy.

It has taken the human race many millennia to realise the true shape of the world. In this age the living reality of God continues to take hold of humanity, reshaping reality and preparing the human family for an unimaginable future. We need a radical shift in our perception of God if we are to adjust our vision to the new creation in which we live. God is eternal; our understanding of him is infinite and fallible. All the pictures we have of God in our heads, all of our ideas about ourselves and our relationship with him have to take account of the flood of knowledge, discovery and research that is shaping for our generation, a new and stunning awareness of creation and our place in it.

We Christians have to allow some of the Gospel images of the Kingdom used by Jesus to grow within a new cosmic context. Jesus described the Kingdom as mustard seed, leaven and light. They are images which imply growth, transformation, energy and understanding. Here is nothing static, predictable, alien or other worldly. All is possible because God is the innermost energy source of all creation.

The Christian faith and spirituality celebrate the coming of the God-man, Jesus Christ, into our human family two thousand years ago setting the seal on God’s plan for the evolution of his creation. It releases divine life and love into humanity; it makes it possible for the human mind to glimpse the pattern and plan behind creation.

As we gaze and wonder at the beauty of the flower arrangements in church, we will come to understand a little more of the heart and mind of God.

But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind. (Job 12. 7 – 10)

There is something deeply sacred about the whole of creation. The sacred book of the universe joins the sacred book of the scriptures where the word of God is to be found, where the revelation of God is made. So we must dwell on the word of scripture and creation, pondering both in our hearts.

With every blessing

June 2007

Global Warming

We spent some days last month on the Island of Bryher, one of the Scilly Isles. It is easy to see the effects that the change in sea level had during a previous event of global warming, when the sea level around, what was then one island, rose several feet, dividing the large island into many smaller ones, covering the farm land in the lower lying areas, and creating a new sea shore and a very changed landscape. What we see today is truly beautiful.

The fear of global warming and its consequences is very real at the moment especially as we have had one of the warmest springs on record; the prospect is frightening. We are able to see that our actions can potentially be the cause, with our heavy use of fossil fuels to heat our homes and to run our cars. It is easy to feel guilty and to chase around looking for solutions and for scapegoats. We are sure that we, the human race, can beat this if only we do the right things, or better still, persuade others to make changes, so that we can continue our lives with as few changes as possible.

As we search to replace these resources we have started to look for alternative fuels, and already oil-producing plants are being grown in our fields to create fuels for our cars and lorries. All of this raises two issues for me.

Firstly, I wonder if we truly believe that we can control our environment. If I have learnt anything from my many holidays on the Scilly Isles it is that the weather is totally beyond our control, and that some of the most beautiful things come from the most unpredicted events. The amazing rainbow appearing in the sea spray high over a rock as the sun reappears after a storm, children building sandcastles on a beach in late October in warm sun wearing tee shirts, the Northern Lights over the islands. All memories to hold, but none of them ones we could have predicted or created. For me these demonstrate the hand of God at work in our world.

I do believe that we have to do all we can to ensure we leave as little damage to our planet as possible, that our ecological footprint is as small as we can make it. It is important that we look at our life styles and see where we cause damage, and where we should manage and use resources more carefully, but we should be doing this knowing that we are God’s henchmen, not his ruler, aware of our subsidiary place in the scheme of things.

Secondly, I have concerns that in the western world we have turned our minds to creating the fuels we require from biological means. Although we have food for our tables there are many places in our world where people go hungry. These same places are also often those with the greatest need to find finance from the western nations to repay debts, and so they are already tempted to grow cash crops to decorate our homes with flowers, and provide luxury out-of-season foods for our tables. Is it right that even more land should be used to provide crops that will not provide food for those most in need in our world, and instead provide fuel to keep our cars running. I do not have the answer, but I do think we need to ask the questions.

We may be reluctant to ask these questions because we do not want answers that will involve changes, but we all need to think talk and pray, and to face the future aware of God’s great majesty and power among us.

May 2007

While it is more than possible to celebrate the earthly life of Jesus in a total and general way every day in our Christian lives, the annual church calendar invites us to reflect upon particular aspects of His life in particular ways as the Festivals come round. During this month we are within what traditionally has been called the “Great Forty Days” between Easter Day and Ascension Day (Thursday May 17th) and the Festival of Whitsun/Pentecost (Sunday, May 27th).

Following the great emphasis of Easter that “Christ is risen!” - brought through (Good Friday) sin and death by the continuing love of God that Jesus showed from the Cross, hence Good Friday, God’s Friday – Ascension Day declares that the earthly ministry of Jesus is completed and received by God through His return to heaven and eternity (from whence he came at Christmas). Pentecost – 50 days after Easter – celebrates the continuing presence of the Spirit of God- now enriched by the earthly life of Jesus – in all that we mean by the Holy Spirit. The “Bible timetable” for these Christian Festivals (or Feasts) comes from the writings of St Luke. First in his Acts of the Apostles where the post-Easter appearances of Jesus came to and end after forty days in chapter 1, verse 3 (that is why Ascension Day is always on a Thursday!) and Pentecost (originally 50 days after the Jewish Passover) follows Jesus’ wish for His disciples (in St Luke’s Gospel chapter 24, verse 49) to “stay in the city until the power from above comes down upon you”. Traditionally, the Easter (Paschal) candle was extinguished following the reading of the Gospel on Ascension Day, but in these days of worship (liturgical) changes, the Paschal Candle remains lit until Pentecost. The word “Whitsun” is derived from “White Sunday” when women and girls being confirmed at Pentecost wore white clothes.

I write about these particular emphases of these significant “milestones” in the life and ministry of Jesus if only because whether believing Christians or not, I believe it still worthwhile, or even of the greatest importance, to “get the facts straight” in a day and age where Good Friday and Easter Day are often regarded as “the same” and where even of our supermarket’s original advertisements on Easter egg packaging, until it was changed, told that Jesus was born at Easter. While it is important in a multi-cultural society to acknowledge publicly the place of other Faiths (Ramadan, Eid, Divali, Passover, different cultures’ New Years, etc) it is a great pity that the playing of “When I survey the wondrous Cross” (Good Friday) and “Jesus Christ is risen today” (Easter Morning) has been dropped from the start of the 8 o’clock BBC Radio 4 News. Just one example among many which indicates that, over the years, the roots of Christian culture are not publicly acknowledged. We perhaps noted it was the Iranian President who publicly brought the Christian Easter, the Jewish Passover and the birth of Mohammed together in his (maverick?) speech in releasing his British naval and marine prisoners. Thank goodness that this year the Whitsun/Pentecost Festival coincides with a Bank Holiday (Holy Day) weekend as it always used to do!

but ...

All of the above is nothing for Christians or would-be Christians if knowledge of Christian roots and faith is not reflected in living out that faith. In Prayer Book days we prayed that “we might shew forth thy praise not only with our lips but in our lives” and in these Common Worship times we pray that we may be “sent out to live and work to your praise and glory“ – same thing!. This month gives us a “heaven-sent” opportunity to do something of this through Christian Aid Week from May 13^th-19^th, the week in which Ascension Day falls. We shall all be invited to give to this great and most worthwhile cause in a variety of ways, mainly through the “red envelopes” or street collections

Christian Aid began its life in 1945 as “Christian Reconciliation in Europe” following the needs of refugees – and churches to help them meet those needs following the end of the Second World War. Christian Aid Weeks began in 1957 and led the way, with Oxfam, in establishing what we now call the Aid Agencies that now come together spontaneously following disasters like the recent Indian Ocean Tsunami and the Make Poverty History campaign. But meanwhile, Christian Aid, acting on behalf of many Christian denominations in this country, is regularly and much involved in long-term development projects in over sixty of the world’s poorest countries. Under the general slogan “We believe in life before death”, this year’s particular motto is “Help poor communities grow a future”. While not directly politically involved Christian Aid, supported by the other agencies and others including the world-wide Mothers’ Union, seeks to harness the power of people united across the world to put issues of trade, aid and development at the top of political agendas to tackle the root causes of poverty irrespective of peoples’ religion or race. 82p of every £1 raised goes directly to places and peoples of need. Over these last decades, millions of pounds have been raised through voluntary contributions made possible through local volunteers in our local communities – not least in Gillingham. May we be moved to give to Christian Aid this month as generously and graciously as we are prompted to do following our thoughts and prayers for those in great need.

If we are to become God’s “Easter People”, we are bidden not only to know about the Gospel but to become the Gospel to enable others in other places renewed hope to live happier and more fulfilled human lives.

With good wishes and prayers

Honorary Assistant Priest

April 2007

The Cross: ‘A Touching Place’

Palm Sunday, April 1st, marks the beginning of Holy Week; this week is the most important time of the Christian Year. In, and through it, we engage with Christ Jesus as He walked the way of suffering and death. Jesus Christ also walks with us now, touching us and the whole world for the cross is Salvation for all, now.

Today we, as Christians, are encouraged to engage with our fellow human beings and the whole world in all its suffering and with all its opportunities. In this way we become the instruments and vehicles of the Redeeming Love of Jesus who died for all and wishes to touch everyone and every situation at the point of pain and sorrow, ‘The Touching Place’.

This year our theme for Holy Week is “The Cross: the Touching Place”. Our preachers at our Evening worship on each day will speak on this theme, linking it to situations and circumstances in the world today, both for individuals, communities and world needs.

Our preacher at St. Mary’s on Good Friday for the two hours, from 1.00pm - 3.00pm, will be Jackie Simmons, (formerly Sr. Jackie who preached during Holy Week a few years ago). Jackie now lives in Wimborne and has recently spent some time with “Street Kids Direct”, a Christian Charity with a mission to help and support those who work with street children around the world. This Charity was founded in 2003 by Duncan Dyason, author of ‘Miracle Children’ and founder of the El Castillo Street Children Project in Guatemala and Matt Levett and Joe Soden.

Jackie writes

“ I have been unable to ascertain how many street kids there are in Guatemala but I can say with certainty the number is rising, more and more kids are being abandoned, or running away from an abusive home. Once on the streets the life expectation of a child is four years. The horror stories of abuse, brutalisation of children, slaves to prostitution, rent boys and drugs, are beyond most people’s imagination. In fact we ‘don’t want to go there’, it is too painful for us. Yet I believe that God is there, that is where this Lent is, daily suffering and dying with these children. Whatever is done to one of them is done to God. While this world denies the rights to life and their children, they keep Christ on the cross as the world remains indifferent to the horrors inflicted on children, world wide, we cannot put ourselves in the arms of God, overflowing with warmth, security and everlasting hope. WE must register the deep pain of God, the reality of this sorrow; think about the children crying out to their God. Children……..

This Good Friday, the story is not just about the passion of Christ, it is about the continuing passion of God’s children. My heart, your heart, God’s heart. “

This Holy Week and the Great Three Days, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, are not just about the Passion of Christ, these days are about the continuing passion of God’s world. It is about putting ‘my heart – your heart’ alongside the heart of Jesus who still cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

On Good Friday at St. Mary’s, after the Solemn Liturgy at 12 noon, for the ‘Two Hours’, 1.00 – 3.00pm, Jackie will be taking some of the ‘Last Words’ of Christ on the cross and putting them alongside the contemporary scene in the world, especially the suffering children of Guatemala who are crying out for salvation.

Some of the titles for the addresses may be:-

‘I only wanted to be a child, but they wouldn’t let me.’
‘Hello God, can you hear me?’ “Eli, Eli lema sabacthani.?”
‘Children of desolation.’
‘Abandoned.’
‘A child despised and rejected by men.’
’I cry out to God.’
‘Behold the child of sorrows.’
‘No more tears, no more pain (I wish).’
‘Where is the hope for the future?’

As we keep this Holy Week, let us pray that God, through the suffering of Christ on the cross and through the power of the Holy Spirit, will touch us in such a way that we may live as though we are truly alive in Jesus Christ our Lord, who has Risen from the dead and is alive in us forever more.

May the Cross, as lived through the witness of the church, be truly a ‘Touching Place’ for the world.

The Retiring Collection at the Two Hours will be given to the charity ‘Street Kids Direct’.

March 2007

Standng on Firm Ground

We had a lovely winter walk recently in North Somerset from Berrow Sands to Brean along the beach. There had been high tides and everywhere was clean and washed and the sand at the top of the beach firm to walk on. Our dog ran and ran, searching every clump of seaweed and every blade of grass on the dunes. The sea was way out of sight, just a very distant sound across the wide expanse of seemingly flat beach. To the seaward of us there were fishermen digging in the sand for worms, with their Wellington boots covered in the wetter sand. Because we know the area we did not need to read the notices warning us not to walk too far down the beach in search of the sea as the sand closer to the water at low tide is in places a dangerous quicksand.

Lent is a good time to consider how confident we are in our faith. These forty days give us time to think about what we believe and how the foundations of our faith support that belief. As the society in which we live often aligns faith with eccentricity and places little value on our faith, and is, in fact, comfortable to ridicule the Christian beliefs in a public way, it is important that as Christians we are sure of what we believe and what it means to each one of us to be a person of faith.

Walking on the firm sand is when we understand, when we are sure of what we believe and what that faith means to us. This is material we understand and are confident with. But this is also when we need to ask ourselves if we are complacent? Are we taking things for granted? And is it easy because we are not taking time to renew our interest? If we are to remain alert and confident then we need to take time to enliven and renew even the basic things we believe. Take time to discuss with others and to read, keep our faith lively and alive to continue supporting us and to increase our knowledge and understanding. There is so much more to discover about our Lord and God than one lifetime can contain.

And when we are standing in the water, then we have some work to do, because if we become ‘bogged down’, maybe even stuck for a while and then we begin to wonder whether our faith will be strong enough to keep us going. We all do have times of feeling jaded and perhaps wondering why we are going to Church, whether we do really believe in it all. But that is the voice of the world affecting us and it is by persevering that we shall regain that wonder of our God; it would be easy just to give up but far more exciting to explore why we have the questions and dilemmas with other people.

Faith is the wonderful gift we are given, not something we can just grow all alone, as it is God’s gift to us. However, as with every gift we are given, we can decide whether to receive it and accept it or to put it to one side. If we accept it then we should look after it. Not by wrapping it up in tissue paper and hiding it away in a special drawer to be taken out on Sundays only but by living it every day of our lives.

If our faith is well lived then when we come to the times of life when we find ourselves in the quicksand, when everything we know seems to be standing on its head and life sucking us under, then we shall have a safe dry firm place to stand back on while everything else sorts itself out. A strong well lived faith can sustain through even the bleakest times; of course it will suffer doubts and confusion, but it will carry us through if we rely on God our Father to carry us when things are tough.

I wish you all a time of growth and strength through this Lent, so that when we stand at the foot of the cross on Good Friday we will know the wonder of the gift we have been freely given.

February 2007

February brings our thoughts to Lent which begins on Ash Wednesday, 21st February. For some Lent is a period in the Church’s Year associated with giving up and being miserable. It is, in fact, the very opposite.

Lent calls us to make something of our lives; it is not just about penance and self-denial. It is about freedom, coming alive, learning to live more intensely for Jesus and being happy and contented in our discipleship.

Lent is about life, healing and fulfilment. It challenges us to wake up, open our eyes and dare to live. In and through the Incarnation, his birth as a man, Jesus offers us new opportunities, a new creation, a new energy to turn to others and build up community and friendship.

Lent calls us to come to a new understanding of our Faith and a recognition and acknowledgement that we are part of the work-a-day world which disappoints and corrupts, and yet is in a constant process of change.

Lent calls us to conversion leading us into a new existence. As Christians we remain within the same reality which all human beings experience but because of our new understanding of life within the context of God, we know that life can be transformed. Conversion is a turn around, a rethink, which should bring about a revolution in our attitudes, perceptions and response to the challenges of the world in any age.

Jesus opened his mission by proclaiming: “Repent and believe the Good News.” Conversion involves both parts of that process: giving in and giving up; giving into God and giving up for God. That’s what Lent is about.

On its own repentance, being sorry for sin, can be self-centred and self-obsessed. Conversion on the other hand means waking up to the fact that ‘I’ am not the centre of the universe nor am ‘I’ the only point and purpose of creation. Each of us is totally a gift of God, a word of God, expressing his goodness, love and life. We are simply to share, rejoice, understand and give thanks. That’s what Lent is all about. We are part of an act of love and creation which embraces all ages, the whole human family.

So Lent is not and never should be gloomy or negative. It should certainly not be thought of as a boring annual ritual. It is a chance to learn how to wake up and be fully alive in God through Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Lent provides us with the opportunity to understand and feel that there is more to life, there are no hidden secrets: only the humble, the poor, the little ones, those who live for God and for other people, will learn. Lent is about understanding that we have to be free to die if we want to fully live.

Lent reminds us that we need never lose hope because the God who is shown to us in Jesus Christ is not a distant dispassionate God. God is here in the darkness, despair and loneliness of the world. He is here when defeat and death stare us in the face. We live in a brutal, violent world but it is a world whose wickedness is already forgiven, because Christ, in his love, died for us. Since then the torn fabric of our world is being gradually “rewoven”. We live in a world where the sun shines for us without ceasing providing we are willing, in faith and hope, to live that unending and uniquely creative present, locked into the love of God, committed without limit to the love of others.

We Christians are here to show ‘Jesus’ to the World in all our days. This is our calling and reason for ‘Being’. We are Christians not in order to sustain archaic structures for the benefit of a few people. We are here to be heralds and architects of a new creation that God is bringing about. We are here to enable others to claim their rightful place in God’s Kingdom. We are all called upon to develop and nurture our own discipleship and to develop and nurture others in their relationships with God. We are all of us learners and should be seekers on a Pilgrimage to God, with God.

That is what Lent is about. That is what the Christian Life is all about.

May we all keep a good Lent.

January 2007

We go forward into another New Year with Christmas, not simply behind us but surely very much in front of us. That means that, for those of Christian faith, Jesus is not simply the Baby of Bethlehem, but the One whose life “went on” from Christmas into – 30 years or so later – the “real world” of human living with its mixture of goodness and wickedness. As we go forward in our lives within this same world – however younger or older we will become during this year – the spirit, the message but, above all, the Jesus of Christmas points us towards at least three ingredients that, unworthy as I am, I offer for both New Year Resolutions and for daily living:

Thanksgiving. Because of the birth and human life of Jesus, we can give thanks for that “Human Face of God” (as Bishop John Robinson put it). The nature and the characteristics of the Jesus of the New Testament are a direct reflection in human terms of what God is like. With this in mind, not only have we that example and inspiration to show that same goodness, compassion and forgiveness in our own lives, but also that personal companionship of God-in-Christ to help and support us – especially in those circumstances and occasions where we fail and fall short. The Christian Gospel is always the Gospel of the “second chance” – for the likes of you and me!

Wonder. Those Nativity Plays we either remember or have shared in recently will have brought that wonderful simplicity that little children can bring. Heaven and earth are brought very close together. A similar sense of wonder is brought to us by those TV documentaries such as “Planet Earth” to underline all that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins meant when he wrote that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God”. We sing “He came down to earth from heaven…” It is truly wonderful (if we think about it) that our eternal life with God has already begun among “the angels, archangels and all the company of heaven.”

Transformation. There is no doubt that the stable room at Bethlehem must have been` transformed out of all recognition! And that the lives of Mary and Joseph from then on were to be lived in a totally different way. The whole thrust of the four Gospel books of the New Testament is that the life and ministry of Jesus were to bring “ transformation” to human living and human situations in the greatest variety of ways. The healing, forgiveness and companionship that Jesus brought to those in need brought new start, new possibilities and new hope.

The events of Good Friday and Easter Day tell that God is not only to be found among the depths of the human situation, but transforms depths into heights. The resurrection and on-going life of Jesus were to change and transform the lives of those first century disciples/apostles and always potentially available to do just that for twenty-first century disciples and seekers.

Christian Faith bids us carry these – and more – consequences of the first Christmas into our own lives and into the life of the world as we seek to witness to these ingredients in all that we think, do and say. We pray that our lives may be out-going in every way towards others in joy and encouragement, practical concern, compassion and forgiveness as the case may be in, for example, the letters we write, the folk we meet, the words we say or in the attitudes we adopt. We pray too that we may always regard our prayers at home and our regular worship in church among our fellow-seekers and travellers as occasions of both refreshment and renewal “through Jesus Christ our Lord” that we shall be worthy of the name Christian by those who look to us. I am often reminded of that “Wayside Pulpit” question: “If you were ever arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Something else to bear in mind as we say “Happy New Year”!

With all good wishes for 2007 to you and yours

Honorary Assistant Priest

December 2006

Turkey and Tinsel
or
Holy, Holy, Holy

I am writing this on 7th November and last Friday I learnt of a group travelling for a few days to Cornwall on a ‘Turkey and Tinsel’ trip. Yes! ‘Turkey and Tinsel’ time comes earlier and earlier, such is the pressure on us all to think Christmas before we have even got to Advent.

The commercial and secular world encourages us in a kind of fantasy, ‘it’s tinsel time’!! There is an artificially created feverishness to encourage us to forget the dark and cold, or even appreciate the joys of autumn, and embrace the secular promise of happier times tomorrow.

The great season of Advent means simply to look for the “Coming”. It does not mean pretending that Bethlehem will be repeated year by year, but it does remind us that God who came to birth in Bethlehem as the son of Mary is now constantly coming to birth in our history, in all humanity and in ourselves.

We live in a time that is a permanent, perpetual Advent. If we had eyes to see and ears to hear we would be able to recognize that here is our God. God should be seen perpetually in us in our lives, in history, in all that is. He is perpetually coming to birth in us, so that we make holy all we touch and offer back to God in a constant sacrificial offering of prayer and praise and thanksgiving. Advent and Christmas have to be happening inside each of us. We need to become alive to it and in it.

It is so important for us, Christians, to realise that we are blessed beyond words in the glory of our calling. All the words of peace and good will that go with these seasons (Advent and Christmas) should be overflowing with abundance as blessings to all around us.

Advent and Christmas remind us that we are in the ultimate stage of growth and transformation, not just for us but for all. We miss so much because so often we do not look in the right places or even in the right direction. The new heaven and the new earth are being shaped all around us through the ingenuity, technological genius and scientific knowledge of the human race. God is in all this. God’s love and life are evident everywhere and in everything. God is not confined to the church or exclusively to its activity. It is, however, the movement forward that is important.

Whenever humanity moves forward, God’s revelation is being fulfilled. ‘Sacred’ and ‘secular’ are not two realities but a single expression of the one God. We can rejoice in the bewildering profusion of goods and opportunities on offer to us today, yet at the same time there remain the reality and emptiness of the poverty stricken all over the world and their cry for help.

We are made for light, life and love; we are made by God to share His love. Humanity yearns for what we are to be. In the dark of December we dream of light. We are nothing, yet we are called to be immortal. Advent and Christmas call us to embrace the Christ – God who comes to meet us.

This Christmas I hope and pray that you will all be able to rejoice in the daily loving of God and give thanks for that divine generosity. It is my prayer that our vocations may be fulfilled, as we all engage in the same outpouring of goodness and affirmation on today’s world.

May these Advent days inspire us
warmly to prepare his way,
brightly to expect his coming….
for he came and comes to stay
as the Saviour, born in Bethlehem,
as our Saviour born today.

© David John Harding (1935 - ), taken from Worship Live No. 36, Stainer & Bell

With all best wishes for Advent, and God’s blessing for Christmas through His most wonderful gift of Jesus, to you and to your families.

November 2006

The year moves rapidly on; here we are in November, the month of Remembering.

‘Remember, Remember.’

• 1st November All Saints’ Day when we remember All men and women of Faith
• 2nd November All Souls’ Day when we remember All the Faithful departed
• 11th November Remembrance Sunday when we remember All those who have given their lives in Service to their country, for Peace and Freedom
• 26th November ‘Christ the King’; this celebration brings the Church Year to an end, the re-living of Christ’s life through our Liturgy/Worship.

‘Remember, Remember.’

It’s good for us to remember what God has done for us; it’s also paramount to remember what generations of our fellow human beings have achieved for us through their Sacrifices.

At this moment the news has broken upon the world that North Korea has tested a Nuclear Device. This has caused unease and outrage across the world, threatening peace and stability further.

As Christians we are called to live love, reconciliation and universal brother/sisterhood in a sinful world, where individuals and states use aggression and violence to secure their purposes. The Christian vision of peace is a different one from the understanding of the secular world. The Church has been told by Christ to bring “His Peace into the world”. “Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you; a peace that the world cannot give.” John 14. 27.

The biblical and Christian concept of peace is necessarily bound up with the deeds of righteousness and justice for all, honouring our responsibilities to God and to our neighbours. In the New Testament we find the revelation of God’s serving love for us in Jesus Christ and his commandment to love others as he loves us. This of course is the heart of the Christian Good News. We must, as Christians, be heralds of peace and reconciliation. This means that the Christian Church, each and every individual Christian, must be committed to bring together those who are at variance and to heal injustices and inequalities that breed bitterness and conflict. We, as Christians, are called upon to witness by the way we live that all people are equal and equally loved by God.

As we struggle to remain sane in a mad world let us ‘remember’ what others have already achieved in their time and learn the lessons of history. Above all let us learn from, and embrace more fully, Christ who is our King and renew our resolve to live His way of Peace.

October 2006

Living in the World

It is carnival time again, with all the bustle and fun that goes with it. I especially enjoy the afternoon procession with all the children in their amazing costumes. The balloons and the excitement as the crowds gather to watch, and then the crush to the fair ground to watch as people try so hard to win that reward. As children it was our only chance to get a coconut, and the one who won the prize was allowed to have the first drink of the prized milk from the centre. Carnival, shows and fairs play an important part in our society allowing fun and laughter into lives that might otherwise contain only solemn events, and enabling a little controlled misrule to occur. A chance to stand back from the serious task of every day living and laugh at ourselves.

The Holy days of the church became the first holidays, and these were days to worship God and then to relax and to enjoy living. I wonder sometimes why laughter is sometimes frowned on in our daily lives. I always respond more positively to a smiling face than to a frowning one; in fact it was something I had to learn. Because I am short sighted I have always had a tendency to screw up my face and appear to be cross, and I had to learn to smile. So why do people find laughter threatening? Perhaps because they have experienced it being used cruelly in the past to poke fun, and to make individuals feel as if they are outsiders in a community. Perhaps because laughter can be used to belittle a subject and so diminish its importance. I am sure this latter point is especially true when people find laughter difficult to cope with in our Church services. They find it hard to accept that by treating something as important as our faith in a light way we are treating it casually or with disrespect.

I like the story of the tumbler in medieval times. He travelled round the fairs until he became ill, and lay down under a bench and would have died if one of the monks had not noticed him and taken him home in his barrow. They nursed him back to health in the monastery. When he was well he begged to be allowed to stay, and he became a novice, but he just did not seem to fit easily into the usual work in the monastery. In the kitchen he burnt the bread, in the scriptorium he blotted the page, in the garden he pulled up the plants with the weeds, and in the hospital he could never remember which herbs did what and cured what. The senior monks were about to meet to decide what he should do, and the young tumbler went into the Church feeling very sad; he loved the place so and wanted to do God’s work. He knelt to pray, but found words difficult; he would have sung, but everyone kept telling him what a dreadful noise he made. Suddenly he decided to do what he had always done best, and to do it for the Lord, and there in front of the altar he started to do the handstands and summersaults he did so well. One of the senior monks who was watching was outraged that he should do such a thing in front of the altar of the Lord and dragged him to the abbot. But the abbot was a much wiser man, and he valued the young man for who he was; he could also see a use for these talents in spreading the word of God. He asked the young man to accompany the monks who travelled around the countryside telling the Christian story and to use his tumbling to draw people to listen, and this was something he did very well. Our love of God in response to His great love for us is something we can all express both in peace, quiet, prayer and reflection and in laughter, jollity, and fun. There is no right way, just ways that respect the needs of others and enable us to be ourselves.

Enjoy the fun of the carnival and fair, and bring that joy with you to Church.

September 2006

September marks a turning point in the year as summer begins to fade into autumn with its bounty of harvest and richness of colour. Many of you will have had a holiday and I hope you feel rested and refreshed. We have so much to be thankful for, so many blessings.

September also comes with a challenge as we address autumn and winter activities. This edition of “Impact” reminds us of many of the good things going on in our community; in the lives of individuals, groups, organizations and, of course, in our excellent schools. A good magazine contains news, views and information and for all of this we rely on your contributions.

We live in changing and challenging times. Today there is a great deal of interest in the person of Jesus. Every Christian needs to ask themselves “Do I show what Jesus was like in my daily life, in my relationships with everyone I meet?” It isn’t just talking about Jesus but it is in our actions that Jesus is known. Jesus said “Love one another.” How is Jesus working in your life? We would like to know; please share your experience with us.

August 2006

Living and Understanding

I have always been fascinated by the variety there is in human form, and even more by the fact that each of us forms our own views and ideas in an individual way. The idea I found most frightening, when as a young person I read John Wyndham’s book ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’, was the lack of individual identity of the strange alien children. If we are so individual why does every society find it hard to accept those who stand out, those whose individuality means they are noticed, or enables others to deride or denigrate them because of physical differences. So many wars and atrocities over the years have originated in a society attempting to create, and then conform to, a set identity.

The conference which the clergy of the diocese attended in early July was entitled ‘Living with difference’, and provided four excellent speakers to consider from their experience how, as Christians, we achieve this. The Bible studies each day, given by Kathy Galloway, from the Iona Community, considered some of the underlying issues behind the stories of three individuals who were regarded as outsiders in the Bible, and how we could learn from them and their actions, and those with whom they came into contact, if only we were willing to see. Bob Hepple, a Christian and a lawyer, who had worked in South Africa, and has been working to create a more equal society in this country, looked at how the law both created and treated outsiders. James Allison, a Roman Catholic, who spent many years in a Dominican order, and is a homosexual, considered how his life journey had given him his special view of God and of God’s love for each individual, and how this is expressed in our Christian Story. David Marshall, who was chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and has studied the Muslim faith, considered how Christian faith is viewed by the Muslims and also what we have to learn from them. They were four very full days and it will take some time for all the ideas to form and take root,

I did not agree with all I heard, but everything made me think and consider from another point of view, and so enlarged my own ideas. This is how we grow and develop our ideas. But if we were to move into tight cell groups, with people who share our opinions and have a common history, then how much poorer we should be. Even at the most simple level of food – we now borrow so much from other cultures, with Italian, Indian, Spanish, French and Chinese and many more styles of cooking food available for us in the High Street. We do not like everything we try, but we enjoy the trying.

It is very easy to fall into the trap of seeing things from our own background, and our own history, so we do not always stop to listen to the insights that come to us from outside, sometimes because we have to understand the background from which the ideas spring before we can truly make sense of them. The Anglican Communion is facing several issues which could divide us. The Church is living among people with very different experiences and cultures, and we must be prepared to listen and reflect on their experience, acknowledging that there may be decisions that they cannot at this moment accept and then retain their own place in their society. It is how our Church, with its collegiate response to differences meets these situations that will determine the future of our Communion.

So what can we do, living as we do in this rural and protected piece of England? Well, we can start by reading a different newspaper from the one we choose normally, or listening to a different news channel. We can make an effort to listen to our younger and older friends, and understand why they see things differently. We can read the church press, not just that of our own Church, but several. But, above all, if we truly believe then we can pray for God’s guidance for those leading the Church, and for them to have their minds open to God’s wishes, and for us to have our minds open to understand those decisions. We are after all God’s Church, and it is His business in which we live and breathe and have our being. We were created as individuals reflecting His image out on the world, not as clones with fixed ideas and views.

July 2006

By the time you read this we will have celebrated St. Peter’s Day, 29th June; Peter, who figures so large in Christian thinking, living and ministry.

For our post-Easter break, Margery and I went to Rome for five days. We went, as it were, to Peter’s place. I was hoping to get to know Peter a bit better but I was disappointed, both at the Vatican and St. Peter’s. I was surprised at the large numbers of people and Rome is a very noisy city. The Spiritual experience didn’t materialize; I obviously had the wrong expectations. The journey was yet another reminder that we Christians live and minister in the contemporary world. A world where God “is” and maybe we should expect no more other than to be here.

This was, of course, the way it was for Peter. His ministry means so much to us as Christians that it is strange how little we know of the man himself. We have snapshots, references here and there, vivid cameo portraits, and yet curious gaps. We know nothing of his childhood or early manhood, even how old he was. We know he was a fisherman, from the Sea of Galilee. We know he had a house at Capernaum where Jesus lodged. We know that he emerged as the spokesman, leader, of the twelve apostles and that he was marked out as the ‘Rock’ by Jesus. He was to be the one to feed the flock, to sustain his brothers. Peter was generous and impetuous, he denied the Lord, yet was one of the first witnesses of the resurrection and he was a leader in the Jerusalem community.

Half way through The Acts of the Apostles there is silence. Tradition has it that he went to Rome, was executed by Nero and buried on Vatican Hill. How he got to Rome, how he carried out the Lord’s commands, what became of his family and what he did - there is just silence.

We know enough however to suggest he would have been acutely uncomfortable inside today’s St. Peter’s. He would have enjoyed the crowds and the sense of humanity coming home. He probably travelled light and maybe would have been bewildered by the palaces on the hill. Today the workings of the Vatican would, no doubt, be difficult for him to understand. Hadn’t his master put all that to one side?

How then should we think of Peter, make sense of his ministry, take our message from him. Three things stand out. The first is that he was always at the heart of a group, the centre of a circle. He was never a lonely leader. He is always seen in the gospels as a family man, specifically a brother, son in law, partner in a fishing business and then a spokesman; the big-hearted man to whom the others looked for encouragement. He was the witness, the Rock. He was always with people: the people of God, his human family, the Church. This is enough to remind us that we need never feel alone. We are always part of each other, always in God’s presence, always able to look to others for support, encouragement and guidance.

The second thing Peter reminds us of is that we are called by God as we are. To be holy is not to be inhuman: to follow Christ does not entail being less of a human being. Peter was a real person, rough, forceful, light-hearted, outspoken, sometimes he was too big for his boots, impulsive. Sometimes he was scared but he was always enthusiastic for Jesus Christ. He lost none of that because he was called to serve his master so spectacularly. It was because of his character that the Lord was able to use him so powerfully and so positively. Peter’s strength was his commitment to the Master, Jesus, who does not require us to become angels, but just become more intensely human men and women.

Thirdly, Peter was the Rock, because of his faith in the Son of God, because of his witness, his proclamation of the Gospel. He was called to that. We are all of the same stock, belong to the same people and have through our Baptism and Confirmation the same calling. In the Church there are no seats for passengers. We, like Peter, have to bear witness to the things that are unseen but utterly real. Peter reminds us of this. There may be no one to write down our story but we have to play our part in the drama that is being played out unceasingly on God’s stage in the world today.

Peter was a very human man who lived his life in God’s way; in this respect he confirmed the humanity of all around him. We are, of course, all called to this self same vocation - to encourage each other in living life in God’s way, wherever we are.

Maybe our trip to Rome was a spiritual experience after all!! Despite the crowds, the traffic and the noise, there, at the heart of it all, is the witness of two thousand years of Christianity.

God bless you all

June 2006

Sacred Space

Two recent conversations with friends have prompted the contents of this letter! The first was with a (non-churchgoing) musician who was very "moved" by the beauty of Coutances Cathedral while on holiday in Northern France. As with many English and Continental Cathedrals, the great spaces, the stained glass, the "unbelievable" architecture and the general atmosphere made a great impression upon her. It is easy (and understandable) to realise that cathedrals and parish churches are among those much valued by worshippers and visitors alike. They are places and spaces that are "different" - where folk with all kinds of values and faith commitments in life are brought together - very often both in diversity and in acclamation.

The other conversation was with the current Muslim Mayor of Blackburn-with-Darwen when on a return visit to Blackburn cathedral.. Having greeted the Mayor by saying that it was good to meet him in the Cathedral again (I knew him fairly well in my Blackburn days), he replied that he had always continued to come for civic occasions and that (jokingly!), he regarded himself as an "Anglican Muslim!" In a setting that now stages public dialogue between one of the Residentiary Canons and the Education Officer of the Lancashire Council of Mosques - drawing well over one hundred people on Tuesday lunchtimes - that very public sacred space of hospitality is, hopefully, bringing about a greater understanding and respect for those of two different cultures. And the same could be said about inter-faith occasions in a mosque, temple or synagogue where possible and appropriate.

Inner Space

Sacred (religious) spaces can have an effect, great or small, on the way we think about God, the world, the Church, and ourselves whether the space of that church or cathedral etc. is offered for informal visiting and exploration or for an act of public worship. "Inspiring" is a word that will come to the lips of many as the decorated architecture, stained glass and other artefacts and symbols "speak" to our inner selves. Especially, perhaps, in a day and age when accepted faith and values are bombarded on every side. . There will be very many folk (regular worshippers among them sometimes) who find themselves reflecting upon those three great questions "Where have I come from….?" "Where am I going….?" And "What am I doing about it….?"

Christians, among others, will be currently coming to terms with The da Vinci Code which is a best-selling novel and now in its film version. The traditional biblical portrayal of Jesus and particular aspects of church history are re-told very freely (to put it mildly) but no doubt unhelpfully- even offensively - to very many Christian believers. For myself, I take the view that the biblically presented and interpreted life of Jesus can, at the end of the day "look after itself". Faith and trust in the incarnate (flesh and blood) earthly life of Jesus followed by His ever-living presence born of resurrection-out-of-crucifixion, as presented in the Bible and re-affirmed in worship, has not only fulfilled the lives of all those who down the centuries have "turned to Christ" but remained as serious and purposeful faith and life-giving possibilities for countless numbers of others who might regard themselves as potential Christians. Not forgetting that Christians will be first to acknowledge that not all has been Christ-like so far as the history of the church is concerned. Whatever we might think of the publication, screening and content of The da Vinci Code there is no doubt that Jesus and the Church have been put back on the public agenda. This is no doubt very good "box office". It is not only another opportunity for Christian believers to reflect upon their inner and core beliefs but also to realise that in commending Christian faith to our generation not all the "stories of Jesus" that are heard and seen are coming from the pages of the Bible or the life of the Church.

I never cease to rejoice in the opportunities that come the way of the Church of England which is, by its nature and history, a church for folk in parishes and not just for folk in congregations. Whether through public worship by just "being there" with doors open, the "C of E" - with very wide boundaries of doctrine and expressions of belief - can still be "home" to all those beyond Electoral Rolls and Stewardship schemes including those who are seeking faith in a confused and confusing world. The other day, I read and warmed to an extract from a piece by Ian Hislop ("Private Eye" and "Have I got news for you…?") one of the contributors to a recent book "Why I am still an Anglican". He writes "A Church that allows for science, biblical theology, unbiblical scholarship and changes in knowledge, and trusts its members to form their own opinions - that is its strength…."

May God in Christ fill all the spaces of our hearts and minds to His glory.

Honorary Assistant Priest

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