Dear Friends
Welcome to the second of our new-look Clergy Newsletters. Thank you to those who have offered comments and suggestions for how to develop it further—all ideas are really very welcome and are carefully considered.
Communication across and between our churches is one of the vital areas of development that we are seeking to improve over the next few months. Not only are we bringing in more contributions to this newsletter, but we are also trying very hard to ensure that agendas for Church Leadership Team meetings and for Church Forums are publicised on the Sunday sheets a week or two before the meetings, and that feedback from those meetings is made readily accessible in church (either by having copies of the minutes available or by having a summary on the Sunday sheets) within a week or so.
If you have any ideas about how to further improve our communication, please don’t keep them to yourself!!! The more ideas we get in the better our communication will be!!
With my very best wishes
Dan
Queen’s Jubilee Celebrations – Weekend on Saturday and Sunday 2nd and 3rd June.
Mapledurham Estate will be hosting a Jubilee Celebration on the afternoon of Saturday 2nd July between 2.00pm and 6.00pm. All members of the parish and their friends are invited to attend and to participate. St Margaret’s Church will be open for visitors with moments of appropriate music and there will be a short service of thanksgiving at 5.30 which, again, all are welcome.
In particular, members of St. Peter’s, St. John’s and St. Margaret’s are invited to help with afternoon tea. A small team has already formed but more volunteers are needed to join to help make it a fun afternoon for everybody. This will involve baking cakes beforehand, preparing sandwiches on the day and serving tea to visitors in the afternoon. Men are especially welcome to participate. If you can help in any way, please contact Libby Lowry by ‘phone on 9481321 or by email at libby_lowry@hotmail.co.uk who will give you further details.
This is an ideal opportunity for us, as members of the local Anglican community, to engage with the wider Caversham and Mapledurham community, as we all celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen, our Supreme Governor and Sovereign.
Following the Jubilee Eucharist at St. Margaret’s at 11.00am on Sunday 3rd, there will be a Jubilee lunch at Trench Green Hall. This will consist of two courses and a glass of fizz to respond to the Loyal Toast. Tickets will cost £5.00 each and will be on sale from the beginning of March.
Keith Knee-Robinson
Jeremy’s Jottings
I was sharing with people at St.John’s recently about the idea of Lent as a journey we undertake, based on Jesus’ own journey from his baptism through his trials in the wilderness to proclaiming the gospel, and eventually of course ending up crucified on a cross. Whilst our journey will not be the same as Jesus’, it will probably have involved our baptism and included various trials and temptations of one sort or another, by which of course we are changed. Unlike some Christians in other parts of the world, we probably won’t be martyred for our faith in this country, but we are invited to ‘put to death’ certain practices or ways of being which are not life-giving. As St.Paul puts it, “we have taken off our old self with its practices and have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” (Colossians 3:10).
So what ways of being, what habits or practices might God be calling us to examine this Lent? One way of addressing this question is to ask ourselves what is most important in our lives. What do we commit most time, energy, or money towards? Is it our work, our partner, our families, ourselves? All of those things are good things in themselves, of course. We do need to learn to love our neighbours (that is anyone in need according to Jesus) as we love ourselves. But we also need to remember the first commandment Jesus quoted in his summary of the law; “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. How are we getting on with that commandment, I wonder? How are we getting on with making time and space to listen to God this Lent? Perhaps you might like to make an appointment to speak to one of the clergy for an hour this season to talk about your spiritual life. We’re not there to judge, just to listen and perhaps offer a few things for you to think about. Perhaps you might like to come to an extra church service as a way of making some extra space for God – a midweek communion service or morning prayer at St.Peter’s or St.John’s? Perhaps you might like to make some extra time to pray or to read your bible, either at home or as you commute to work. However you may choose to use this season, don’t let it pass you by and merely rush ahead to Easter. Jesus took time out in the wilderness to listen to God, to see himself as his Father saw him and to find direction and purpose for his life. May we do the same as well.
On a separate (Olympics!) note, I am delighted to report that Churches Together in Caversham (CTC) have appointed Jan Beardsley as its Olympics events co-ordinator. Jan brings experience both of managing projects and working with young people to the role, ideal for someone overseeing our involvement in the Caversham festival (on 8 July) and Children’s Holiday Club (23-27 July). Please pray for her and the CTC Olympics Steering Group and the various co-ordinators at this busy time. On a personal note, I am also delighted to report that I have been selected to be part of the chaplaincy team for the Olympics and am due to be based in the sailing village in the Weymouth/Portland area.
Jeremy Tear
‘’BISY BACKSON’’
When clergy get together we often tell each other how busy we are and how we would like to slow down. We rush from meetings to funerals, hospital bedsides to school assemblies and there’s always LOTS of paperwork and planning. Oh and don’t forget weddings, baptisms, services ,are you getting the picture?
I am revisiting Winnie the Pooh and the character who always makes me smile because of his business is Rabbit, the ever busy self-important Rabbit. He has gone to visit Christopher Robin who is out but has left a notice pinned to his front door. GON OUT BACKSON BISY BACKSON. Rabbit didn’t know what a Backson was –in spite of the fact that he is one-so he went to ask Owl. The wise old bird tells Rabbit a story ‘’There was a man who disliked seeing his own footprints and his shadow. He decided to escape from them and began to run. But as he ran along more footsteps appeared, while his shadow easily kept up with him. Thinking he was going too slowly, he ran faster and faster until he finally collapsed and died from exhaustion!
If only he had stood still there would have been no footsteps. If he had rested in the shade of a tree his shadow would have disappeared. You see them everywhere you go, it seems. On practically any sunny sort of day you can see the Backsons stampeding through the park making all kinds of loud breathing noises. The Bisy Backson is almost desperately active. If you ask him what his life interests are, he will give you a list of physical activities: Skydiving, tennis, running, scuba diving, water skiing – wrestling alligators?’’. That’s how it is with the busy restless Backsons! The rest of his energy goes on creating a youthful appearance, hiding the bags under his eyes and his varicose veins from all that running. If you want to slow down, relax be content, then watch the Bisy Backsons and do the opposite .It’s sometimes hard just to stand still and know where you are and enjoy it. There’s nothing wrong in watching the grass grow every now and then, in fact it’s very important to do just that as often as you can!
At the end of the story Rabbit says to Winnie the Pooh ‘’Why aren’t you busy?’’ and Pooh answers ‘’ Because it’s a nice day’’ good old Winnie the Pooh!
Marion Pyke
Bishops’ Advisory Panel
One of the extra-curricula activities I have been asked to do by the Bishop of Oxford is to be part of the national team that helps our bishops decide who has a calling to ordained ministry. Every person who feels they have a calling to be a priest or deacon in the Church undertakes a series of discernment conversations in the diocese before attending a three day residential “BAP” (Bishops’ Advisory Panel). The whole process is designed to help the individual and their bishop to come to a view as to what calling has been laid upon the individual by God. All baptised Christians have a calling, and those who get married in church are reminded that God has a purpose for them and their lives. The process of discernment is enable individuals to discover their own particular vocation.
I am often left thinking that we, in the Church nationally, are mis-reading the situation: that we think because a vocation to the ordained ministry is very special it is also very rare. I’m not so sure about that … my marriage is very special to me, but it’s not unusual. I think we need to rebalance things and allow people to discover the specialness within the ordinariness of a calling to the priesthood.
Dan Tyndall
Reflections on Lent
I love scary roller coasters. Love them. So long as they don’t spin, theme park rides are absolutely my thing. That is, except one, which I had the misfortune of trying once. Only once.
It was the exact opposite of a bungee jump: caged in a metal ball at ground level, the large piece of elastic connecting the ball to a (very) tall crane was stretched, and there I sat, asking myself: “Why?”. It took an age to stretch the rope, and during that time it was the role of the attendant to torment me by getting me to look at him, and not at the sky. But I was clever enough to see through his tricks, (yet, apparently, not clever enough not to go on the ride) knowing that if I looked at him, he would release the giant ball when I was not ready, hence increasing the likelihood that I would scream like a little girl.
So, as the elastic was stretched to the point of concern, he released me. It was not a pleasant experience, hurtling up into the air, before spinning around and hurtling back down again. I did not care for it. The feeling of dread and suspense, followed by the feeling of sheer terror helped me to realise that I am a human being, and not a conker.
Lent brings out similar feelings, If that’s not too much of a (bungee) jump to make. At the end of Lent is a hideous and terrifying ordeal that all disciples must witness each year: the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Standing at the beginning of Lent, I have that familar feeling of dread: I don’t really want to witness it again, and would much rather jump to Easter. I’d rather have a Christianity of sunshine and John Denver, than darkness and Leonard Cohen. But, then, without the cross, there can be no Easter. Without being confronted with the failures of the world, we cannot be shown how it might be transformed. Without admitting the power of death, we cannot confess the even-greater power of God.
There are plenty of distractions that can take our minds off that which stands at the end of Lent, but no amount of shopping, television, jogging or eating-out can change the destination. Prepared or not, we will all, once again, be witnesses to Christ’s crucifixion, and that is not for the faint-hearted. This is why it is worth giving up, or taking up, something, that we might shed some of our baggage to be more focussed on that which is to come.
‘Who would true valour see, let him come hither; One here will constant be, come wind, come weather. There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent his first avowed intent to be a pilgim.’
Graeme Fancourt