“Earth is crammed with heaven. And every common Bush fire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh. It is easy to feel that everything is out of control, or maybe worse we feel that everything should be under our control but it isn’t. We have the technology, don’t we? Surely, we can regulate everything. Nature and life, however, have other thoughts. The cool breeze this June has kyboshed best laid plans for our vegetable patch. The runner beans have been bashed by the wind (my dad always says we put them in too early) and the courgettes are looking very peaky. It is certain, we can’t make the weather get better, we can’t turn up the temperature of the sun, nor can we tell the wind to stop blowing. It feels hard, living at the mercy of what comes our way. Life does what life does. There is some truth in the cliché “Always look on the bright side of life”. Looking at the bright side gives us something to do, we are taking positive action. It doesn’t take away the “dark side”, the trials and tribulation, but at least we have a better view as we battle on through. I love the images of weeds which against all odds push through the cracks in the pavement. They may be weeds, but somehow there is hope in their resilience, “Earth is crammed with heaven”. The author of Ecclesiastes (Bible, The Message) was fed up. He had tried everything, he found no satisfaction anywhere, he concluded in chapter 3 verses 1-14 that, “God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time … I’ve decided that there’s nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life... It’s God’s gift”. In times of trial and tribulation this is very difficult. But I wonder if Elizabeth Barrett Browning was right. Perhaps we should give ourselves permission to take the time and the space to take off our shoes and see the goodness of God in the things around us, that action in itself might bring us hope and peace. Sarah Smith
Dear friends, the following announcement was made in church this morning:"It has been a real joy and privilege to have been Rector of the Staffordshire Border Group of Churches over the last three years. However, with family in Scotland, when a vacancy arose in the area, I applied for and was offered the post of Priest-in-Charge of Greyfriars, Kirkcudbright and St Mary’s, Gatehouse of Fleet.My final Sunday in the Benefice will be on 25th August, when we will join together for a Benefice service in Gnosall."With kind regards and prayers,Revd Alison
The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ (John 3: 8) June is the month of long days, picnics and wildflowers as the great outdoors beckons. In the recent good weather, I was outside blowing dandelion seed heads with my granddaughter, it’s no wonder they are so prolific – it’s an irresistible pleasure and their means of spreading far and wide so effective. Did you know a single dandelion plant can produce over 5,000 seeds a year, traveling up to five miles from their origin? These seeds are uniquely designed for wind dispersal, they simply need the invisible force of air movement, whether that be from us, or nature! The Greek word for wind is pneuma. This is also the word for spirit and breath. God’s Holy Spirit moves around and among us, unseen as the wind, yet effectively opening our eyes to the reality and beauty of our Creator God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this beautiful month of June, when we naturally spend more time outdoors, all of creation can speak to us of the splendour and nurture of God. It’s a nurture that we are asked to share, in our care of and love for the natural world, and there are many different and creative ways that we can demonstrate our care. The Wildlife Trust says “Gardens are a vital resource for wildlife, providing corridors of green space between open countryside, allowing species to move about. In fact, the UK's gardens provide more space for nature than all the National Nature Reserves put together. So why not try leaving wilder areas in your garden, such as patches of buttercups in your lawn or nettles near your compost heap, to see who comes to visit?” and importantly, “Dandelions are an important early source of food for pollinators - so let them grow!”The dandelion seed heads floating around in the wind remind me that just as the wind blows where it chooses, so too does the Holy Spirit of God blow where He wills. We often don’t know what lies ahead, but God does, and He provides for us, whatever season of life we are in, inspiring us to spread the Good News of God’s love far and wide. That Good News includes demonstrating our love for the world that God created, the earth that God walked upon Himself in His Son Jesus Christ. Who taught us that the Father cares for each sparrow, each wild flower, and yet how much more he cares for us. Do join us on 30th June at 10.30am for our Benefice Eco-Church service at Norbury Church as we consider how we can each play our part in protecting the natural environment, and tread more lightly on the earth, so that our footsteps are as unseen as the wind, yet as productive in enabling nature to prosper as the spreading of the dandelion seeds. May you know the reality of the love of God in your lives this summer as you enjoy and live responsibly in this world He created. Revd Alison Hudson, Rector
Pause for Thought I have gone on record recently for not understanding a lot of the adverts that we see on television, especially the ones to do with perfumes and cars. I am not always taken by some of the supermarket adverts, but I do like the more recent Tesco one. I hasten to add that this is not because I have shares in Tesco or that I worked for Tesco when I was at school and in the holidays when I was at college training to be a teacher. The reason that I liked it was that it used a woman doing a random act of kindness to her neighbours. The woman takes her Tesco delivery at the same time as her neighbours arrive home with their new born baby from hospital. You then get clips of her carrying out her daily routine around her home, but the sound you hear is that of the neighbours new born crying and crying. It then shows the woman cooking a mushroom stew before knocking her neighbours front door. The young woman answers the door and seeing her neighbour automatically starts to apologise for the noise of the baby as they have been unable to settle her down. The neighbour stops her and says that she thought they might like the stew she had cooked. The young woman wells up with emotion and declares that it is so kind of her. The advert closes with the young woman eating the stew whilst her husband holds a now restful baby. Random acts of kindness are not new, but there is a school of thought that thinks that a random act of kindness can cause a chain reaction of kind deeds throughout the day. An example of this is when June and I went to the supermarket the other day. As I locked the van up, she was looking in her purse to get a pound coin for the trolley when a women approached and gave June a pound coin saying she was a member of the passing on club (she had been given the pound by someone else and told to pass it on when she had finished her shopping). So dutifully when we had finished our shopping June passed the pound coin on to another shopper giving the explanation she had been told. It is strange that during lock down when you met people in those opportunities you had to escape from the house people seemed more pleasant and polite to each other eager to talk as they had few opportunities to meet and talk with anyone other than their household. Also, people were in general kinder to each other and more prepared to help each other out. Now we are out of the lock down, people seem to have lost the urge to talk and in some sense be kind to each other. If we look at Christ’s ministry it is full of acts of kindness that he did for people who were usually strangers to him. Christ’s followers were told to take up their cross and follow him, which still applies to us all today. So if we follow Christ we take on board his teachings and let the way he lived his life be the example by which we lead ours. Christ said that the two most important commandments were firstly, to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind as this was the greatest of all commandments. The second is to love your neighbour as you love yourself. Who is our neighbour? Everyone we meet, is our neighbour. So, I would like to urge us all to consider being Christ like and try to do an act of kindness at least once a day if not more frequently. This will be a good starting point for us each day to base our discipleship on. John Underhill
Last month our son celebrated his 30th birthday. Among countless memories of that time is a landmark event that took place a few days later. Still in the Maternity Hospital, I watched the first group of women deacons being ordained to the priesthood in the Church of England in a service broadcast live from Bristol Cathedral. Similar services took place in every Cathedral in England in the following months. Many of the first women priests had served as ministers in the Church of England for decades, encountering rejection and negotiating obstacles along the way. As deaconesses they had been given charge of churches but were limited in the role they could play. When in 1987 the first women were ordained deacon, they could marry couples but could not preside at Holy Communion. 12 March 1994 was a day of mixed emotions. For me and countless others it was a day of joy and celebration, a historic moment in the long journey towards women’s ordination. The journey continued until the first woman bishop was consecrated at York Minster in January 2015. For many, though, the day stirred up feelings of anger and betrayal. There were protests and defiant gestures. The bells of a nearby Anglican church rang out a funeral dirge. My journey? Ordained deacon in July 1990, I joined 1000-1200 women called to serve God in the Church and the wider community through pastoral care, preaching and assisting with worship. The men were ordained priest after a year as deacons. Peter, ordained deacon in June 1991 a few months after we married, was ordained priest in 1992. Like most women deacons I longed for women be ordained to the priesthood. Yet I was eager to live out my calling to the full while remaining a deacon. What though did women’s ministry look like? How was I to apply my bundle of gifts and abilities, personality and experience to the role of ‘lady deacon’? In my years of worshipping in Anglican churches I had never come across a deaconess or woman reader. Likewise, people I met had never set eyes on a woman in a clerical collar before or seen a woman minister in action. The challenge was to be myself and get on with the job. Like other woman deacons I encountered people who had hesitations about accepting my ministry. Most were pleasantly surprised by the experience, though some refused to have me minister to them on the grounds that I was female. Since 1994 women in ministry have become a familiar sight, not only in church and community life but also in the world of television and radio. No programme has done more to raise the profile of women clergy than the Vicar of Dibley, starring Dawn French, which first screened in November 1994. When in 2006 more women than men were ordained as clergy in the Church of England it was suggested that the continued popularity of The Vicar of Dibley could have encouraged women who already had a sense of calling. For me, the call to ministry and priesthood remains a momentous gift from the God of surprises, a privilege and a joy. The world and the church have changed a lot in 30 years, but I continue to trust that God is at work even in situations – in our families, our country, our world – that seem hopeless and out of control. The call remains to love and serve all of God’s children. To be myself and get on with the job. Revd Cathy Dakin
In Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem, under the floor in one of the rooms, visible through glass panels, is a pile of leather shoes, just a few of the 12 million shoes worn by those entering the gas chambers. There the shoes are now preserved in the dilapidated, worn-out state they were in when they were carefully put down by those who either thought they were going to have a shower or knew they were not. We all wear shoes and have done since the ancient Egyptians and countless civilisations before them, made primitive sandals. Shoes unite us with all humankind, past, present and future because everyone wears shoes if they can and no one can fail to be moved by the sight of the pile of discarded shoes. They are part of and witness to one of the darkest periods of human history. When the camp guards told the gas chamber victims to remove their shoes, they never dreamt that their inhuman task would yield the opposite effect and that those same shoes would end up viewed by millions as a symbol not only of how bad we have been but also of how good we can be. Those shoes lying there, as a mournful testimony to their wearers are also objects of hope. All shoes are objects of hope because they speak to us about journeys made and journeys yet to be taken. Shoes carry us forward; as the song says, they are made for walking. The Holocaust shoes carried their wearers to a miserable end but an end that will never be forgotten and which, in the years that have followed, has made those shoes haunt our consciences. For they say to us, ‘Do not walk this way; do not take the path of hate and horror.’ To those who perpetrate horror and terror today, those Holocaust shoes have a message: even if all that is left after the outrage is a pile of shoes, those shoes were made for walking and humanity will walk on, in spite of everything and because of everything. We are called in Christ to fight the good fight and run, or walk, the race of faith; this gives us hope, as well as warning, for we always look to the future, knowing we will be judged by the future. We also walk in the shoes of our predecessors: those who ran the race, fought the good fight and have received their reward. Whatever path we walk, in whatever shoes, it is hopefully a long walk and it is a walk that has a beginning and an end. No one else can walk it for us; they can lend or buy us shoes and give us a map but in the end we walk the paths ahead of us with all the turns, dead ends, hills and slopes that life puts in our way. The apostle Paul talks of running a race and fighting a good fight. Both are metaphors for the journey, the pilgrimage, the linear progression from the day we were born to the day we die. Most people take an average of around 7,500 steps a day. This means that if they live to 80 years old, they will have taken about 216,262,500 steps in their lifetime. The same average person with the average stride will have walked approximately 110,000 miles, which is the equivalent of walking more than five times around the earth’s equator or almost half way to the moon. We walk almost all those miles in shoes and apparently the average person owns 20 pairs of shoes at any one time. Yet we are born with bare feet and we die with bare feet. Shoes are only for the journey. Between the font and the grave, we wear shoes to carry us on our pilgrimage race, knowing that at the end we shall bare both our soles and our souls before our Lord, the righteous judge. Lent is a time to remember this inevitable finishing line and gives us an annual opportunity to walk the course. Each lent is a lifetime in miniature. We begin by recognising our frailty and our sinful nature, which we proceed to regret and repent of. Then, as we journey through the 40 days and nights, we resolve to repair our lives with the help of God, so that we may be renewed and at the end reach the goal of resurrection life. The journey through lent is a spiritual walk-through of the greater life we have, which itself carries us forward in hope to the eternal resurrection life we are promised in Jesus Christ. Next time you select a pair of shoes to wear, think how far they will travel and why.
