Pick a Christmas, any Christmas…. You can have Matthew’s Christmas for example. He traces Jesus back to Abraham (interestingly taking in Ruth on the way) and narrates the story of Herod and the Magi. He doesn’t call them kings nor are there three of them. The Magi was astrologers, predicting human events by watching the stars. All a bit dodgy but Matthew is making the point that the pinnacle of current human wisdom recognises who this child is. Abraham is of course the founding father of the Jewish people. Or you can have Luke. He traces Jesus back to Adam, the origin of the entire human race. It is Luke who tells us of shepherds, another dodgy lot. Shepherds were generally despised and mistrusted. Yet Luke tells us that God chose them to be the first witnesses to the Christ’s birth. Or you can have John. No stable, no star, no wise men, no shepherds. He traces Jesus back to the very beginning of everything. Before creation even. Jesus is the Logos, usually translated as the Word but it could equally mean Wisdom. Everything God has done and does and will do happens through that which appears amongst us full of grace and truth. The light that shines in the darkness. When John says that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”, the word he uses means literally, ‘one who pitches their tent alongside ours’. Or you can have Mark. When I look at the shops selling Christmas tat in October. Houses festooned with lights in November. Places which play Christmas carols in December, then I go with Mark’s Christmas. Have a look, you’ll find it very refreshing. Before Christmas comes Advent which too often we miss out on. Advent is a time of expectation, anticipation, waiting. Too often these days we live life in a rush. We have lost the art of looking forward with eagerness, and patience. There is much to be gained and learned in waiting. R S Thomas’ poem, The Absence seems at first to lack in hope. Yet there is a taut sense of expectation thrumming in every line; It is this great absence that is like a presence, that compels me to address it without hope of a reply. It is a room I enter from which someone has just gone, the vestibule for the arrival of one who has not yet come. I modernise the anachronism of my language, but he is no more here than before. Genes and molecules have no more power to call him up than the incense of the Hebrews at their altars. My equations fail as my words do. What resources have I other than the emptiness without him of my whole being, a vacuum he may not abhor? Alfred Delp, a Roman Catholic priest who worked in the underground German resistance to the Nazis, wrote of Advent that it is the time in which we recognise that, “Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. There shines on them already the first mild light of the radiant fulfilment to come.” We need to stand in the empty spaces in order to recognise that which God is doing in Christmas. To stand still in order to perceive God’s movement towards us in the tiny and fragile. To be silent in order to hear the song of the angels in the darkness. Paul.
Letter from the Vicar: November – A season of Remembrance In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. John McCrae 1872-1918 At 8.00am on 2nd May 1915 Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, Canadian Field Artillery, was blown to bits by an artillery shell. His body parts were gathered into some resemblance of a human form and buried by his friend John McCrae. The chaplain was busy elsewhere so McCrae recited extracts from the Order for the Burial of the Dead from memory. At dawn the next day McCrae looked out over the wild corn poppies and the freshly dug graves with their wooden crosses. He sat on the tailgate of an ambulance and on a page torn out of a book wrote the first lines of ‘In Flanders Fields’. The poem was rejected by the Spectator but published by Punch in December 1915. It spoke to the men in the trenches and struck a chord throughout the English-speaking world. The corn poppy became the Flanders Poppy, the symbol of the fallen. McCrae was an educated man and a doctor. He knew that the poppy had significance in medical practice as a sedative. The Romans had used it for that purpose. The poppy was also the emblem of death featuring in Greek funeral rites. Archaeologists have found poppy capsules alongside locks of hair tucked in with human remains dating back to 4000BC. McCrae also understood that poppies had not grown in profusion in Flanders fields before the war. Poppies need earth that is turned over and well fertilised. It was the action of shelling that turned the earth, the chemicals from the explosives that provided nutrients, coupled with the bodies of men and horses, often left unrecovered. Private Isaac Rosenberg, The King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment, wrote, “Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins.” The blood of the fallen is the fertiliser for the poppy. John McCrae died of illness no doubt brought on by the conditions he endured in France. He died on 28th January 1918. Poppies do not grow in winter, so his comrades searched in vain for flowers for his funeral. As an alternative they ordered a wreath of artificial poppies from Paris. So, by chance, John McCrae’s funeral wreath was the first appearance of the poppy wreath that has become our symbol of Remembrance. By chance, again, Remembrance falls alongside All Souls, when we remember and give thanks for the lives of the faithful departed. We shall offer two services, one at St Peter’s on 6th November, the other at St Mary’s on 13th November. Both are at 6.30pm. We will remember the names of those who have died within the past year as well as names people have asked us to include. The names from both parishes will be read together at both services. So, if you cannot attend one then please join us at the other. Paul If you came this way, Taking any route, starting from anywhere, At any time or at any season, It would always be the same: you would have to put off Sense and notion. You are not here to verify, Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity Or carry report. You are here to kneel Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more Than an order of words, the conscious occupation Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying. And what the dead had no speech for, when living, They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. Here, the intersection of the timeless moment Is England and nowhere. Never and always. from T S Eliot, Little Gidding
“The Vicar calls…..” My grandfather was a clergyman in the Diocese of Manchester. He served in city centre parishes which were densely populated. One of his habits was to write poetry in Lancashire dialect, the collection is named after one of his longer poems, The Vicar calls. The first verse goes Ah’m glad to see yo’ Vicar Reight fain ah am yo’n come, Neau sit asahd o’ t’ feigher, Un mak’ yersel’ awhoam. Ah’ll make a sup o’ tay, Un wi’ con ‘ave a chat, There’s nobody’ll say nay Nobbut eaur tom cat. The eight verses are a monologue delivered by a Lancashire housewife who claims to be shy with men but nevertheless talks incessantly until the poor parson grabs his grabs his hat and makes good his escape. In those days vicars would spend Monday morning giving their several curates lists of houses to be visited and the clergy would go from door to door visiting parishioners. Parishes were not large geographically but in streets of terraced houses a small area would be home to several thousand people. At one time there would be one member of the clergy for every one hundred parishioners. These days the average is more like one member of the clergy for ten thousand parishioners. My first parish had a population of some 25,000. Our benefice has a much smaller population but covers a much larger area, somewhere near twenty square miles. The spread of members of our electoral rolls is much larger as over half our members live outside of both parishes. Which makes visiting quite a different thing from my grandfather’s day. He never saw the need to learn to drive, he could visit everyone without walking more than a mile from the Vicarage. Post-pandemic, though as we are reminded, not post-Covid, we find ourselves in a different place. Add to that the huge rise in fuel costs and it is clear we need to look at pastoral visiting differently. I can easily cover over 30 miles a day travelling around the benefice and often the people I have gone to see have been out. Hence we have been saying for some time that visiting will arranged differently. The clergy are glad to visit anyone who would wish to be visited for whatever reason. Some people receive Holy Communion at home. Some would like a chat about something. Some just want to keep in touch. There are no criteria, just the invitation. This seems odd to me as it overturns many years of just being free to call on people unannounced but the cost to the parishes of travel expenses is something we have to take into account. So please bear this in mind as we move into autumn and know winter lies ahead of us. We are pleased to visit, but it would be helpful to know who would like a visit and to make sure people are in when we call. Just ring the vicarage and we can make a convenient arrangement. Now if I may digress a little, the mention of fuel costs reminds me that it is not just petrol that is so expensive. We are aware that gas and electricity costs are soaring. One of my grandfather’s other habits was to smoke a pipe and to hold the bowl near the church thermometer, so that when the Church Wardens complained it was cold and they wanted to turn the heating on he would point out that the thermometer was reading a much more comfortable temperature. A midweek service? In March 2020 we had to forego public worship including our midweek service. We have been able to reinstate our morning services but so far there hasn’t been much enthusiasm for restarting our midweek service. It is something I have been giving much thought to and have raised it at our PCC meetings. There are a couple of things worth bearing in mind. Firstly, one point of midweek services is to offer something for those who cannot attend on a Sunday morning. I know people who struggle to get to St Mary’s at 9.30am on a Sunday and were equally unable to attend the Wednesday service which was also at 9.30am. I think we need to offer a later time. Secondly, I believe we ought to offer Book of Common Prayer services as well as Common Worship. The Book of Common Prayer remains a key part of our Anglican identity and whilst it might not be suitable for Sunday mornings these days those who attend midweek services are more likely to have grown up learning the old service by heart. Having looked at possible days and times the best suggestion seems to be Wednesday at around midday. It could be held at either church or alternate between the two. Much depends on who would actually attend such a service. So this is really asking how many people would attend a midweek service, and if there is sufficient support we will try it and see how it goes. Please let us know. You can speak to one of our Churchwardens to me. Thank you. Paul.
