Services, events and texts for December and Christmas.
Dear Friends,We come, this week, to the end of the church year. It is a good time for each of us to look back over the last year - deep in lockdown at this time, the quiet Christmas, our gradual return to church worship from Easter onwards, each church and each one of us finding our own journey through the challenges of a world where vaccines give hope, but our care for one another is still essential, the emergence of issues in our personal lives and our lives together that the lockdown paused or made worse or highlighted, the joys of re-uniting with loved ones, the sorrows borne with others or shouldered alone - the life giving, the draining, the fruitful and the challenging. Where have you felt God close to you this year: really remember those times, and what that felt like: give thanks for those times Where did it feel you were distanced from God: hold the feeling of those times out to God for God's healing and reconciliation. The new Christian year begins a time when nature encourages us to turn inward: shorter colder days may send us indoors, and offer us some preparation time. In the pattern of the Christian year Advent is a time of quiet preparation, we begin with preparation, not a rush into action.As you have looked back over the last year, what might you want to let go of, to free you in life and faith in the coming year? What might you want to draw into your life to help you deepen in faith and love? Now is a time just to notice these things, to ask for the grace to let go, and the grace to take up whatever moves you closer to God in the coming year.God blessSamantha
Dear Friends,This weekend we mark Remembrance Sunday. There will be an Act of Remembrance at the War Memorials in Lynton (outside the Town Hall) and Parracombe (outside Christchurch) from 10.45 am. In Lynton this will be followed by a service in St Mary’s at 11.20. In Martinhoe there will be service of Holy Communion with an Act of Remembrance beginning at 9am. As I gathered with the children and teachers of the West Exmoor Federation for their service at Woody Bay Station on Armistice Day (see sermon), I was reminded that we were not able to keep to this tradition last year. What we were aware of last year though, was the comparisons people were making between the community spirit that had arisen as neighbours came together in mutual support through the early days of pandemic lockdown, and the experience of war-time resilience.It is my hope, that our remembering together this year re-invigorates that spirit of service, love and care that represents the best of human nature. That it reminds us of our hope to reset our values and attitudes as we recover from the pandemic. Reading the names of those from the area who lost their lives in the wars of the 20th century is a huge privilege, and here it is a deeply profound experience because the surnames are those still familiar in local life (in a way that is less direct in bigger towns and cities). We have the privilege of living in close knit communities – it is my prayer that we can continue to honour the generations who have shaped our communities by the love we continue to show for each other, and to those who visit this place, modelling that “pandemic reset” we all hoped for.God blessSamantha
A Remembrance Day service was held at Woody Bay Station on the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway on 11 November for the children of the West Exmoor Federation (Lynton, Parracombe and Kentisbury Primary Schools) led by Rev Samantha Stayte. After the two-minute silence the children planted little wooden crosses in the Garden of Remembrance on the station platform and then went for a ride on the train before returning to school. Axe, the steam engine heading the train, was built in 1915 for service on the Western Front in the First World War supplying food and munitions to the men in the trenches and bringing wounded soldiers back from the front line. The bell on the front of the engine on this occasion came from an armed motor launch (ML 903) which escorted some of the first wave of landing craft on D-Day in 1944.
