Dear Scargill Friends,
This morning we went to the Walled Garden to finish our service with the act of Remembrance. For me, it seemed more poignant than ever before, being in lockdown, as many would not have been able to commemorate an act of Remembrance. It is so important for us to continue to pray for peace for our world, giving thanks for those who have given their lives for the freedom that we enjoy. In these difficult days, I am reflecting on what it means to be a person of peace.
It was lovely to connect with many of you last Thursday for our livestreamed prayers and we will be doing that again this Thursday from 4:30pm. Watch out for the link on our website. It was a profound and beautiful time to be together in the Chapel. We warmly welcome you to join us again this Thursday.
We are very pleased that Jock and Margaret Stein are leading our Quiet Days next week, and you can still book in for Saturday’s Quiet Day here.
The next on-line programmed event is with Bishop Chris and Susan Edmondson, titled ‘For everything a season’. I am very grateful to +Chris and Susan for being willing to do this. If you would like to join this course then here is the link.
On Tuesday at 3:30pm, inspired by our new Community members Mike and Alison Leigh, we are going to do a Facebook live streamed Tea Party – and this is going to be just fun. You don’t need to sign up for Facebook to be part of this, and the link will again be on our website.
Here now is Di’s reflection on ‘what is essential?’ Enjoy!
Diane writes:
I have recently been on Grandma Di duty and when reading a bedtime chapter from The Animals of Farthing Wood. I read ‘Like Vixen, Fox wanted to run as far as he could in the opposite direction. – to keep running until those ghastly sounds (of the hunt) became memories only. But he had already decided once that day, that to be reunited with his friends was his most important objective. These friends, who needed him were somewhere ahead.’ Fox knew that his friends needed him, but was also beginning to realise they were also important to him, they were who he was and he was lost without them. It was essential that he found them.
Which set me thinking about what is essential to me. Well, first I asked Bonnie and Jack, they very helpfully said that dancing and jam sandwiches were essential to life! So moving swiftly on; for some reason I began dividing my life into Church and other! Perhaps that was more realistic back 11 years ago in London, even so I have spent a long time now talking about God–with-Us, about God not being elsewhere, about God being in our work, rest and play. So what was the ‘other’ if not part of the now?
I then looked at Ecclesiastes 4 ‘A rope made from three strands of cord is hard to break.” Phil often used this verse at a wedding; it is often seen as a picture of their relationship within the Triune God, and the third strand could be the Holy Spirit who has bound them together in oneness giving strength and durability to their relationship.
But I also read that the actual Hebrew does not say “three strands” but simply “three”. Now this left me room for interpretation. Of course the Trinity – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit sprang to mind, but also Faith, Hope and Love – and the greatest of these is Love. Then last Sunday Mike reminded us about being called into God’s love; that we are to enter into God’s love, to live the way of God’s love. Paul tells us ‘Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.’ And this love cannot be contained, we need to go out, we need to share this love with the world, we need to be God’s love in the world. This is what is essential!
But now we find ourselves back in lock down and once again we need to look beyond what is essential to us as individuals to what is essential to our family, our friends, and our neighbours. The editor of ConnectUs recently wrote ‘God has designed humans to be social. He is community in and of himself, and we are most in his image when we are in community with others, sharing God’s love and supporting one another.’
How we do this during these next few weeks I do not know? It will be different for each and every one of us. But I do know that we are to be God’s people wherever we are and that it will be in the small deeds as well as the large. Mother Teresa once wrote: ‘If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one’.
We are called to live the way of Christ, we are called to walk the way of love – this is what is essential.
With love from