Dear Scargillians
This comes with much love and prayers as we begin this New Year. Since we were last in touch, the situation has become more challenging. We will continue to do our very best to keep connected with you in a number of ways:
- Our Tea Party will resume this coming Tuesday 5th January at 3:30pm.
- On Wednesday 6th January we have our evening Forum as we celebrate Epiphany (7:45pm for 8-9:30pm).
- On Thursday 7th January we will be livestreaming our Evening Prayer at 4:30pm.
- Our January Quiet Day is being run twice, on Friday 8th and Saturday 9th January. This will be led by Mike and Phil and have an Epiphany theme.
Please look at our website where you will find a number of online events that are planned to the middle of February. We very much look forward to seeing you.
Below is Di’s reflection on a wonderful word that I have never heard before. Enjoy!
Diane writes:
I am hesitant to wish your all ‘A Happy New Year’, but I do pray that we will all, very soon, be able to glimpse a light at the end of the tunnel and that for all of us 2021 will hold moments of happiness.
Listening to Classic FM over Christmas, I was introduced to the word ‘confelicity’. It is a much-underused word, which has a lovely ring to it and one which I certainly have neither heard nor read before. Anyway the radio broadcaster was very excited because confelicity means ‘delight in someone else’s happiness’ and ‘participation in the joy of others’. Which reminded me of a great friend of ours called Felicity. She is absolutely someone who relishes life and has great pleasure when those around her are enjoying themselves. Now surely this is a word that should be in common parlance? So why isn’t it?
Well I’ve no idea. But when I looked up confelicity the German word ‘Schadenfreude’ kept appearing. Now Schadenfreude means the complete opposite: “joy over some harm or misfortune suffered by another”. The Japanese have a similar saying: “The misfortune of others tastes like honey” and the French speak of “joie maligne”, a diabolical delight in other people’s suffering and I could go on, but instead let me mention that there has never really been an equivalent word in English for which there is surely only one possible conclusion: as a journalist in the Spectator asserted in 1926, “There is no English word for schadenfreude because there is no such feeling here.”
Really? What utter nonsense! Do we not delight in Laurel and Hardy and Tom and Jerry or as Mr Bennet in that most essentially English of novels, Pride and Prejudice, declares “For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” And I’m sure like a German study carried out in 2015 our football fans smile more quickly and broadly when their rival teams miss a penalty than when their own team scores! More seriously though, do we not, like the media, seem to delight in the misfortunes of others?
But I digress, what has this got to do with confelicity? Well perhaps we can overthrow Schadenfreude. Can our New Year resolutions be to ‘try our very best’ to live the values of confelicity each day. To make the word commonplace, common parlance even. And I am sure as we ‘delight in someone else’s happiness’ and ‘participate in the joy of others’ we too will feel the warmth of God’s happiness as we travel through 2021.
With much love and prayers
Phil, Di and the Scargill Community
Friday 18th December 2020
Dear Scargillians
This comes with much love and prayers as we prepare to celebrate Christmas.
The Community will be having a break over the Christmas period, and will be coming back together early in the New Year.
I am very pleased to announce that this Sunday 20th December at 5pm we will be having an online Carol Service. It will be lovely to welcome you virtually into the Chapel.
We would also like to welcome you to our Christmas Tea Party via Facebooklive on Tuesday 22nd December at 3:30pm.
Watch out for the links for Di’s Bedtime Stories that are being released on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day on our home page.
You will be very welcome to join us for Evening Prayer livestreamed from Scargill Chapel at 4:30pm on 31st December, as we ‘fly with fragile wings, courageous but a little scared’ into 2021.
Please look at our new online programme on the website which starts with an Epiphany Forum on Wednesday 6th January. This programme runs to the middle of February.
Our Christmas Momentum magazine, if you have not received a hard copy, is now available to read online here.
Diane’s reflection is sparked by an unusual depiction of Joseph, Mary and the Christmas story. Enjoy!
Diane writes: The illustration I am using today came as a complete surprise. Earlier this week just before Anna left community she was leading morning prayers and introduced us to ‘José y Maria’ by Everett Patterson.
Looking at this illustration with its pouring rain it could easily be a scene you drive past, observe whilst waiting for a bus, notice from the warmth and safety of your home, or walk by on the other side. Here I see a hot-line to God (telephone) and I love the donkey!!! But is this also a reality check; is this perhaps a more realistic interpretation of how Mary and Joseph might have felt on arriving at Bethlehem. Does this illustration challenge our perception of the lonely, the down and out, the refugee, the homeless? And as I write this listening to Jo Brand asking us to support ‘Crisis for Christmas’ I am reminded of ‘Jesus in the breadline’, that our Jesus’s parents (and indeed, Jesus himself) were at one time similarly unfortunate. I am reminded of a story or two Jesus once told…. and that ‘God did not send his Son into the world to condemn its people. He sent him to save them!’ (John 3:17)
Within their desperation there is HOPE. Have you noticed a hint of colour, a kernel of faith, a sapling of new life, the new shoot of Jesse’s tree, the promised Messiah, the Kingdom of God here with us? In his blog Everett Patterson writes ‘the main goal of this illustration was to pack as many clever biblical references into the scene as possible.’ There are at least a dozen including his favourites; the verse from the prophet Ezekiel in the graffiti on the phone kiosk, ‘the way the “Save More!” behind Mary’s head looks kinda like “Ave Maria!”’ and the two advertisements for “Glad” and “Tide” on the newspaper’ And YES I did find them all – eventually! Why not enlarge the image and have a go? It will, I’m sure, in a strange way, give you HOPE. As I searched God promises came to mind ‘You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13 ) and “I (God) love those who love me, and those who diligently seek me will find me. (Proverbs 8:17).
Advent is a journey of the soul to meet with God, the journey is nearing completion, Bethlehem has been reached, the shepherds are in the field, the Magi travel on and the stable, where the Christ child will be born awaits his parent’s arrival. For this is the stable in which God keeps his appointment to meet his people. Remember in an out-of-the-way place which folk never thought to visit – there God kept and keeps his promise; there God sends his son.
Wishing you a very blessed Christmas in these strange and challenging times.