Dear Friends
We are just coming to the end of SummerFest 2 with Fest 3 beginning on Saturday. Fest is exuberant, fun and wonderfully inter-generational, including having great grandparents with their great grandchildren enjoying all the activities.
This week we have 39 young people on site! Our theme this year has been ‘Chosen – called by name’. Please pray for the Community who have been wonderful, and the large number of Working Friends, they have been wonderful too! But please pray for energy, endurance and open hearts as we move to the end of SummerFest.
While Fest has been going on, so has Phase 7 and particularly the substantial refurbishment of the Marsh Lounge. Below are some photos of the latest developments. The first shows the underfloor heating pipes and the second shows them being covered with a special type of concrete. You have one guess to notice what is missing from the Lounge!
Please pray for the ongoing relationships with the Contractors, which are really good, and that the works will keep to schedule. Our hope is that Phase 7 will be finished by mid November.
You will be aware that Helen (music and worship co-ordinator) and Wendy (youth co-ordinator) are leaving very soon. The job description for these important roles are on our website. Please pass them on to anyone you think has a calling to Community and could fulfil one of these positions. Prayers for this please!
And here is Di’s latest reflection on the subject of shared lives – enjoy!
[A Shared Meal – Felix Schlesinger]
A grace from the Book of Common Prayer:
Blessed are you, O Lord God, King of the Universe, for you give us food to sustain our lives and make our hearts glad; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
This, I believe, is especially true when we eat with others. Barry D.Jones in an article for VOICE (Dallas Theological Seminary 20515) talks about the dinner table as a place of connection, of brokenness and of blessing. Unlike our painting, the article goes on to talk about the table as a ‘place to remember the blessing of God’ and that ‘we need to recover the importance of gathering with people around our tables for the purpose of enjoying a meal as both a gift and means of grace’. Simple, humble or lavish ‘meals where we gather with family or friends both old and new, perhaps even, ‘to be!’ are the meals where we can receive a glimpse of the banquet of the kingdom to come… a little foretaste of the shalom of God’.
These meals are what the Celts called “thin places”—where the veil that separates heaven and earth seems exceedingly thin. Which is exactly what Phil and I discovered not only here at Scargill but in Kensal Rise, Hackney, Cambridge, Lee Abbey Youth Camp and Kenward House. Lee Abbey Camp was where I first encountered a generous hospitality where all were welcome. Even after the two weeks we spent together on the field camp team members would invite me round for a meal or to stay, something my mother never really understood. And 13 years on from having moved to Yorkshire, whenever I walk up to the main house there is the same distinct feeling that stirs within me as I had every time I walked onto the camp field. It feels like an acknowledgement that here is a sacred place, and I have, for some reason, the privilege to be here, to live, work and share my life with a myriad of people.
One reason I believe this is a safe haven for people is because from the very start of this adventure we knew that eating together, sharing meals, was to play a vital role in the life of Scargill. By default really, we quickly got into the routine of morning prayers followed by breakfast – well there was no one else to get breakfast! And we have never looked back, there is something very precious about coming down from prayers and starting the day with whoever is here over breakfast.
Interestingly I am writing this sitting at our kitchen table alone, having eaten alone. Phil is away. For me a solitary meal is quite a novelty. The meal I partook of was fine, I cooked it, but it was very short lived. It did though lead me to start writing this reflection and suddenly I felt inspired and no longer alone. We can’t always share our meals with others but we can share our lives. So with glad hearts, whether we eat alone or with others, let us remember that lives shared, with Christ at the centre, are lives transformed.
With love and prayers from