We hope you are enjoying our latest Momentum magazine/Programme, covering events September 2024 to February 2025, and are making plans for when you can next connect with us either online or in-house. Here is the Momentum/Programme as a PDF.

Forthcoming online events with spaces available for you to join us:

Friday 21st to Sunday 23rd June The Bass Note led by Adrian and Bridget Plass
Wednesday 10th July Online Quiet Day (Free and Donation tickets available)
Wednesday livestream services (4:30-5pm) – (on our Youtube channel) same link to catch up later

As a community, we recently enjoyed welcoming our guests of all ages for our Paddington themed May Half Term, and are looking forward to welcoming guests for all sorts of events and groups over the Summer.

Joining the Scargill adventure as a residential community member
As Summer approaches, the community will be welcoming some short-term summer workers amongst us. There are also a number of community member departures scheduled before September, as folk come to the end of their time with us and move on to new things.

We would welcome applications from folk for a shorter or longer stay, and there are gaps opening up across a number of teams – is God calling you or someone you know to be a part of the Scargill Community?

Please pray for God to send us the right people to join us for the Autumn, and join the adventure of living and serving on this Christian community. You may know someone who you think would both benefit from and contribute to the residential Scargill community. Do ask them to be in touch with us to enquire about joining – see here.

Phil and Di sabbatical
Phil and Di are now two-thirds of the way through their sabbatical. Di shares here some reflections on their recent trip to Italy and the life of St Francis of Assisi. Enjoy!

Diane writes:

During this mid-section of our sabbatical, we travelled to Italy with Jo P to visit two linked religious communities – Bose, the main house in North Italy, where we been many times and one of their three small houses which happens to be in Assisi! 

Our journey started by car then plane, coach, bus, train and taxi!! It felt very much like being on a pilgrimage – as indeed it turned out to be with a few days later and another day’s travelling we arrived in Assisi. Along the way we were also reading Chasing Francis – a pilgrim’s tale by Ian Morgan Cron. It is in the genre of WISDOM literature with a delicate balance of fiction and nonfiction, pilgrimage and teaching, focusing on the life of St Francis.

The story opens with these words:

 “In the middle of the journey of our life
  I came to my senses in a dark forest,
  For I had lost the straight path.
  Oh, how hard it is to tell
  what a dense, wild and tangled wood this was
  the thought of which renews my fears!”
  From – Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy – Canto1 lines 1-6

Now I have never read The Divine Comedy and probably never will but these words spoke to me. I felt very much like the main character, floundering in the unknown, the where, when and why-for not yet clear, a new way of being community – will we be able to stay the course?

Thankfully we were in a beautiful place, full of peace and quiet and as I began reading there was this quote from Anne Frank.

‘The best remedy for those who are afraid or unhappy is to go outside some where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens and nature and God, because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty in nature’

Not only were we encircled by the beauty of the surrounding countryside, there was also the incredible artwork in Bose, the frescos of Assisi filling many of the churches we visited as well as the beauty in the simplicity of the few unadorned churches, water fountains and fields. I also discovered that every confessional has a cross impregnated in the screen separating the priest and the individual. You’ll be pleased to know I checked in every church we visited! And I became truly excited about the idea that Christ is there in the centre of their conversation reminding me that he is also ever present with me and all the conversations and interaction I have each day.

Ian Morgan Cron also reminds us Francis loved God, the world and all that is in it, passionately. He was convinced that how we live together is what attracts people to faith. His way of evangelising people was through the example of his own life….” It is no good walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching” in other words we need to ‘walk the talk!’ That Christ is present when we offer radical generosity and open hospitality – eating together, praying together, embracing all – doing life together which has always excited and energised me and I know it will continue to.  It seems to be in my DNA!
Chasing Francis concludes with these lines from Dante’s Divine Comedy:

By that hidden way
My guide and I did enter to return
To the fair world: and heedless of repose
We climbed, he first, I following his steps,
Till on our view the beautiful lights of heaven
Dawn’d through a circular opening in the cave:
Thus issuing we again beheld the stars.

Our journeys are full of new chapters and mine now continues with the hope of Dante’s stars and the assurance that where ever we go our home will be a house of peace, a house of welcome, a house of laughter and a house of prayer, for all.

With love and prayers from

Phil, Di and the Scargill Community

Thank you for your continued support and the love shown to us. In this mailing we have news of our latest magazine and programme release, and a reflection from Di about ‘sacred walking’. 

We are glad to announce the publication of our new Programme combined with Momentum (covering new events from January to August 2023). We do hope that you find much to encourage you to continue to journey with us and to plan to book a visit to stay here, amongst the wide variety of events on offer both in-house and online. Please complete your booking forms via the website if at all possible.

We are all aware of the financial instability and struggles that many people are facing, please be aware of our bursary fund. You can access our bursary fund application form on each of our programme event booking web pages.

We mentioned in our last MailChimp that Hilary, our Kitchen Team lead who has done a wonderful job, is needing to step aside for family commitments, in the New Year. If you know of anyone who would be interested in joining Community with a particular gifting and passion to join the Kitchen Team please look on our website for the job description, or contact di@scargillmovement.org

Here is Di’s latest reflection. Enjoy!

Diane writes:
In a recent application I read the words ‘……spending time and learning about each other was so sacred, walking on the holy grounds of other people’s experiences.’
 
Wow, this line jumped out at me and I underscored it twice! It speaks of spending time and learning about each other as being sacred because it involves ‘walking on the holy grounds of other people’s experience’. Quite a profound statement that made me acknowledge what a huge privilege it is to be able to walk alongside another.
 
Holy Ground, hmmm, I wonder what they meant by that! I wonder what ‘Holy Ground’ means for you?

Betsy Jean writing for A Rocha says  ‘When Moses was out in the desert looking after the flocks of his father-in-law, he saw the burning bush, he stopped, and turned aside to look and then to listen. Very quickly he found himself on holy ground. What made it holy, of course, was the presence of God, manifested in flaming shrubbery.’
 
She goes on to say, ‘What if, God, being everywhere (as Christian doctrine teaches us), makes every place holy? What if, every bush dances with the flames of God’s presence, but our eyes are just not calibrated to see it?’
 
Well, that’s a thought. If that is the case, and I certainly believe it is, we can also say – What if every bush, every street, every kitchen table, every time we spend with others, every conversation dances with the flames of God’s presence but our senses are just not calibrated to see it? What if indeed! Perhaps walking alongside one-another should not be taken so lightly.
 
The two travellers in our painting by Janet Brooks Gerloff (1947- 2008), are walking along the Emmaus Road completely unaware of Jesus’ presence. He was just another traveller who spent time with them, walking alongside, gently explaining the scriptures, accepting their hospitality, until they were able to recognise who he was and begin to comprehend the full significance of the journey they had just walked.
 
Like Moses, we need to be prepared to stop and turn aside, to look and to listen to where God is calling and like Jesus with his two companions we need to be willing to walk alongside, to tread gently on holy ground, with as Jacob said this morning, ‘Your (God’s) spirit in our steps and your (God’s) joy in our hearts.
 
To conclude, in our kitchen we have the most beautiful calligraphy of several blessings by John O’Donohue. One which I am constantly drawn to includes the words
 
‘Endeavour to remain aware
Of the quiet world
That lives behind each face.’
 
And another:
 
‘Be fair in your expectations
Compassionate in your criticism.
May you have the grace of encouragement,
To awaken the gift in the other’s heart,
Building in them the confidence 
To follow the call of the gift.’
 
Perhaps this is how we walk on the sacred, holy ground of other people’s experiences.  Perhaps this is the call we are being asked to follow!

With love and prayers from

Phil, Di and the Scargill Community