St.Mary, Alderley Cheshire

Transcription

1 St.Mary, Alderley Cheshire Rector Writes: March 2011 Lent begins this month with the customary Service of Holy Communion and Ashing on Ash Wednesday. Traditionally we use this time in the Church s year to reflect on the themes of death and resurrection. There seems to me an uncomfortable truth that you need the bad in order to see the good. This year I have been involved with a number of funerals of younger people all involving cancer. Out of the stories of struggle, fear and pain come stories of amazing strength, courage and a thirst for life. In other words the darkness of a situation allowed the brightness of the human spirit to shine. Adversity can be the mother of generosity and kindness. Hardship of whatever kind can foster human virtues. Sacrifice can bring reward. There is a paradox to life which the teachings of Christ take up. It is in giving that we receive or those that lose their life will find it. The rich are poor, the deaf hear and the blind see. The gospel notes that the blind are those who have sight but do not see God likewise the deaf are those who can hear but shut their ears to God s call. I asked God for strength that I might achieve. I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey. I asked for health that I might do greater things. I was given infirmity that I might do better things. I asked for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be wise. I asked for power that I might have the praise of men. I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am, among all men, most richly blessed. CS Lewis noted that God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world Parish Magazine March 2011 It would seem wrong or disordered to seek pain or hardship. However there would seem both in scripture and in the life of the Church a rich spiritual tradition in dealing with it positively. I wonder whether the pains that the Church has faced in the last century and continues to face will be the fertile base for future revival. Christ is the human face of God; the fullness of Revelation. He lives in His Church and operates through the baptised who are His hands, His feet and His merciful face. I pray that we may see the opportunities given by God and not dismiss them as threats. I pray that we may ever be vigilant in keeping Christ s light burning in our lives and also have eyes to see it in others. May we hear God s call to serve Him and His Church with optimism and joy. 30p James 1

2 DIARY FOR MARCH 2011 Thurs 3 rd 10.00am Holy Communion at Alderley 12.noon Soup & Study in the Rectory Sat. 5 th 10.00am St.Mary's Walking Group 1.30pm Holy Matrimony at Alderley Sun. 6 th Quinquagesima 8.00am Holy Communion at Birtles 9.30am Family Service at Alderley 10.15am Family Service at Birtles 11.15am Holy Communion at Alderley Wed. 9 th 7.30pm Holy Communion at Alderley with Ashing Thu. 10 th 10.00am Holy Communion at Alderley Sat. 12 th 10.30am Choir Jumble Sale Sun 13 th First Sunday in Lent 8.00am Holy Communion at Alderley 9.30am Holy Communion at Alderley 10.15am Holy Communion at Birtles 11.15am Mattins at Alderley Thu. 17 th 10.00am Holy Communion at Alderley 12 noon Soup & Study in the Rectory 8.00pm Lenten Recital Sat. 19 th 6.30am Family Games Evening Sun. 20 th Second Sunday in Lent 8.00am Holy Communion at Alderley 9.30am Family Service at Alderley 10.15am Mattins at Birtles 11.15am Mattins at Alderley 6.30pm Holy Communion at Alderley Thu. 24 th 10.00am Holy Communion at Alderley Sun.27 th Third Sunday in Lent 8.00am Holy Communion at Alderley 9.30am Family Service at Alderley 10.15am Holy Communion at Birtles 11.15am Mattins at Alderley Thu. 31 st 10.00am Holy Communion at Alderley 8.00pm Lenten Recital 2 (continued) April Sat.2 nd 10.00am St.Mary's Walking Group Sun 3 rd Fourth Sunday in Lent 8.00am Holy Communion at Birtles 9.30am Holy Communion at Alderley 10.15am Family Service at Birtles 11.15am Holy Communion at Alderley Date COFFEE is available in the Parish Hall after the 9.30am Family Service. Donations to charity. Gift Aid Envelopes COLLECTION TOTALS Non-Gift Aid Envelopes Misc. Cash Standing Orders Total Jan 2 nd Jan 9 th Jan 16 th Jan 23 rd Jan 30 th TOTAL EASTER LILIES If you would like to make a donation towards the cost of Lilies / Easter flowers in memory of loved ones, would you please place it in an envelope with the names of those to be remembered clearly written on the outside. Envelopes are to be handed to either Lesley Taylor or Michael Penlington. There will also be a small box at the back of church where you can place your details and donation. (Cheques to be made payable to 'Alderley Church Flower Fund'). As usual, a list of those to be remembered will be put up in the porch and published in the parish magazine. It is anticipated that the cost of lilies will be about the same as last year, 2.50 per stem. Lesley Taylor ( ) & Michael Penlington ( ) 3

3 SOCIAL COMMITTEE The next Tea Party will be on Wednesday February 23 rd at 3.15pm at Alderley Cottage. Anyone welcome. Please let Janet know if you would like to attend. We held a very successful Bridge Drive on Tuesday February 8 th in the Parish Hall. 15 tables were sold and a profit of 420 was made. These events are well supported by people from outside the parish. The next Bridge Drive will be Monday May 9 th. Please put the date in your diary. Also, please let your friends who might be interested know. We are planning to have a Spring Buffet Lunch on April 10 th at12.30 following morning service. Tickets will cost 10. Please let Janet know on or Janice on if you would like to attend. It would be helpful to know sooner rather later as it is difficult to organise when we have no idea of numbers. If anyone can help in any way please let us know. ST MARY'S WALKING GROUP Saturday 2 nd April Janet Adamson Tel: MOTHERS' UNION NOT TO BE MISSED! Our next speaker is Mrs Janet Adamson Fun with Flowers" Wednesday 16 th March 2.00pm DO JOIN US! MEDITATIVE RECITALS IN LENT From the very beginning music has played an important role in our relationship with God. On four occasions in Lent there will be an opportunity to hear the organ as an aide to meditation. The idea is to come with your own thoughts, reflections, dreams or even anxieties and spend half an hour in Church soaking up over seven hundred years of prayer. The Church will be open from 7.30pm with the recital starting at 8.00pm. At 8.30pm we finish with the Lord s Prayer and depart. Thursday 17 th March : John Pyatt Thursday 31 st March : John Pyatt Thursday 7 th April : John Pyatt Thursday 14 th April : Martin Potter Shinning Tor and Windgather Walk: start 10.00am prompt Starting point: Errwood car park Goyt Valley Grid reference: SK Map: Outdoor Leisure 24 Peak District, White Peak Length: 8 miles Further information: Walking up to Shinning Tor, along the ridge to Windgather, Goyt Valley and Fernilee Reservior. Packed lunch required. Contact: Chris Sweetman ( ) with any questions or confirmation of the arrangements during the week before the walk. 4 From Oasis A big thank you to all those who have given mens and womens toiletries to the centre. There are few luxuries for these people and your gifts are very much appreciated. Anne Robinson The Kea to toothache? Kea was an early Christian and a monk from a good family who left Glastonbury to work in Devon and Cornwall, where Landkey (Devon) and Kea (Cornwall) bear his name. He founded several Christian centres in the area before going on to Brittany to become the saint known there as Saint-Quay. It seems that Kea may also have tried a bit of early dentistry, as down the centuries since he has been invoked over the problems of toothaches. 5

4 Rector s Church Notes Altar: The Altar is the central focus in nearly all Anglican Churches as it is the place where the sacrament of Holy Communion is celebrated. Holy Communion is the only act of corporate worship directly commanded by Our Lord to his disciples Do this in remembrance of me. This is not to say that Holy Communion is the only act of worship permissable in the Church but that Holy Communion has a centrality and supremity derived from Christ himself. The word Altar recalls Christ s scarifice for us on the cross and stands in the Church as a reminder of God s love for us. The central position of the Altar in Churches is indicative of the centrality played by Christ s sacrifice in our faith. Altars are used in art and literature to denote a place of offering. The stone table appeared in C.S Lewis Chronicles of Narnia Aslan offered himself as a substitionary sacrifice. After this the stone table broke in two and could no longer be used as a place of sacrifice. This is analogous to the Christian belief that Christ s sacrifice is once and for all. It is not to be repeated. We are also reminded of the continuity but also discontinuity with the children of Israel in the Old Teastament. Sacrifice played an important part in Temple worship, however in the words of institution we are told that Christ s blood is the blood of the new testament. In other words the old has been superseded. Sacrifice is a huge topic that has interested anthropologists for over a century. Altars are used by other religions and were in use by the Pagan religions in Jesus own time. The Aztec s are infamous for their human sacrifices and the Chinese for the sacrifices made to their ancestors. In all cases an altar is involved. The Old Testament prophets Amos and Hosea radically critique the sacrificial system in their own day noting its hypocrisy and the fact that God prefers a contrite heart, justice and mercy rather than a fatted calf. King Josiah attempted to regulate sacrifices making the Jerusalem Temple the only place where a sacrificial altar could be erected. Church Altars can go by various other names The Lord s Table, Holy Table or Communion Table. These names recall the last supper at which Our Lord and his disciples gathered round a table and broke bread. It is Our Lord s words at table which form the prayer of consecration at Holy Communion. The Altar is a focus of prayer and a place where we lift up the offertory at Services and ask for God s blessing. Altars are usually made of wood or stone however their outward appearance can vary greatly. It is currently fashionable to have small plain Altars in the middle of the Church. The position of Altars within the Church has been controversial at different points in the Church s history. It is a requirement of Canon Law that the Altar be covered with silk or other decent material at the time of Divine Service. 6 Do you want to have some fun? Come and join us at our Family Games Evening and steak pie and chips supper Saturday 19 th March 2011 at 6:30pm Nether Alderley Parish Hall Tickets 6.00 from Maureen Woolley, Charlotte Rozsas, Ruth James or Fiona Robinson JUMBLE SALE ADVANCE NOTICE Choir Annual Jumble Sale on Saturday 12 th March 2011 Please remember us when you start to do your Spring Clean!!!! Noni Watkins ( ) Helpers would be much appreciated either for the sale itself at 10.30am or for assisting with the sorting on Friday 11 th March at 2.00pm. 7

5 Women's World Day of Prayer Friday 4 th March 2.00pm 3.00pm at St.Pius Church, Alderley Edge (refreshments in church hall at 3.00pm) Women's World Day of Prayer is a global, ecumenical movement of informed prayer and prayerful action, organised and led by Christian women who call the faithful together on the first Friday in March each year to observe a common day of prayer and who, in many countries, have a continuing relationship in prayer and service. The service is written by a different country each year and that country then becomes the focus of the world's prayers on the day itself, which begins as dawn breaks over the islands of Tonga in the Pacific and continues across each continent until the last services of this special day are held back in the Pacific, on the islands of Samoa, circling the world in prayer for 36 hours. The origins of Women's World Day of Prayer date back to the 19th century when Christian women in the USA and Canada initiated a variety of cooperative activities in support of women's involvement in mission, at home and abroad. It was in 1928, at an international missionary conference in Jerusalem, that Scotswoman Grace Forgan first learned of the world day of prayer and brought the news to these islands. On Friday 4 th March 2011 over 3 million people world wide will be praying and worshipping together during an annual day of prayer, using a service prepared by Christian women in Chile. Chilean women represent just over a third of their workforce and have only entered the labour market in recent years to augment family income. Most are in domestic service and earn two thirds of the basic minimum wage. Women tend to work in less prestigious and less well-paid jobs. They are the heads of the household, putting up with heavy work as seasonal workers, selling in street markets and garage sales, working in private homes, caring for children, and discovering other intelligent ways to earn more money. It is very common to see women on tricycles in poor neighbourhoods, collecting cardboard and discarded objects for re-sale. The World Day of Prayer in Chile began in 1980 under the wing of the Ecumenical Women of Latin America but it was not until 1996 that a national WDP committee was formed. Preparing the material for the 2011 service has helped to unite and consolidate the movement in Chile. Do please come along to the service: you will be made most welcome. (Men are also welcome!) 8 The Tichborne Dole The Tichborne Dole is an ancient British tradition still very much alive today. It takes place in the village of Tichborne near Alresford in Hampshire every year on March 25th the Feast of the Annunciation (Lady s Day) and dates back to the 13th century. Suffering from a wasting disease which had left her crippled, on her deathbed Lady Mabella Tichborne asked her miserly husband, Sir Roger, to donate food to the needy regularly every year. Her husband was reluctant but made a bizarre agreement as to how much he would give. Sir Roger agreed to give the corn from all the land which his dying wife could crawl around whilst holding a blazing torch in her hand, before the torch went out. Lady Mabella succeeded in crawling around a twenty-three acre field which is still called 'The Crawls to this day and which is situated just north of Tichborne Park and beside the road to Alresford. Lady Tichborne charged her husband and his heirs to give the produce value of that land to the poor in perpetuity. But aware of her husband's miserly character, Mabella added a curse - that should the dole ever be stopped then seven sons would be born to the house, followed immediately by a generation of seven daughters, after which the Tichborne name would die out and the ancient house fall into ruin. The custom of giving the dole, in the form of bread, on 25th March, Lady Day continued for over 600 years, until 1796, when owing to abuse by vagabonds and vagrants, it was temporarily suspended by order of the Magistrates. Local folk however, remembered the final part of the Tichborne legend and Lady Tachborne's curse. The penalty for not giving the dole would be a generation of seven daughters, the family name would die out and the ancient house fall down. In 1803 part of the house did indeed subside and the curse seemed to have been fulfilled when Sir Henry Tichborne who succeeded to the baronetcy in 1821(one of seven brothers), produced seven daughters. The tradition was hastily re-established and has continued to this day. The Dole is held every Lady Day, March 25th. The parish priest carries out the traditional Blessing of the Tichborne Dole before the flour is distributed to the local people - only those families in Tichborne, Cheriton and Lane End are entitled to the dole. 9

6 Beware what lurks in the church vestry... My dear Nephew Darren The Rectory St. James the Least of All I am unsurprised that the cleaning lady took exception to you dismantling your motorbike in the church vestry. Clergy vestries are the final repositories of rotting hymn books, ancient cassocks with a certain aroma, buckets with holes in which are kept just in case and dead animals in various states of decomposition; but they are no place for bike chains, disc brakes and inner tubes. I will concede that vestries seem to attract all those objects no one quite knows what to do with, but which parishioners can t bear to throw away, as iron filings race towards a magnet. But flower arrangers looking for space for boxes of twine, decorators hoping to store cribs and Easter gardens and choirmasters for overspill for anthems must be repelled vigorously. Only hardy souls should enter a vestry. You will be confronted with all of your predecessors staring down at you reproachfully. The most recent, in colour, will stare smugly, knowing full well that you cannot equal their standards. Earlier incumbents, in black and white, will look mildly reproachful, reminding you that your abilities have fallen well short of their intellectual stature. Those from previous centuries, hand drawn and looking as if they have recently ingested a pint of vinegar, will tell you that, whoever you are and whatever you may become, you are a disappointment. I am already rehearsing my own look of pained forgiveness for my leaving photo that will stare down on my own successor and perpetually irritate him. It also seems to be a tradition that retiring clergy donate their robes for their successors, probably because it spares them a walk to the dustbin. So, a five foot, 18 stone incumbent will leave a cassock for his six foot, ten stone successor and then will let his disappointment be known that the new arrival is not using his kind gift. There will also be a spare 1960s nylon surplice hanging on the back of the vestry door, to remind you that should you ever forget your own, then this is the horror you will be obliged to wear throughout Evensong. Notices on the walls will tell you that marriage fees in the 1920s were seven shillings and sixpence, that Communion wine can be obtained from a shop that closed down a generation ago and there will be a copy of the prayer of thanksgiving to be used on the relief of Mafeking. ROTA FOR FEBRUARY 2011 LADY SIDESMEN / SIDESMEN / LECTORS DATE TIME SIDESMEN LECTOR 9.30am Mr G.Woolley 6 th 11.15am Mrs J.Adamson & Mr G.Hilton Mrs V.Muir 6.30pm Mr G.Barrie Mr P.Bean 13 th 20 th 27 th 8.00am Mrs B.Essayan 9.30am Mrs J.Davenport 11.15am Messrs A.Claridge & R.Shiers Mr R.Shiers 6.30pm Mrs. D.Barber Mr P.Bean 8.00am Mr P.Bean 9.30am Mrs G.Beeley 11.15am Messrs W.Ablett & R.Akester Mr R.Akester 6.30pm Mr A.Cockitt Mr & Mrs Davis 8.00am Mr H.A.Wright 9.30am Mr M.Stonehewer 11.15am Mrs R.Dyas & Mr J.Haigh Mrs S.Hine 6.30pm Mrs D.Barber Mr R.Akester 9.30am Mrs L.Taylor Apl. 6 th 11.15am Mrs J.Adamson & Mr J.Morum Mrs V.Muir 6.30am Mr S.Maynard Mr S.Maynard My only advice is to remove your bike before it gets bundled up with the Scouts tents although you may try claiming that the engine oil was brought in for anointing the sick. Your loving uncle, Eustace 10 11

7 Christenings FROM THE REGISTERS Sat 12 th February Alexandra Madeline Hall Sun 20 th February Scarlett Elizabeth Walker FLOWER ROTA Mar 6 th Wedding Mar 13 th Lent Mar 20 th Lent Mar 27 th Lent READERS' ROTA FOR THE FAMILY SERVICE Mar 6 th Charlotte James Mar 13 th Ella / Nancy Davis Mar 20 th William Vardon Mar 27 th Isobel Clarke MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTIONS The deadline for the next magazine is Thursday 17 th March 2011 Please send all copy to: Editorial: Jenny Youatt info@stmarysalderley.com 1, Orchard Crescent, Nether Alderley, SK10 4TZ Production: Jean Whittingham Subscriptions & Distribution: Peter Bean: Large format copies of the magazine are available. 12