St Lawrence, Seal Chart Parish Magazine August 2016

Transcription

1 Services at St Margaret s Underriver during August 2016 In the Church, every Thursday at 08:30, Morning Prayer (said) - CW St Lawrence, Seal Chart Parish Magazine August Aug 11:15 All Age Family Service & Baptism 14 Aug 08:00 Holy Communion BCP 18:00 Evensong BCP 21 Aug 11:15 Family Communion CW 28 Aug 11:15 Parish Communion CW 4 Sept 11:15 All Age Family Service CW ST LAWRENCE CHURCH AND VILLAGE CONTACTS Vicar - Revd Carol Kitchener Reader - St Lawrence Church - Mrs Gretel Wakeham Admin Assistant - Tim Pearce admin@stlawrencesealchart.com Parish Website - Churchwardens Ron Drury Rob Otto PCC Hon Secretary John Morris PCC Hon Treasurer Andy Rowell Electoral Roll Clive McLintock Covenant & Envelopes Rob Otto Organist Alex Trigg Choir Director John Morris Bellringers Hon Secretary Peter Wharton Sevenoaks Deanery Synod Ron Drury Peter Wharton School Hilary Darque Child Protection Rep Kate Clark Church Flowers Sheila Jackson St Lawrence CE Primary School Headteacher Alison Saunders Chairman of Governors Paul Martin Clerk to the Governors Valerie Maunder St Lawrence Pre-School??? 1 st St Lawrence Brownies Janet Boswell S oaks District Councillors Julia Thornton Roderick Hogarth Seal Parish Council Chairman Edward Oatley Vice-Chairman Mike Harvey Clerk Lorna Talbot Ward Councillors Peter Granville Tony Bulleid St Lawrence Village Hall Management Committee Chairman Peter Wharton Secretary Janice Brooker Treasurer Andy Smaggasgale Bookings Secretary Andy Smaggasgale Cricket Club Secretary Robin Webster Badm ton Club Contact Peter Wharton Archery Club Secretary Mike Davies Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinators Stone Street Contact Janice Brooker Seal Chart Contact Nicola Mitchell Copy for the next issue should be sent, preferably by , to the editor, Brian Sutton ( ) at manofkent99@yahoo.com to arrive by 08:00 on Wednesday 17 August 2016 The next issue of the Parish Magazine will be in Church on 28 August 2016 Edited and Typeset by Brian Sutton, 50 The Crescent, Sevenoaks, Kent, TN13 3QY ( ) Printed by Highland Printers, Church Farm, Seal, Sevenoaks, Kent, TN15 0AN ( ) Vicar The Revd Carol Kitchener St Lawrence Vicarage Stone Street Sevenoaks, Kent TN15 0LQ Ron Drury Garden Cottage, Raspit Hill Ivy Hatch Sevenoaks, Kent TN15 0PE Church Wardens Reader Mrs Gretel Wakeham The White House Bitchet Green Sevenoaks, Kent TN15 0NA Rob Otto 23 Hillingdon Avenue Sevenoaks Kent TN13 3RB

2 Our Vicar s Page Summertime has finally arrived! You might question my judgement on this, by looking out of the window at the weather, but the school summer break in upon us. Having a break away from our work, our home, our normal routine is very valuable. We all need to stop the things we are doing and have a break from them. If we do not have a break we can get stale and people can begin to notice a weariness or lack of interest in what we are doing. Even Jesus had times away from the hustle and bustle of ministry. We are told that quite early on in Jesus ministry, after a busy spell calling disciples to follow him and healing a very sick man, Jesus spent a night at the house of two of his disciples James and John. The next morning he got up very early and went to find a quiet place to pray to his father, he needed time and peace before the busyness began all over again. If you want to read the whole of this story you can find it in Mark s gospel (1:29-39). Time away from home does not necessarily mean time away from God. The exact opposite could be the case! With time away from work or the daily tasks we all need to do, can mean time to think about our faith, time to stop and pray and in a different way. Instead of the (sometimes) frantic help me or help others kind of prayers, you might choose to say thank you to God for all that he has done, is doing and will do in your life and in the lives of the people you love. You might look around you at a new and unfamiliar landscape and see God s fingerprints in the beauty around you, or in the new people you have met. You might choose to pray in a different way, doing something creative perhaps composing a poem or some music, sketching or painting, or maybe just dancing in the surf? Whatever happens, stop and enjoy the summer and remember to say thank you for your relationship with a loving and creative God. For the Children Yours in the love of Christ 2 11

3 Clare of Assisi - a life of prayer and simplicity In the year 1212 Clare, the 18 year old daughter of a local Count, heard a young preacher called Francis. A few years earlier he had caused a sensation in the centre of the town where they both lived, Assisi in Italy, by stripping himself of his wealthy clothes and declaring that from now on he would live the life of a peasant. This, he said, was in obedience to the call of Christ, for whom the poor were blessed and the rich were in peril of judgment. He gathered a group of seven men prepared to embrace what he called joyful poverty for Christ s sake, but that day he was to enlist a female disciple. You are a chosen soul from God, he told Clare, when she expressed her eagerness to embrace the same strict rule as his male followers. In due course, after a period in a Benedictine convent, Clare and her sister Agnes moved into the church of St Damiano, which Francis and his friends had restored, and gathered there a group of like-minded women. Eventually Francis made Clare the abbess of a religious Order, at first called the Order of Poor Ladies, eventually, and universally, to be known as the Poor Clares. Unable to operate an itinerant ministry like the men, Clare s sisters concentrated on a life of prayer and simplicity. In fact, their dedication to poverty was such that it affected the health of many of them. Francis and Clare remained friends and colleagues over the next 14 years in this remarkable movement of renewal and mission. During the preceding century (as we can learn from Chaucer, among others) the religious Orders had in many cases substituted indulgence for discipline. Francis and Clare found this scandalous, and despite opposition from high places, set out to demonstrate that an effective Christian message required an appropriate Christian life-style. For them, poverty was not a burden but a joy - a release from the delusions of power and ambition. Their witness made an enormous impact on the poor people of Umbria and beyond, who saw an authenticity in their lives which spoke as eloquently as their words. Clare helped to nurse Francis through his final illness, which lasted several years. She lived for 27 years after his death, like him suffering from the effects of long years of strict austerity. She died in 1253 and was canonised two years later. She is buried in the basilica of St Clare in Assisi, a few hundred yards from the basilica of St Francis. In life they proclaimed the same message of sacrificial love and service, and in their deaths they were not divided. Her special day is 11 th August. 10 ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BOAT BEWL WATER DRAGON BOAT RACE 2016 St Lawrence's has entered a team in the 2016 Bewl Water Dragon Boat Festival. The event takes place on Saturday 10 September 2016 and should be a fun day out for rowers and supporters. A team of 20 volunteers from our church and wider community and friends, are raising funds for charities supported by the church. The prime beneficiaries will be : DEMELZA HOUSE provides the best care and support for seriously ill babies, children, young people and their families, across East Sussex, Kent and South East London. THE BRIDGE TRUST supporting single homeless people in West Kent since SEVENOAKS AREA YOUTH TRUST A youth work charity based in Sevenoaks, Kent, with the aim of training, employing and supporting detached Christian youth workers in Sevenoaks and its surrounding areas. The dragon boat races take place throughout the day, starting at 10 am, and finishing at around 4 pm with the 10 boat grand final. Just come down to the water's edge and watch all the colourful action. Teams of 16 paddlers, plus a drummer and a helm will be competing for the annual trophy in a series of time trials over the 250 metre course. There will also be stalls, and there's no shortage of food and drink! Just head to Bewl Water (TN3 8JH) on 10th September Standard Bewl Water entry fee of 2 per car (for up to 5 people) applies. PLEASE : If you can give any sum to these amazing charities, either visit or contact our Church Treasurer, Andy Rowell on to donate by cheque or bank transfer. On behalf of our charities and people who benefit from their amazing work Thank you for your donation. 3

4 The Cathedral s Hidden Treasures Update June 2016 We now have a restored library, watertight under a splendid Kent peg tiled roof that sets off the beauty of the stone work, with the East oriel window clearly visible once more now that the builder s compound has been removed. The library is now resplendent inside, with superb elm flooring that suits the size and dignity of the room. Three Georgian windows light the south facing wall and these retain their original shutters, which are still functional and serve a useful purpose in protecting the precious volumes from too much sunlight. The shelving is being rebuilt and has been designed to allow a proper display of the older volumes, which have been recatalogued by the University of Kent in a joint project that has enabled students to explore and appreciate some of the oldest and most interesting volumes in the collection. The library will be accessible to view even when it is not open as a glass screen replaces a 19th century lobby. In opening access to the library we are also able to highlight the splendid 14th century stone doorway built by Bishop Hamo de Hythe and showing, at the apex, his soul rising to heaven reduced to the innocence of a baby. The library will partly be used as an area for academic work, building on the joint work with University of Kent, so that scholars can, for the first time for many years, use the library as a resource for research. There is a much wider purpose, however, in introducing everyone to the glories of the collection and our volunteers are keen to return to the books they know and love so that they can share the treasures with many who may have had no inkling of the literary heritage the Cathedral houses. The crypt is now enhanced by Purbeck stone flooring, more in keeping with size and dignity of this elegant space than the earlier concrete. Each gothic pillar is lit with a roundel of lights that highlight the ribbed arches and create a sense of infinite space. The lighting also enables visitors to see the restored ceiling paintings that survive in some parts of the crypt. Shadowy figures are visible, with the ribbed arches embellished by rosettes. While these are frustratingly faint and partial they feed the imagination to envisage the colourful splendour of the pre- Reformation crypt. This is an area of beauty and calm and the Ithamar chapel, which was created in earlier years at the East end of the crypt, now benefits from replaced leaded light windows that are protected by elegant iron work which serves as a barrier to unwelcome intruders. The oldest part of the crypt, built in the late 11th century by Bishop Gundulph, will house the exhibitions that are planned to showcase the Cathedral s more precious and interesting artefacts. The central exhibit is the Textus Roffensis, an inexplicably little known book that is the only existing written copy of the first codification of English law and which formed the basis for Magna Carta. It was written in Rochester during the 1120s and is in old English and Medieval Latin. This is undoubtedly the greatest of all Rochester s hidden treasures. Gilly Wilford Executive Director & Chapter Clerk Reproduced by kind permission of Rochester Diocesan Development Office Children in distress Romania Sue and Harry Ward, retired GP Robin Dunn and his wife Anna are walking the 96 miles of the West Highland Way this September to raise money for Children in Distress, Romania. Robin and Harry are Trustees of this charity which started as a hospice movement for children with HIV left in orphanages after the fall of the communist regime. We are all involved in their work in Romania. The Charity has developed into an organisation which works with the local charities Copii in Difficultate and Positive Plus (for young adult survivors with HIV) to provide a range of residential and community services on several sites for children with special needs including terminal illness, severe physical and learning difficulties, autism and school refusal. The charities work with government services in these fields. We hope you can support this worthy cause. More information about the Charity, the walk and donating can be found on the sites below. Alternatively, please contact us directly on The Charity web site can be found at The donation site can be found at True Story Harry A vicar entered a Christian bookshop to buy a popular book title. Do you have Time to Embrace please? he asked. The astonished elderly lady assistant responded by slapping him across the face. 4 9

5 Buster Back in my day the words police dog conjured up a picture of a german shepherd moving gently alongside his handler, tongue hanging out and some quite fearsome teeth on show. Some time later the military recognised that there were other breeds which could be trained for specific tasks. And so it was at some time in the early days of this century, in 2002, somewhere in the UK a springer spaniel bitch produced a littler of pups and one of these was later named Buster. Now as anyone with any knowledge of dogs knows, spaniels and particularly springers are highly intelligent and very inquisitive. Buster was no exception and so he was trained as a Military Arms and Explosive Search Dog. During his service, Buster was deployed to those several locations, eg Afghanistan, Bosnia and Iraq, where terrorists littered the countryside with nasty home made bombs or carried such from place to place blowing themselves and others up in the name of their religious masters. In 2007 Buster was teamed up with Flight Sergeant William Barrow, a senior NCO in the Royal Air Force Police and they were posted to Helmand in Afghanistan In this dangerous location. He took part in patrols through the poppy fields seeking taliban insurgents and booby trap bombs intended to kill or maim our troops. Here, Buster saved countless lives by sniffing out explosive vests - leading to the arrests of two suicide bombers. It was reported that Buster s friendly nature was also valuable in gaining the confidence of local children. In 2011 Buster retired to Lincoln and lived then with Will, his wife and family, but remaining as the RAF Police mascot. Sadly, in July 2015, at the age of 13, Buster died after such marvellous service. In July 2016 a memorial to Buster was unveiled in Lincoln, with serving and retired Snowdrops in attendance, in to the memory of one of ours. Ed Your Support is Requested You will already have read our announcement concerning the Dragon Boat Race at Bewl Water on Saturday 10 September and the three very worthy causes that we seek to support. To make life very easy, all you have to do is go to and follow the simple instructions. Thank you. Ed Who are we? All this talk about Europe and the post-referendum arguments about identity have left me, and probably many people, wondering just who I am. After all, this island is home to people of probably the most mixed provenance in human history. Way back, we were Celts, until our ancestors were driven back into the mountains of Scotland and Wales. Then came the Romans, the Vikings, Angles and Saxons, some to do a bit of pillaging and others to make themselves at home. Then came 1066 and the French invasion, which changed our language for ever. Over the ensuing centuries we had various refugees from religious persecution, Irish people in huge numbers when harvests failed, and then more recently people from the Commonwealth, starting with the recruitment of workers from the Caribbean in the nineteen-fifties and then those driven from their homes by Idi Amin in East Africa. And so it has gone on. Yet here we are, quite clearly a nation, even if we don t all look or sound alike. We may feel at times that it would be nice if everyone was just like we are, but deep down we know how boring that would be. It s a nice quiet afternoon exercise to map out our own answers to the question Who am I? What are the things that really make me who I am? I ve done my list. I am, I suppose, first and foremost Christian. Then I m British (English/Welsh), European (geography/ culture), and a member of the wonderful, multi-coloured, argumentative, richly endowed but endlessly flawed human race. In the words of the old Church of England catechism, which older readers may remember, the answer to the question Who are you? is a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. Put it all together, and I d settle for that. David Winter 8 5

6 Friday Services and Events at The Church of St Lawrence Seal Chart during August 2016 Every Tuesday at 08:30, in the Church Morning Prayer (said) (CW) 5 August Prayer Time (Lasts about an hour, all are welcome) 10:00 at The White House, Bitchet Green 7 August 11th after Trinity 08:00 Holy Communion BCP Genesis 15: 1-6 Luke 12: :45 All Age Family Service Genesis 15: August 12th after Trinity 09:45 Family Communion & Baptism CW Hebrews 11: 29-12:2 Luke 12: Tuesday 16 August Prayer Time (Lasts about an hour, all are welcome) 10:00 at 50 The Crescent, Sevenoaks Church Flowers 7 Aug Gill Beynon 14 August Sheila Jackson 21 August Wedding 28 August Jean Stirling 4 Sept Jean Stirling Children meet promptly at 09:45 in the School Hall on the dates shown below They will rejoin their parents in the church towards the end of the service. All children aged 3 and upwards are welcome For further information contact Hilary Darque 21 Aug No School 21 August 13th after Trinity 09:45 Family Communion CW Hebrews 12: 18-end Luke 13: August 14th after Trinity 09:45 Matins Hebrews 13: 1-8 & Luke 14: 1,& 7-14 Dates for your Diary 2016 Fri 9 Sep In the Church Fri 18 Nov In the Church 4 Sept 15th after Trinity 08:00 Holy Communion BCP Philemon 1-21 Luke 14: :45 All Age Family Service Luke 14: Thursday 8 Sept Prayer Time (Lasts about an hour, all are welcome) 14:00 at The White House, Bitchet Green From the Registers 3 July Baptism Harry Hayward, 9 July Wedding Steven Goldup and Ruth Anderson May we all take this opportunity to extend our very best wishes to Harry, Ruth and Steven and pray that the Good Lord will watch over and guide them for the rest of their days. 6 7