Author: sheumais

Zoom Quiz Night – Thursday 23rd July at 7:30pm

sheumais Events, Notices

Beatrice and Janet from St. Andrew’s, Tain present

A Grand Quiz Night on Zoom

Prepare to be puzzled, entertained and, perchance, to entertain!

But whatever you do, come prepared!

Folk from any of our congregations (or none) are most welcome to join us

There’ll be three rounds;

for two of them you need only yourselves and a sense of humour!

However …

for the ‘Unbelievable Truths’ round you’ll need to have ready

three startling,

unusual,

or even outrageous

‘facts’ about yourself, your life, or your family.
(Such as: my dad rode to school on an elephant.)

Only two should be true and the rest of us have to guess which of the three is really ‘unbelievable’ (in other words a lie)! As well as laughing a lot we’ll have the opportunity to get to know one another just a little bit better.

You may also find you’ll need ample refreshments, which could be stronger than usual as we won’t be driving anywhere afterwards…

Zoom joining details are the same as for coffee mornings and will be circulated by email.

Collect for Pentecost 7A

sheumais Local

O God of power and might,
all good things belong to you:
sow in our hearts the love of your name,
and make us grow in the life of faith;
nurture the things that are good,
and tend them with your loving care;
through Jesus Christ, our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, world without end.  Amen.

Churches Open for Prayer

sheumais Local, News

Yesterday saw St Finnbarr’s in Dornoch and St Andrew’s in Tain open for Individual Prayer for the first time.  A fair number of people took the opportunity to drop in for a little while during the two hour periods that the Churches were open.

St Finnbarr’s, Dornoch open 10am -12pm on Wednesdays

 

St Andrew’s, Tain open 2pm-4pm on Wednesdays

A Psalm of lament and praise in a time of coronavirus

How shall we praise you, Lord, our God?

When we are locked down, how shall we praise you?
When the doors to your house are barred, and your people cannot assemble?
When those urgently in need of money and work can’t even wait in the market-place?
When we have to circle round people in the street,
and to queue for shops maintaining safe distance?
When we can only communicate by hearing on the phone,
or seeing on the screen; or by digital messaging,
or even just waving through a window?
When we cannot meet our parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren,
or other family members and friends?
When we cannot touch them in their flesh and blood, to know they are really alive?

How shall we praise you?
How, like Thomas, shall we not see yet believe that your son is raised among us?
How shall we praise you?

Lord, I will try to praise you.
Through gritted teeth, I will try to praise you.
I will try to remember that you created all things, and this virus is part of creation.
I will try not to hate it but seek to mitigate its harm.
I will try to do my bit to keep others safe, by the way that I behave.
I will pray for all those around me and seek to help in whatever way I can.

Lord, when I cannot pray or worship help me be aware of all your people
and your saints and angels hovering around me, lifting me up.
When I feel alone, let me feel you near me,
even if only for a moment that enables me to go on.
Let me hear you say “Peace be with you”.

 

 

Letter from Bishop Mark – 10th July 2020

sheumais Diocese, News, Notices

Dear Friends across the Diocese

As most of you will now know, the Scottish Government has given permission for places of worship to reopen next week as long as those places can be opened safely. This will require much hard work and some difficult decisions. In some cases it will be difficult to open and some cases it might not be right to open just yet. These decisions will be made by your clergy and your vestry with support from myself as bishop.

There is no right answer to this process, each place is different and each church member will be experiencing this situation differently.

Many of your clergy have worked hard in new and unusual ways and are ready for a break, yet we need to work through this next phase.

So can I ask that you hold the diocese, the congregations and the clergy in prayer. Could you remember that rather than expecting your clergy to be there for you, we must also be there for them. Some are shielding, some are as anxious as you and that, as you know, makes us all vulnerable.

My fervent prayer is to be with you all again, but I know that wonderful moment might take longer in some places than others. We are a family of faith, let us hold each other in love.

Prayers Blessings and love

Churches in the light of Covid, Seasonal Flu and the Common Cold

sheumais Reflections

The Christian Community

God of heaven and earth,
in these times of isolation, apart from loved ones
distant from friends, away from neighbours
we thank you that there is nothing in all of creation,
that is able to separate us from your love.
And may that love which never fails continue to be shared
through the kindness of strangers looking out for each other,
for neighbours near and far all recognising our shared vulnerability, grateful for every breath, and desiring a full and healthy life for all.
Enfold all your children in your loving embrace.
We ask this through Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord. Amen.

A Christian Community gathering for worship, prayer and fellowship is as old as Christianity itself and something we all cherish and value. The Corona Virus pandemic has had many effects on our lives and the way we interact with each other. We’ve yet to see the full implications of the direct effects in relation to health and the indirect effects in relation to different groups in our society. One thing is certain, that how we meet and how we use our Church buildings and other places of worship needs to be carefully reviewed in order to ensure that we don’t put one another at risk.

Our Liturgies quote Matthew’s Gospel (22:37-40) in saying

“Our Lord Jesus Christ said: The first commandment is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all Your strength.’ The second is this: “Love your neighbour as yourself.“

An oft quoted Covid prayer draws on this when it says: “We are not people who protect our own safety: we are people who protect our neighbours’ safety.” However, as our Governments have made clear, an important part of how we protect our neighbour, is through our own behaviour. As our Bishops also pointed out in relation to closing our churches, “we do this not out of fear but out of love”.

Many of the precautions that we need to take as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic, are ones that we should have been taking in the past to protect each other from Seasonal Flu, the Common Cold and the other respiratory infections that can have such a devastating effect on the elderly, the vulnerable and those in poor health.

What we need to keep uppermost in our minds, is that all that we do must be grounded in prayer and guided by the desire to provide spaces and communities where people can be present to God and God to them, where people feel able to pray and where we can all learn to pray that little bit better.

Our Individual Duty to our Neighbour

As part of our love of neighbour and love of God, each one of us has a duty to:

  • Stay at home if we, or any member of our household, has any symptoms of a respiratory infection – a persistent cough, an elevated temperature (and in the case of Covid-19 and a number of other viruses – a loss of sense of taste or smell). Many of us (clergy and worship leaders especially) have not been very good at doing this, persevering with “duty” when we might pose a risk to others in doing so.
  • Maintain an appropriate Physical Distance from others. Without prompting we need to be respectful of each other’s space with sensitivity and be happy to maintain a suitable distance, taking account of individuals’ needs as well as any health guidance that we’re given.
  • Follow good hygiene practices to help prevent spread of disease:
    • Wash our hands frequently and carefully with soap and water for 20 seconds. At the very least this should be done before leaving for Church (or other social gathering) and immediately on returning home and especially by those handling the Eucharistic Elements.
    • Whilst out, carry and use a hand gel with at least a 70% alcohol content for at least for 30 seconds, if we have no access to soap and water.
    • Be careful to avoid touching our eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands.
    • Wherever possible stay a safe distance from people who appear to have symptoms of a respiratory illness.
    • Cover our nose and mouth with a disposable tissue when sneezing, coughing, wiping or blowing our noses. Dispose of used tissues promptly. If a tissue isn’t available, cough and sneeze into the crook of our elbow (not ideal but better than hands which immediately touch other things). Wash with soap and water or use alcohol hand gel to clean our hands at the first opportunity.
  • At times when there is significant risk of infection such as the Covid-19 Pandemic or a Seasonal Flu outbreak, where we might be unwittingly carrying infection, we should also wear a face-mask in public spaces and know how to put it on and take it off safely for maximum protection of both our neighbour and ourselves.

God give me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time,
Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it be,
Trusting that You will make all things right. Amen.

Our Duty as a Church Community

“Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:45-47)

As Christian Churches Clergy, Vestries and people we have a responsibility to people who meet in our buildings and join us in the other places where we meet. That responsibility is a core part of our Mission and Ministry and times of crisis provide opportunities for a reconnection with our wider communities.

In our Churches we have a duty to make it as easy as possible for individuals (Church members or not) to exercise their duty to protect one another, we should:

  • Organise our activities to ensure a resilience which doesn’t place pressure on Clergy, Worship Leaders or others facilitating activities to turn up when they have symptoms of respiratory illness. How this is done will depend on Church circumstances and the activity, but the procedures should be documented, agreed and well understood.
  • Re-think and agree all aspects of maintaining distance in Church Worship and in Fellowship (especially how the Peace is shared), so that those taking part feel close to each other but also safe and comfortable.
  • Apply appropriate hygiene practices in the Eucharist and in the making and sharing of refreshments as part of our welcoming Fellowship.
  • Review the need to touch or handle objects or surfaces that have been touched or handled by others in the recent past, so as to reduce the risk of passing infection from one person to another.
  • Review how our Church premises are cleaned and kept tidy, so that all those entering and using them may do so with confidence that they can focus on Worshipping and Praying to God in the Community of Faith

Keep us, good Lord, under the shadow of your mercy
in times of uncertainty and distress.
Sustain and support the anxious and fearful,
and lift up all who are brought low;
that we may rejoice in your comfort
knowing that nothing can separate us
from your love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Loneliness, Solitude, Joy and Serenity

sheumais Pastoral Letter, Reflections

solitude

The other day I was sorting through some booklets about a range of subjects and two particularly attracted my attention. The titles of these two were: ‘From Loneliness to Solitude’ and ‘The Gift of Joy’; seemingly quite unrelated, until I started reading them.

For the last thirteen weeks things have been rather different for all of us. We can’t meet up in the way that we could and can’t meet others in work or social activities in the usual way. I know that lots of us have found that really hard. In some sense we feel we’re no longer the people that we were. Sadly, the loneliness that’s long been a problem in our society has also increased markedly with ‘lock-down’ and ‘social distancing’.

The author of ‘From Loneliness to Solitude’, Roland Walls, was Priest-in-Charge of the Rosslyn Chapel in the 1960s and subsequently went on to found a Monastic Community in an old miners welfare hall in Roslin, just around the corner. He writes in 1976:

“Loneliness is the biggest, most extensive personal problem of our cities and while ‘telly’ and radio help to keep you in touch with the world, the daily screenful of busy, exiting, active people is in such strange contrast to the armchair, the biscuit on the plate and a mug full of coffee; it makes it worse to be alone in view of so much happening.”

If he were writing today, he would doubtless have included social media and all the other digital ‘communication’ tools that serve to keep our daily screens full. He goes on to say that we’re lonely because we’re made for ‘infinite possibility’ and at times we experience the painfulness of emptiness, because there’s a void ‘aching to be filled’. Whatever we may think and whatever we may try, that void can only be filled by God. It’s a God-shaped hole if you like. However the response of most of us to that void is to try to fill it up with busyness, but that doesn’t work, it just covers it up, but it’s still there just as empty as ever.

At this point, we shift our attention to ‘The Gift of Joy’. Curtis Almquist, its author, tells us that “Joy is something of a rare commodity” and the primary reason, he says, is that “Joy takes time”. He talks about an old ‘monastic insight’ that to find joy you need to do one thing at a time. When you’re walking, just walk; when looking, just look; when listening, just listen. Whatever you’re doing, having a cuppa, watering the plants, stroking the cat, just do that and savour it. Quite the reverse of busyness.

Be present in the current moment, don’t dwell on what has or has not happened in the past or worry about what’s to come, just savour the smell of the flower, or the sound the birdsong, or the taste of your lunch. Whatever happens next can wait whilst you enjoy the present moment. Joy also requires us to accept what is and not grieve for what is not. To experience joy we have to accept how little of what happens in our lives we have real control over and be comfortable with that.

That lack of control is glaringly apparent to anyone who had any plans prior to March this year. As one version of the Serenity Prayer goes:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time,
Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it be,
Trusting that You will make all things right. Amen.

Blessings
James

Caption Competition Winner

sheumais Local, News

Captions entered for this competition were:

  1. ‘Eye, nose, cheeky cheeky chin, cheeky cheeky chin, eye, nose!’
  2. ‘It’s great to have collared two nice men trained to amuse me!’
  3. ‘Two trained to keep me on the right lines!’
  4. ‘Am I too young to start the discernment process?’
  5. ‘Carry on ‘training’!’
  6. ‘Since those two are Gordon and James, can I be Thomas? Pleeeese!’
  7. ‘Station-ary Vocational Train-ing!’

AND THE WINNER IS…….

Number 6

‘Since those two are Gordon and James, can I be Thomas? Pleeeese!’

Well done to Beatrice Somers – a fitting tribute to the Rev Wilbert Vere Awdry – original author of the Thomas the Tank Engine stories.

 

A New but also Old Pilgrimage Route

sheumais Events, Notices

Origins

The Caithness Book Club boasts all of six regular members at its monthly meetings in St Anne’s church hall, Thurso. One of its books was ‘Together in Christ: Following the Northern Saints‘ by John Woodside. From this developed ‘The Northern Saints Trails’, listing 33 names and 32 sites linked to these names. The sites were organised into six circular routes, four starting in Thurso and two in Wick. For more information, see the web site at: www.wickstferguschurch.org.uk/page16 .

The Pilgrimage Trails Project

While doing the research for the Saints Trails, the group realised that there was enough historical evidence to re-create the medieval pilgrimage route linking the shrines of St Duthac in Tain and St Magnus in Kirkwall. So a second project was born. Much of the background work has been done and we are now planning some public events in the hope that this will encourage more people to come forward with offers of practical help and local folklore about the sites along the route.

Pilgrimage Events

We are launching this stage of the project with a ‘Pilgrimage Event’ in Tain on 29th May 2021. There will be an ecumenical service in St Duthac’s chapel followed by refreshments and information on the Northern Pilgrims’ Way.  This event will be jointly led by that the event will be led by our own Bishop Mark Strange and the RC Bishop of Aberdeen Bishop Hugh Gilbert.

Similar events will take place in Old St Peter’s Kirk, Thurso on 3rd July 2021 and in St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall on 20th August 2021.

There will be more information in due course.

The Symbolism of our logo

  • The central cross is from the St Andrew’s cross on the Scottish flag.
  • The two lines represent the two saints – Duthac and Magnus
  • The pointed curves are copied from the Ulbster Stone, a Celtic carved stone originally at the site of an early chapel dedicated to St Martin at Ulbster, on our Braid Three and the John o’ Groat’s Trail. The site is now marked by a mausoleum.