Author: sheumais

Corpus Christi

sheumais Notices, Reflections

The Feast of the Thanksgiving for Holy Communion, commonly called, Corpus Christi was first celebrated in the 14th Century. It began as a local custom to celebrate the Mystery of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist and slowly spread throughout the Church, finally being added to the Kalander in the 15th Century.

William Harry Turton’s hymn “O thou who at thy Eucharist didst pray” sung to a lovely tune (Song 1) by Orlando Gibbons.

Perhaps the most famous aspect of Corpus Christi (literally the Body of Christ), that people associate with this feast day, is the great processions through cities, towns and villages.  The Blessed Sacrament is held aloft by a priest, in a monstrance, as a public statement that the sacrifice of Christ was for the salvation of the whole world.

Monstrances are one of those liturgical curios that appear sometimes, but in our tradition not very regularly.  This one belongs to Jamie (who drafted a substantial part of this piece for us).

Jamie’s Monsterance

The Host (the consecrated Bread) sits in the glass plate in the centre with ‘rays of glory streaming out from it‘. A reminder of the Glory of Christ, present in the Eucharist, and the glory of the Heavenly Banquet that we join when we take Communion together.

Traditionally, at the end of the Mass on Corpus Christi the Host (the consecrated Bread) is placed in a monstrance and the congregation spend some time reflecting on this Mystery of Christ made present in the bread and wine.

The officiating Priest would then take the monstrance and carry it aloft down through the church and out into the streets – with servers throwing rose petals down in front of it to make a carpet – a bit like confetti at a wedding – with bells ringing out to tell everyone that Christ was walking among them in the Eucharist.

It’ll be an irony not lost on many that the Feast of Corpus Christi has something of a hollow ring to it this year.  It’s a feast when we give thanks for the gift and privilege of Holy Communion, which we normally share on a regular basis.  So what does it mean to give thanks for something we can’t (at present) receive?

Corpus Christi represents more than just the Church giving thanks for the way that Christ remains, with us always – even unto the ends of the Earth. It’s a celebration that we, the Church, are united in and as the Body of Christ.

As Corpus Christi comes around this year, we have to do things differently.  And perhaps this involves reflecting on what being unable to meet up and share Holy Communion together these past months has meant.  It’s left a yawning gap in the lives of many members of our congregations. But of course, God’s not gone away, Christ is still very much with us.  And of course when we do reunite to break the bread and pour the wine together, we can have a thanksgiving as never before!

St Columba of Iona, 597

sheumais Notices

Today is the Feast of St Columba of Iona

St Columba in the West Window of St Columba’s Largs

O God, who called your servant Columba
from among the princes of Ireland
to be a herald and evangelist of your kingdom:
grant that your Church, remembering his faith and courage,
may so proclaim the gospel,
that people everywhere
will come to know your Son as their Saviour,
and serve him as their king;
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, world without end.  Amen

Charities Shop – Distribution of Funds 2020

sheumais Charities Shop, Local, News
St Finnbarr’s Charities Shop

The first part of the distribution of funds from St Finnbarr’s Charities Shop for this year is now complete. £12,450 will be distributed this year to various groups and charities

So far £10,150 has been disbursed between the following local groups.:

  • Caithness and Sutherland Womens’ Aid
  • CALA
  • Citizens Advice Bureau
  • Dornoch and District Community Association
  • Dornoch BRIG (Dornoch Beach Regeneration Improvement Group)
  • Dornoch Firth Group
  • East Sutherland Rescue Association
  • Friends of Oversteps
  • History Links
  • Lawson Cambusavie Memorial Hospital Friends
  • Maggies Highland
  • Meadows Patient’s Comfort Fund
  • Migdale Hospital Comfort Fund
  • SSAFA
  • Sutherland Care Forum
  • Support in Mind Scotland (Golspie Gatehouse)

£2,300 will be disbursed between the following groups when they are back in operation.

  • Alzheimer Scotland (Dornoch Dementia Cafe
  • Dornoch Academy Additional Support Team
  • Dornoch Academy School Library
  • Dornoch Brownies
  • Dornoch Cathedral Boy’s Brigade/Shipmates
  • Dornoch Flowers and Fairs
  • Dornoch Primary School Additional Support Team
  • Little Lambs (Free Church Playgroup)

A huge thank you to everyone who helped to raise the money by working in the shop or donating goods for sale – the above groups really appreciate your efforts, as do we in St Finnbarr’s.

The Touch of Love (or a touch that kills)

sheumais Reflections

Revd Canon Dr Sarah Hills, Honorary Canon for Reconciliation at Inverness Cathedral writes…

A touch of love or a touch that kills?

I have been feeling, like very many of us over the last week, angry, sad, bewildered. George Floyd in Minneapolis died being held down, kneeled on, struggling for breath. Touch comes in different forms. George died from a touch that killed him. That touch was sustained, unwarranted, brutal and deadly. That touch of a policeman’s body was seen by those around them in the street that day. It was seen by millions on TV. And that touch has come to symbolise much that is wrong in our world. Hate, racism, division, arrogance, even evil. And then Donald Trump touches the bible in front of an Episcopal church. Another touch – calculated, shocking, sinister. The bible is a book about love. The gospel message found within it is one of inclusion, not division. Of love triumphing over death. Of righteous anger, forgiveness and justice. Of diversity and welcome and healing. Of reconciliation. But these are not only words. These cannot only be words. The bible embodies these words in the touch of Jesus Christ. His touch of love for us. And he let us touch him – his cloak, his side, his hands and feet.

In Church in Holy Week, we recreate Jesus’s act of touching his disciples as he washed their feet, days before his own death. I find this act of foot washing on Maundy Thursday one of the most moving and poignant services. Touching another’s foot, drying their toes carefully, feels like one of the most sacramental of acts. An act of service, of devotion, of intimate connection. The feet come in all shapes and sizes, some toes painted, some misshapen and painful looking. Feet with a story to tell. Where have these feet walked? Who with? Why? Have they had to run from danger? Or made prints in the sand on the beach? Touches of love.

My father died at the end of March. I had not been able to say goodbye to him, and so I really wanted to see him at the chapel of rest. I did – but what I most wanted to do was to touch him. And I did. I held his hand, kissed him, and said goodbye. Of course, that last touch was not the same…but it was a touch of love.

I wonder if George Floyd’s family were able to give him a last touch of love, after the touch that killed him?

Our need for comfort through touch, through hugging a friend, through sitting on a parent’s lap, through holding a dying hand, is about goodness. It is grace filled, and in theological language, sacramental. It is about love being made visible.

It is an abhorrent distortion of this touch of love to kill someone because of their race. Or their colour, or creed, or sexuality or gender. Or for any reason.

I am a white South African, full of privilege. I am a mother and wife, delighting in our two boys and our Labrador. I am also Vicar of Holy Island, Honorary Canon of Inverness Cathedral and Canon of Reconciliation for the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church. As a reconciler, it seems no accident that I find myself on Holy Island, a liminal place straddling the land and the sea, a beautiful place where pilgrims come to have their hearts and souls touched. A place founded by St Aidan in 635AD, an Irish monk sent from Scotland as a peacemaker.

My life is full of privilege. I know that. Maybe I shouldn’t even be writing this piece. But I believe that as a South African who grew up in Northern Ireland during the troubles, now priest and reconciler living on a holy island, that I have some duty to say something. And so I offer this in humility. Not because I am an expert. Not because I have experienced the racism that George Floyd and millions of others have. But because I am confused and heartbroken. I feel the need to offer something of myself through writing this in order to work through what is going on around us, and in case it resonates with anyone else. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has said that to be silent in the face of oppression is to choose the side of the oppressor. This oppression has benefitted me and all of us who look like me.

This last week I have been forcibly reminded of the time of apartheid in South Africa that my parents and countless others fought against. Of numerous deaths because of race and colour. Deaths due to the touch of blows, of batons, of bullets, of electric shocks. I was born in South Africa, and my parents were both involved in anti-apartheid activities. We left when I was a young child and went to Northern Ireland where I grew up. As a medical student I spent time in back in South Africa working in a rural hospital in the 1980’s. While there, I found myself joining in protest marches with thousands of other South Africans, demonstrating against apartheid. During one of the marches, the police fired on us. I joined other medics in the back streets of the township treating those who had been shot. I touched someone’s shoulder as I fought to remove the bullet lodged in his muscle.

Afterwards, the bullet out, we exchanged the touch of a bloody and careful hug. He and I were fortunate that day. George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Stephen Lawrence, Ahmaud Arbery, Belly Mujinga, Steve Biko, the people on the bridge in Selma, and thousands of others were not.

My dear friend Glenn Jordan died yesterday. He was a true reconciler, a brave and beautiful man. Funny, hopeful, deeply humble and one of the most profound and poetic thinkers I have known. I remember him sitting on our sofa here on Holy Island, glass of whisky in his hand, touching my heart, and all of ours there that evening. I suggested a swim off St Cuthbert’s beach below our garden the next morning. The touch of the icy water, then the touch of our frozen hands as we high fived afterwards. The touch of love. I never got the chance to hear what Glenn would have to say about the situation we find ourselves in this week. In the USA, and if we are honest, everywhere in our broken world. We have lived, we continue to live with conflict, violence, and the touch of death. But I know that Glenn would not want me to stop there. Nor would my father.

The touch of love is here to stay. The touch of love enables us to be angry. And so we should be. To grieve. To lament. To search for justice. For all those suffering racism, brutality and discrimination throughout our world. For our children and our children’s children. And these things – grief, lament, searching for justice and even forgiveness, we must do. Without them, reconciliation is useless. But if we can hold fast to the touch of love, reconciliation will come. Maybe not today. Or tomorrow. But it is there in the hope that Jesus Christ brings us. The touch of love is stronger than the touch that kills. Always. And forever.

I end with a prayer from the ‘father of reconciliation’, Desmond Tutu

Victory is Ours

Goodness is stronger than evil;
Love is stronger than hate;
Light is stronger than darkness;
Life is stronger than death;
Victory is ours through Him who loves us.
Amen.

Sarah Hills

The Blessed Trinity

sheumais Notices, Reflections

On this Trinity Sunday, Simon sings the words of John Henry Newman to an arrangement by Patrick Appleford.

Firmly I believe and truly
God is Three and God is One;
and I next acknowledge duly
manhood taken by the Son.

And I trust and hope most fully
in the Saviour crucified;
and each thought and deed unruly
do to death, as he has died.

Simply to his grace and wholly
light and life and strength belong,
and I love supremely, solely,
him the holy, him the strong.

And I hold in veneration,
for the love of him alone,
holy Church as his creation,
and her teachings as his own.

Adoration ay be given,
with and through th’angelic host,
to the God of earth and heaven,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Holy, Holy, Holy

sheumais Local, Services

Sunday is Trinity Sunday, when we give voice to one of the central elements of our understanding of God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit or to put it another way Creator, Redeemer and Giver of Life.

This year in ‘lockdown‘, we are missing out on singing some of the wonderful hymns which we use on Trinity Sunday, so Simon and Jamie have collaborated using various forms of technological wizardry to help fill the gap.

or with just the audio:

A Growing Family

sheumais Local, News, Pastoral Letter

On Sunday (31st May), which is the Feast of Pentecost, Revd Nicholas Court (above left) who has served the North-West corner of the Diocese (with congregations in Ullapool, Achiltibuie, Lochinver, Kinlochbervie and Tongue) for the last 11 years, retires. I’m sure that you would all join with me in wishing Nicholas and Gilly a long and happy retirement, even though until the end of lock-down Nicholas will still be helping to provide pastoral care in these areas. However from Monday (1st June), the congregation of St Mary-by the-Cross, Tongue will join our family of congregations in East Sutherland and Tain.

For the benefit of those of you who are unfamiliar with the Episcopal arrangements ‘up north’, I have assembled a little history and description, with the help of a number of people, as will become become obvious.

Anna and I have been regular visitors to Tongue for the last 30 or more years, since her parents Alan and Irene bought a house beyond Melness. There was no Episcopal worship for some while and so they (and Anna, the boys and I when we were visiting) made the 120 mile round trip down to the monthly service in Kinlochbervie. The Services there were at first in the Fishermen’s Mission, then the Old School Restaurant and finally in the Community Centre. Over the years, KLB was served by Revd Chris Dormer, who travelled from Ullapool, then Revd Cliff Piper, who travelled from Tain and then Revd Mel Langille, who travelled from Golspie.

From June 2003, Services started at the Fir Chlis, House of Prayer and Retreat, run by Kathleen Pannell, who had found a ‘half built property just outside Tongue village’ overlooking Ben Loyal, a year earlier. Kathleen takes up the story.

“We moved in on 24th March 2003 and on June 22nd Fr John Stevenson from St. Peter and the Holy Rood, Thurso celebrated the first Service of Holy Communion with about 20 communicants. I opened Fir Chlis up as a Retreat House, inviting people to ‘Come away to a deserted place, and rest a while’. Fr John continued to come once a month to celebrate Mass and when I was blessed with hosting a priest on retreat, we would be blessed with regular, sometimes daily, Mass.

Fr Len Black took over from Fr. John at some point when the Episcopal church was trying to find its way in a changing world, but the congregation was truly set on a firm footing when I met Fr Nicholas in April 2010. The congregation of St. Mary by the Cross was officially constituted on 5th April 2012 by Bishop Mark and numbers attending have grown significantly since. During 2017/2018 we counted up that more than 75 folk had attended the monthly services here at one time or another, many travelling miles to attend, and folk from several different denominations too. It’s been such a joy to host these services month on month, to witness people growing in their love of the Lord through His gifts of Bread and Wine.”

St Mary’s now enters a new phase of its life, at a time when although the future looks very uncertain for us all, it is more important than every that we trust in our faithful and loving God. As St Paul wrote to the Romans:

“We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” and:

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”

On behalf of all of us in East Sutherland and Tain, may I extend a warm welcome from our family in Tain, Dornoch, Lairg, Brora and all the places in between, to ‘our friends at the very top’ in Tongue.

Blessings
James

21 People and a Cockatoo

sheumais Local, News

Very busy virtual coffee morning today with 21 people, a cockatoo and one or two dogs (not forgetting the cats – thanks Tanya).

The Coffee Mornings happen each Wednesday Morning at 10:30am on Zoom.  Joining details sent out by email.

Bishop’s Update – 26th May 2020

sheumais Diocese, News

My Dear Friends

I thought it was time to write again to you as you hear of changes to lockdown both in the country and eventually in the churches.

The first thing I want to do is to once again thank you all.

Firstly I want to thank the clergy and Lay Readers and lay ministers for the way that they have simply kept on going, there are services in nearly all congregations, live streamed, recorded, phone messaged sermons, Zoom services and because of the way the lockdown advice was given then the priests have been able to celebrate the Eucharist either in the church if it is close at hand or in their homes. This has been so important, remember we celebrate the Eucharist as the sacrament of Christs sacrifice and redemption, it isn’t about us it is about God.

Secondly I want to thank the laity for the gracious way most of you have accepted the need for these changes and the kindness you have shown to your clergy. I am also aware of rotas of food delivery, food banks, words of comfort for the bereaved, and learning of new skills that help with the life of the Church. Someone tried to tell me that the churches were shut !!! I don’t know where they were looking. Can I simply ask that if you are struggling then please get in touch and we can try and help.

Thirdly I want to thank all those who have been working as usual, those in key worker posts and essential services, I know how difficult the changes can be, Jane is teaching from home and Beth is coordinating a workforce from home, it is very different. Can I also ask you all to be kind to yourselves, take time out to relax it is important.

Now to the next period of time;

The College of Bishops has set up a working group of experts to advise us on how to open up our churches when the time is right. This group are looking at matters of distancing, hygiene, protection, numbers of volunteers required etc. The task group will produce a list that each church will need to comply with if it is to open and when you are ready to do that then you will need to show me that you have everything sorted. We will not open a church until the clergy, the staff, the congregation and any visitor is safe. I am not expecting the final document for a few weeks yet and even when it is ready, we will still need to follow the advice of the Scottish Government before we even think of beginning to think about opening. I know many of you are anxious about the church rushing forward, we won’t.

Can I please ask you to do something important for me and for you. If you have a key to your church please leave it on the hook unless you are the priest or the one designated person checking on the building. For example in Caithness, Rev Ellie can enter St Peters in Thurso, but as St Johns Wick is too far to be travelling then the Prior of the Servers Guild keeps an eye on the building there. Please try and keep to the instructions.

I will continue to produce a reflection and the occasional service etc here from Arpafeelie, keep an eye on the Primus’s Facebook page.

The intention of both the diocese and the province is to keep running the digital services that have been available throughout our lockdown, we wont suddenly stop because some are back in church. Please let me know if there is a particular service you are missing out on.
We had been expecting to be celebrating in Wick last week as the church of St John’s celebrated it’s 150th anniversary, please hold them in your prayers and we will have a do when we are able.

I haven’t forgotten that I was going to talk about the Charges of the diocese and their history etc I look forward to doing that next time.

Blessings