Greetings to you dear sisters and brothers in Christ. The month of August is upon us and in some quarters the very first day of this month is celebrated as Lammas Day (or Loaf Mass Day) – when a loaf baked with flour from newly harvested corn is brought into church and blessed. To be honest this tradition is not so commonplace as it used to be in the past. Lammas Day was one of the oldest points of contact between the agricultural world and the Church and the introduction of the Harvest Festival in the Victorian era has kind of replaced many of such agricultural celebrations.

A couple of weeks ago we were on holiday visiting old friends and neighbours in Yorkshire. One of the people we met up with was Anita (Our next door neighbour). Now Anita is a world class specialist in Food Education and has been instrumental in a number of national food education initiatives. One of her greatest challenges though was to teach me to make bread. Those of you who have any idea of my skills in the kitchen will realise just what a challenge this was! Anita persevered and I have to say I did find the hands on process of bread making very satisfying.

One of the fascinating things about it is the yeast: that unprepossessing lump of putty-like substance, or even more unlikely looking granules of dried yeast. Give yeast warmth and sugar and liquid, and miraculously it grows before your very eyes. And then it makes the dough rise and double its size. It seems irrepressible. Knock the dough down and leave it to its own devices, and it will double its size again. 

In the Middle Ages, one of the names for yeast was ‘goddisgoode’ – written as one word as though it were God’s email address. No one understood its chemistry and it was seen as gift from God. A pure gift. God is Good – that’s what lies at the heart of bread.

Jesus said that he is the Bread of Life, embodied for us now in the Eucharist. He offers himself as a gift that is fundamental to meeting our inner needs as bread is to meeting our physical needs. Through feeding on him, God gives us himself, and that is what we need.

When Jesus gave himself as bread, he said it was for the life of the world. At Lammastide let’s remember that when we come to the altar we share God’s life so that we can be the truth that God is good. Our task is to share the news of God’s goodness and invite others to share the Bread of Life too!

Blessings
Fr Simon

The climate crisis, which has been creeping up on us for years, is a reflection and also a cause, of deep injustice in our world. This crisis arises from the abuse of God’s creation, and our broken relationship with our neighbours worldwide and especially the poor and those in less developed parts of the world who are already suffering most from its consequences. 

Climate change and other forms of environmental degradation are caused by over-consumption, primarily in the developed world, and so any solution has to be underpinned by reduced consumption. Consumption is something for which we are all responsible. Everything we buy has a carbon footprint, everything we use has a carbon footprint and everything we consume has a carbon footprint. The earth doesn’t belong to any of us, each of us lives on it for a while and during that time, we’ve a duty to be good stewards of what we inherited.

Since the root of the problem is that the population of the developed world vastly over-consume the resources of the world, that means us. The only real solution is a reduction in consumption for each of us individually and for us collectively. How we do that depends very much on our individual circumstances and it’s for that reason that prayer and reflection must lie at the heart of our approach.

This problem isn’t simply about Carbon Budgets or Environmental Degradation, this problem is about Justice. Those most affected by these matters are the poor, the disadvantaged, those who live in the Third World and less developed nations. We should therefore refer to this matter as Climate Justice, which helps us to think of it not only in scientific/technological terms. We need to reflect on how our decisions affect others in our society and our brothers and sisters around the world and also how they will affect our children and grandchildren.

During the UN General Assembly’s High-level Meeting on the Protection of the Global Climate for Present and Future Generations back in March 2019, Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland spoke about Climate Justice.

“Climate justice insists on a shift from a discourse on greenhouse gases and melting ice caps into a civil rights movement with the people and communities most vulnerable to climate impacts at its heart,” … “Now, thanks to the recent marches, strikes and protests by hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, we have begun to understand the intergenerational injustice of climate change,”

Mary Robinson 2019

The Young Christian Climate Network are staging a relay from the G7 meeting in St Ives to Glasgow to coincide with the start of COP26 at the end of October, when heads of state, climate experts and negotiators meet to discuss action to address the climate emergency. It’s clear that this group of young Christians care deeply about Climate Justice and the care of creation and they want to see systematic change on a global and a local scale. After all it’s the world that they and our children and grandchildren will have to live in for rather longer than most of us. The least we can do is to pray for them on their pilgrimage – may God bless them.

Blessings
James

The Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost – we’ve travelled a long way in our journey with Christ since Palm Sunday on 28^th March. Back then we were in lockdown, now the restrictions are easing and joy of joys, we were able to have our first wedding in church last week after a gap of nearly two years.

In many ways, living under restrictions is ‘easy’ You have a long list of things that you can’t do and also a list of things you must do and, as we’ve all done over the last 15 months, you learn to live your life doing what you must and trying not to do what’s not permitted. So at one level, it’s ‘easy’ but at a deeper level it’s very hard indeed. Not being able to see loved ones, not being able to do things that have been part of our lives for years and apparently small, but very significant things like being able to sit where you want in church or shake someone’s hand when you meet them.

Under the Old Covenant of Moses, the people of Israel lived under ‘The Law’. So in Exodus, we have 10 Commandments but there are 613 statements and principles of law, ethics, and spiritual practice (or Mitzvot) contained in the Torah (mostly Deuteronomy, Numbers and Leviticus) (248 of these are positive – things that one should do – and 365 negative – things that one shouldn’t do).

The purpose of these ‘rules’ is however to try to help people to find God through encounters with the holy. In a sense the summary of the Law, that we use at some times of year in our liturgy, is a pointer to the underlying principles, which is why Jesus came not to abolish the rules rather it refocus people on those principles.

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.”

There is no other commandment greater than these.

SEC 1982 Liturgy

Living by rules, as opposed to something closer to the essence of things, has a tendency to separate the observer of rule from the real purpose of the rule, which in itself althoughrecognisable, is much more difficult to define. The practices that Jesus was reacting against, were a set of rules which, although they may have at some time had a role in helping people to approach the holy, had long since become somewhat divorced from that purpose and an end in themselves.

As Covid restrictions are relaxed, we’ll have to make more decisions for ourselves as to what to do and what not to do, without as rigid a framework as we’ve had. That means that we’ll have to understand the purpose or ‘spirit’ of the rules we’ve been used to and the likely effect of deviating from them. To use religious language, we’ll have to ‘discern’ what we should do in order to continue to keep ourselves and others safe, rather than be told what to do. There’ll still be rules, just fewer of them and we’ll have to continue to live our lives within them. However, just because a politician says that you’re allowed to hug other people, that doesn’t mean that you must or even that most of the time you should. The careful and judicious use of new and very welcome freedoms is what discernment is about.

Perhaps the simplest definition discernment is that it’s nothing more than the ability to decide between truth and error, right and wrong. Discernment is the quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure, it’s the ability to judge people and situations well. In the religious context however it’s no more or less than knowing or attempting to know the mind of God.

Under the New Covenant of Jesus, it’s not the rules that are important, it’s this seeking to know the mind of God. Religious practice isn’t in itself a route to the holy, but may help to get us to a place where an encounter with the holy may happen. Not the only route and absolutely no guarantees. We use practices that have traditionally been helpful, rather than trying to conjure up encounters with the holy all on our own.

Our joint task in ministry is to walk with others as they try to encounter something that neither they or we can ever fully understand – the Mystery of God, that unseen and unknowable force at the very centre of our being. That’s always going to be a pretty tricky task, just as is trying to protect ourselves and those that we care for, from an unseen and ultimately unknowable danger!

Blessings
James

Anna and I are very excited, because we now have a definite plan to travel south in June to meet our granddaughter Alanna for the first time. We have been able to start making travel plans because of the gradual relaxation of the rules on travelling and visiting, as a result of the relative success of the lockdown and the vaccine rollout.

Over the last year the majority of the population have had to make considerable sacrifices to protect each other from what has turned out to be a very infectious virus. We are now moving into a more settled phase, as the restrictions are relaxed, but we all need to stay vigilant. The need to avoid complacency is underlined for us in the news reports, as we see how easily Covid can pop up again in areas of our country and in countries around the word.

Simon and I are very grateful to all of you for the support that you have given us in very challenging times, when many of out familiar patterns of church activity have had to be modified or curtailed. We have gradually been restoring patterns of worship, but we have still a little way to go and things will never return to exactly how they were before. Over the next few months we will be taking stock and looking at how under the new circumstances that we and our communities find ourselves in, we can be faithful witnesses to the God who made us and who cares for us. This will include renewing our commitment to the folk on the North Coast by finding a suitable venue for our monthly gatherings.

For some of you new opportunities have opened up with on-line services and we will continue to develop these as they have enable people who are unable to get to services in church or other venue because of health issues or travelling distance to worship with us. You will all have received an email with details of our Zoom Morning and Evening Prayer services. 

Even if you don’t join these services in person, you can join them in spirit. Morning and Evening Prayer are said daily in some form by clergy and many lay people around the world, so however you engage with them, you are joining “such a great cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1). To make it easier for you, a list of the Psalms and Readings for these services is attached to this newsletter and you will find a similar list in each month’s edition.

We have had some success with online social activities, the longest-running of these being the Tuesday Coffee Mornings at 10:30am (now preceded by Morning Prayer at 10am). On those Tuesdays where other business prevents me from joining in, I do miss the lively chat and camaraderie that is always evident. We have also had successful on-line Advent and Lent Study Groups and this way of doing things can bring together people who would not ordinarily want to travel long distances on cold winter night, though I am sure that we have all missed activities where we can be physically in the same room together – it just isn’t the same on-line.

We’re now of course in the Season of Easter, when as Christians we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. What we all need in the coming weeks is resurrection in our lives as we take steps in the direction of a life beyond lockdowns and restrictions on mixing and movement. For the disciples of Jesus, Resurrection didn’t mean returning to life as it had been, but to a new life of hope, in which all sorts of new possibilities opened up, possibilities that they could never have imagined. 

For all of us, the old life that we lived can never return. The experience of the last year has changed all of us and so much else beside. However as we start to forge a future for ourselves, the wonderful thing is – who knows what might happen? Maybe, just maybe, the world might be a better place for everyone.

Blessings
James

On 11th March it was the 10th anniversary of the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami which caused much devastation in small fishing communities up and down Japan’s Pacific coast. By the time I visited some of these communities in November 2011, quite a bit of progress had been made in rebuilding facilities and infrastructure, though there was still much to do in restoring people’s homes and livelihoods.

Given the scale of the damage and disruption to people’s lives, I wondered how hope had emerged from all the chaos and despair. In discussion with several Japanese people, what emerged was that a crucial factor was the timing. The Tsunami hit just before the arrival of the ‘sakura-zensen” the ‘cherry blossom front’.

In Japan the arrival of the cherry blossom (sakura) is greeted with great reverence, with people camping out for several days so as to be in the best place when it happens. There are parties (hanami parties) with groups of family or friends picnicking under trees laden with blossom. There’s a virtual wave as the sakura-zensen which sweeps north from the southern island of Kyushu in early March up through the main archipelago to Hokkaido in the north by some time in May. Daily reports of the location of the sakura-zensen are broadcast on the news, so that people can track it’s progress and be ready for it when it arrives.

The meaning and significance of cherry blossom in Japan runs deep, making the country’s national flower a cultural icon revered not just for its beauty, but for its enduring symbolism. Cherry blossom symbolises for them, life, death and renewal, and the delicate balance between the fragility and impermanence of our existence and new life and hope. Sakura are have been revered for many centuries in Japanese folk religions, as a symbol of rebirth, believed to represent the mountain deities that transformed into the gods of rice paddies and guaranteed the year’s harvest.

Sakura have therefore always signalled the beginning of spring, a time of renewal and optimism. So with the blooming in 2011 coming shortly after the tsunami, it engendered this spirit of optimism and renewal bringing with it new hope and new dreams. When cherry blossoms are in full bloom, the future is bursting with possibilities. When the Japanese gather under the cherry blossom trees each year, they’re also commemorating the loss of loved ones and reflecting on their own lives with a sense of wonder whilst also laying aside the disappointments of the past to focus on a promising new start.

Given all that has happened over the last year, as we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, let us likewise look forward with hope and optimism, laying aside our own disappointments and looking forward to all the new possibilities together in Christ.

Blessings
James