Services for Sunday 19 May 2013

09:15  Family Communion  MB

11:00  Family Communion  WF

11:00  Morning Service  LH

18:30  Evening Service + Communion  LH

# 1662 service

Services for Next Sunday

(26 May 2013)

08:00  Holy Communion  # WF

09:15  Parish Communion  MB

11:00  Parish Communion  LH

18:30  Benefice Songs of Praise  WF

# 1662 service

Your coming in and going out

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord

Will be saved!

(Acts 2:1-21)

Readings for Sunday 19 May

Romans 8:14-17  &  Acts 2:1-21 (MB & WF)

Isaiah 40:12-23  &  1 Corinthians 2:6-end (LH 11:00)

Genesis 11:1-9  &  John 14:8-17 (LH 18:30)

Please pray for

a new Vicar for the Benefice,

Tony Clements, Dianne Gant, Hugh Houston,

Gladys Leach

and

all who have asked for our prayers.

 Wormingford Flower Festival

 The annual Flower Festival will be taking place over the Bank Holiday weekend, 25-27 May. This year’s theme is ‘Mind the Gap’! Help in the church, at the Bistro, or by baking cakes or donating bric-a-brac would be most welcome.

Alternatively, just come along and support us!

 Mount Bures Flower Festival

An early reminder that the annual Mount Bures Flower Festival

will be taking place on 22 and 23 June.

Pop the dates into your diary, as your support will be most welcome.

 More Information

 To volunteer to help with running your church during the interregnum, or for more information about anything in this Bulletin contact your Churchwardens or Deputies, or see your parish websites:

 www.wormingford.com, www.littlehorkesley.com or www.mountbures.com

Items for inclusion next week by Thursday please to:

Churchwardens or Deputies.

The post BENEFICE BULLETIN – Sunday 19 May 2013 (Whit Sunday) appeared first on Wormingford Benefice.

Following the PCC AGM which I reported on last month, we had our Annual Archdeacon’s Visitation which is carried out by the Rural Dean. This is the occasion when we have the Church valuables available for inspection and checking against the Church register, called The Terrier. (I used to think it was called a Terrier because you have to ferret around like a terrier to find everything but it seems that it’s derivation is from the French terre meaning land and a Terrier was a sort of land register).

Then Tim and Alex and myself went to the Archdeacons Citation service which is where the Archdeacon thanks outgoing Churchwardens and welcomes new ones. They usually provide an excellent buffet beforehand which gets us nodding gently during the service and this years offering was certainly up to scratch!

Before the Flower Festival we usually have a Church cleaning session to make everything look nice before the flower ladies start making a mess preparing their exhibits. This year we decided to clear out the gutters and try and clear some of the moss from the north side roof, so we hired a cherry picker platform to make the job a bit safer. I would like to say a big thank you to Cassy and Neil McCleave, Nick and Alex Eden, Tim Bird and Gary Grant, for turning out on a miserable day and working like Trojans to make a real impression on the jobs that we had listed. Sadly, we didn’t get everything done, because once a year may not be frequent enough, but hopefully you will appreciate the result of their efforts when you next visit the Church.

We have four grandchildren now and often enjoy the things they say. I came across these the other day and thought I would share them with you:-

Dear God,

Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don’t You just keep the ones You have now? – Jane                 Thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy! – Joyce                                                                                       Please send me a pony. I never asked for anything before, You can look it up. – Alice                                                                         If we come back as something – please don’t let me be Jennifer Horton because I hate her. – Denise                                             Maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each other so much if they had their own rooms. It works with my brother! – Henry                           Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that or was it an accident? – Norma

As I write, it is Christian Aid week, so all the envelopes have to be deposited through the village letter boxes so that they can be collected at the weekend. If anyone fancies taking this on for next year please let me know and I will reluctantly relinquish the task. It is really good exercise!

Mike Crisp – Churchwarden at Saint Andrew’s Church

PS Don’t forget Mount Bures Flower Festival on 22^nd and 23^rd June

The post Church Matters – May 2013 appeared first on Wormingford Benefice.

TO THE Stour, to launch the John Constable, a fine barge, or lighter, on a fine day, the populace watching, the sun shining, and a young man in danger as in The Leaping Horse. I have been listening to Pepys on the radio, of course. But the replica of what was once a common sight on our classic river is actual enough. David and I make our way to the water’s edge, and there, perfect in every way, lies the new barge, bright as a button. May God bless all who take holiday trips in her – me first.

When I was a boy, by the Stour-side, the last Constable barges were scuttled, and lay a yard or two below the surface of the river, where it was hoped that they would feed pike, rot away, and be no more, the railway taking over. Mothers warned their swimming sons not to go near them for fear of being trapped, although this never happened. And I would watch their huge black outlines waver under the gentle current, and think of John Constable seeing them hard at work.

For him and his fellow Stour artist Tom Gainsborough, they were the most ordinary sight in the world. The river was industrial, busy all the way to the sea with these horse-drawn coalers which, to the astonishment of the Royal Academy, the young Constable, a local miller’s son, imagined would be a suitable subject for art. No one bought.

In vain his glittering workaday visions of our river hung on its walls. The Stour itself twisted and turned through the water-meadows, doubling the distance to its estuary, but offering a smooth alternative to our bad roads, and the laden lighters would glide like slow birds from hard to hard, pulled by huge horses. When the old business was sunk, just before the Great War, we all thought that that was that. Progress had finished it off. Now, here I was, on a Bank Holiday afternoon, saying: “I name this ship the John Constable,” and climbing in, alongside a score of other river travellers, to sense the exquisite gentleness of a river journey, a fresh flag fluttering at the helm, and the blare of a bugle to say that we were coming.

Oh, we should have sailed all day! The throne we sat on provided such sensations! The afternoon was so Englishly perfect, the scattered folk on the slowly passing banks so civil, the rushing dogs in the grass so gratifyingly amazed by the sight of us, that I, at least, could have sailed on for hours; only there was a queue for others to have a turn.

So we came home to watch croquet being played in a walled garden, and to eat sandwiches.

Should paradise be in your mind, go to Sudbury, Suffolk, for a river trip on the John Constable. Barges are so blissful. And rivers are so good at getting about. They will take you to destinations that can only be dreamed of, and offer you smells that stimulate senses that you had forgotten you possessed.

Seated with other old parties on board my lighter, I saw myself, aged 14 or so, lying with a book in the water-meadows alongside the meadowsweet, the enormous East Anglian skies floating overhead. With maybe a bottle of Tizer. And the Boat Club shouts, and the screams of swallows in concert above me. And to think that all these years later they have let me launch a barge – our river’s liner – and savour the early joy.

The post Word from Wormingford – 17 May 2013 appeared first on Wormingford Benefice.

Services for Sunday 12 May 2013

08:00  Holy Communion  # WF

09:15  Parish Communion MB

11:00  Family Service  LH

11:00  Morning Service  WF

18:30  Evening Service  LH

# 1662 service

Services for Next Sunday

(19 May 2013)

09:15  Family Communion MB

11:00  Family Communion  WF

11:00  Morning Service  LH

18:30  Evening Service + Communion  LH

Your coming in and going out

Believe in the Lord Jesus

And you will be saved!

(Acts 16:16-34)

Readings for Sunday 12 May

Acts 16:16-34  &  John 17:20-end (WF 8:00 & MB)

Deuteronomy 34  &  Luke 24:44-end (WF 11:00)

Ezekiel 36:24-28  &  John 17:20-end (LH 18:30)

Please pray for

a new Vicar for the Benefice,

Tony Clements, Dianne Gant, Hugh Houston,

Gladys Leach

and

all who have asked for our prayers.

Wormingford Flower Festival

The annual Flower Festival will be taking place over the Bank Holiday weekend, 25-27 May. This year’s theme is ‘Mind the Gap’! Help in the church, at the Bistro, or by baking cakes or donating bric-a-brac would be most welcome.

Alternatively, just come along and support us!

 Christian Aid Week – 12 May

Christian Aid Week starts on 12 May. If you do not receive an envelope where you live, ask your Churchwardens – or in Little Horkesley – there will be some in the pews and a donation box at the back.

Please be generous for this worthy cause.

 More Information

 To volunteer to help with running your church during the interregnum, or for more information about anything in this Bulletin contact your Churchwardens or Deputies, or see your parish websites:

www.wormingford.com, www.littlehorkesley.com or www.mountbures.com

Items for inclusion next week by Thursday please to:

Churchwardens or Deputies.

The post BENEFICE BULLETIN – Sunday 12 May 2013 (Sunday after Ascension) appeared first on Wormingford Benefice.

Some people think that the most important time in the Christian year is around the birth of Christ at Christmas, but it is actually Easter, when Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead. So getting things right at Easter is quite a big deal for those of us having to do it for the first time without the guidance of a resident Vicar.

Thankfully everything seemed to go OK, particularly our Easter Day Family service at 11.00 which was taken for us by Rosie Tallowin from Myland and was well attended. We are also most grateful to Liz Clarke who kindly produced a tray of delightful Easter posies.

A date for your diaries perhaps, is our annual Church Spring cleaning day which is on May 11^th. This is our opportunity to clear out the gutters using an elevating platform and get rid of some of the moss from the roof. Inside the Church we polish pews and brass, clean windows and hoover like mad, so there are jobs for everyone. Then we are going to the Crown for a light lunch as a thank you for your efforts. Please try and get along for an hour or two to give a hand if you can, but let Churchwardens know in advance so that we can cater for coffee, cakes and lunch.

It will be good to have the Church looking nice for our Annual Flower Festival over the Spring Bank Holiday weekend, 25^th, 26^th and 27^th May. Our theme this year is ‘Mind the Gap’ – a celebration of 100 years of the London Underground which you might regard this as a rather obscure theme for a Flower Festival in Wormingford but you may be surprised at how many connections there are (no pun intended).

Do come along and see the imaginative floral displays, browse through the bric-a-brac, visit the Old School Bistro and find out what is going on with the Wormingford Community education Centre which goes from strength to strength. Hopefully, you will also come to the Sunday evening 6.30pm service which will be a Songs of Praise service led by an old friend.

The printing presses were kept waiting this month so that news of our PCC AGM could be included, so you read it first here folks!

The AGM was attended by the whole Committee and additional parishioners and following elections for the new year, the resulting line-up is now as follows :-

Churchwardens – Tim Bird and Mike Crisp.

Deputy Churchwardens – Colin Bush and Alex Eden

Secretary – Rosy Stamp

Treasurer – Pat Sharman

Electoral Roll Officer – Lesley Gladwell

Deanery Synod Representatives – Tim Bird and Ramon Ariori

With a full PCC team and support from Ronnie Blythe and the Myland Church team we can be confident of keeping the Church in Wormingford alive, with a full programme of services and activities until we have a new Vicar or other permanent arrangement. We expect a Benefice meeting fairly soon with Bishop Christopher to help us plan the way forward.

In the meantime we have to have the Church wall capped, repair some of the Chancel windows and get water and drainage connected to the Church.

No peace for the wicked they say!

Mike Crisp – Churchwarden at Saint Andrew’s Church

The post Church Matters – News from St. Andrew’s – April / May 2013 appeared first on Wormingford Benefice.

THE white cat is given to loftiness in her advancing years, sitting high up in fruit trees, and on the ledge of a Tudor chimney, purring away, looking down on us, bursting with achievement. As is the late and lovely spring. Never such a rush of flowers, such drugging scents. Put work aside. Simply be. For – who knows? – such days might not come my way again. The horses roll on their backs; the trees grow greener by the minute. Best of all, both white and purple fritillaries have multiplied in the orchard grass.

It is May Day, the day of days – the day that we once spent in Padstow, drinking beer at 8.30 in the morning as the ‘Obby ‘Oss [hobby horse] was led out to a haunting song, to process through the slate streets – perhaps the most moving folk festival in Britain. Quite why it should be so escapes all explanation. You have to dance in its wake to prove it so.

And then, those with whom we danced are no longer with us to provide evidence. They have drunk and sung and leapt their way ahead and out of sight, leaving a little music behind – and a pile of curling photos.

My old friend Michael Mayne – for a memorable decade, Dean of Westminster – placed much of his Christian philosophy in an enchanting book, Learning to Dance. “In many ways, I am an unlikely dancer, having only fully mastered the waltz and the Dashing White Sergeant, and, at the age of ten, a passable sailors’ hornpipe, yet the ideas of the invitation to the cosmic dance, and of dance as a metaphor for our assorted lives in this mysterious, dancing universe, have gone on expanding in my mind. . .”

Jesus despaired of “this generation”, of its joylessness and ingratitude. “You are like children calling out to other children, We have piped for you and you did not dance.”

Some years ago, two young neighbours of mine danced down the aisle of Blythburgh Church, in Suffolk, after their wedding. If one is going to dance in church, it may as well be in this angelic building. David, of course, danced before the Ark of the Covenant, being a great poet. In one of his psalms, he turns mourning into dancing, and they conclude with the fortissimo dance music and words of the four final psalms.

Mayne might be said to have taught cosmic dancing wherever he went, and finally at Salisbury, where I “met” George Herbert when I was in my 20s.

The sun is hot on the study window, the May wind chilly. My old friend Antony Pritchett, Vicar of Pickering, is about to pay his annual visit, and we shall do a bit of exploring and a great deal of talking. Each year, I have to provide somewhere different to go, but the talking takes off in fresh directions without the least trouble.

“When did you first decide to be a priest?”

“When I was six.”

When did I first decide to be a writer? Who can tell? “How is Merbecke?” Merbecke is Antony’s dog.

Friends in Yorkshire or Cornwall, or in a Barbara Pym novel, or wildly dancing in scripture, or at this moment giving the churchyard grass its first good back and sides, are given movement by May time. I am, too; and the mower is raring to go at the first pull. The poppy seed I scattered is up; the climbers I tied back are in bud. So soon. So on the go, everything. “Allus on the goo,” the neighbours used to say – and not approvingly.

The post Word from Wormingford – 10 May 2013 appeared first on Wormingford Benefice.

Services for Sunday 5 May 2013

08:00  Holy Communion  # LH

09:15  Family Service MB

11:00  Family Service  WF

11:00  Morning Service  # LH

18:30  Evening Service  LH

# 1662 service

Services for Next Sunday

(12 May 2013)

08:00  Holy Communion  # WF

09:15  Parish Communion MB

11:00  Family Service  LH

11:00  Morning Service  WF

18:30  Evening Service  LH

# 1662 service

Your coming in and going out

He who loves me will obey my teaching

We will come to him and make our home with him

(John 14:23-29)

Readings for Sunday 5 May

Acts 16:9-15  &  John 5:1-9 (LH 8:00)

John 5:1-9 (MB & WF)

Genesis 1:26-end  &  Colossians 3:1-11 (LH 11:00)

Ezekiel 37:1-14  &  John 5:1-9 (LH 18:30)

Please pray for

the soul of Dorothy (Dod) Vince,

 a new Vicar for the Benefice,

 Tony Clements, Dianne Gant, Hugh Houston,

Gladys Leach

 and

 all who have asked for our prayers.

 St. Andrew’s Spring Clean

The annual Spring Clean of Wormingford church will take place (weather permitting) on the morning of Saturday 11 May. Help is required for a variety of indoor and outdoor jobs. A light lunch for helpers will be provided afterwards at the Crown. Please let the Churchwardens know in advance if you are able to come and help. Thank you.

 Rogation Family Service Walk – Little Horkesley

 Next Sunday (12 May) is the Rogation Family Service at Little Horkesley, when we go for a short walk stopping at various places to ask God’s blessing on the crops, livestock, farms and gardens.

 Christian Aid Week – 12 May

Christian Aid Week starts on 12 May. If you do not receive an envelope where you live there will be some in the pews and a box at the back for your donations. Please be generous for this worthy cause.

 More Information

 To volunteer to help with running your church during the interregnum, or for more information about anything in this Bulletin contact your Churchwardens or Deputies, or see your parish websites:

www.wormingford.com, www.littlehorkesley.com or www.mountbures.com

Items for inclusion next week by Thursday please to:

Churchwardens or Deputies.

The post BENEFICE BULLETIN – Sunday 5 May 2013 (6th Sunday of Easter) appeared first on Wormingford Benefice.

“WE WILL have breakfast with the nightingales,” Romane announced; so off we drove through the waking town. Except for us, everyone was going to school or to work. The suburbs ended abruptly; then came a kind of overture to the marshes and rivulets, with tall, greening trees, after which appeared a far distant coast that the sea had torn to ribbons over the years.

We set up our meal on a little gorse plateau, and already the nightingales were at their chook-chook-chooking and piu-piu-piuing, though unseen. The coffee and rolls had stayed hot, and a white-and-blue tablecloth had been laid. The gorse was in bloom with a vengeance. When Carolus Linnaeus first witnessed flowering gorse, they said, he burst into tears, overwhelmed by its glory.

Far ahead, dominating the watery land was the tower of All Saints’, Brightlingsea. It stared down on Alresford Creek and across to us, making itself felt as became the church of a Cinque Port, and a solid thing in a fluid landscape. We talked in a desultory fashion about what should, or could, or must not happen to our living back home, and seemingly in another country.

More and more nightingales sang; more and more marshes glittered. The sun stoked itself up. We sampled Marit’s marmalade, and felt irresponsible. Now and then, seagulls were blown about over our heads.

I found myself remembering a figure from these parts, the Revd Gerald Montague Benton, an archaeologist, one of those learned men who blinked through their glasses and whose apparent easiness and civility concealed an iron will where faculties were concerned. What brought him to these salt marshes, to this liquid meeting of earth and sky? Amazingly, his parish church had been shaken to bits by an earthquake, in 1884. But the instability of things remained apparent. Also the brightness of things.

Sprawling above the crashing Atlantic Ocean in Cornwall, I saw no point in ever doing anything again. Be a layabout – cease. Listen. But then we must get home for lunch. The white cat, who is sloth incarnate, will be lying on her warm brick wall, starving to death.

And I must take a hundredth look at my white and purple fritillaries. Never so many. They are blooming in the orchard, and on old grass paths, along with countless other wildflowers. The long cold winter held them back, then the spring said: “Now!” And thus this racing flood of blooms. The ancient ash tree is suddenly young again, every twig ending with fat buds, and the mower goes at first pull.

We all sit in the chancel at matins. The cold interior has preserved the prolific Easter flowers and distilled their scent. The Epistle is St James’s reminder that “Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” What language!

What is actually coming down at this moment is the first spring rain. It drenches the lambs in the far field, the joyful dogs, the conversing horses. It ruffles the surface of the ponds, and polishes up the view. St James speaks of self-deception, of our being hearers and not doers of the Word. He is so beautiful in his reproaches. Who could not take him to heart?

The post Word from Wormingford – 3 May 2013 appeared first on Wormingford Benefice.

Services for Sunday 28 April 2013

08:00  Holy Communion  # WF

09:15  Parish Communion MB

11:00  Parish Communion  LH

11:00  Morning Service  WF

18:30  Evening Service  LH

# 1662 service

Services for Next Sunday

(5 May 2013)

08:00  Holy Communion  # LH

09:15  Family Service MB

11:00  Family Service  WF

11:00  Morning Service  # LH

18:30  Evening Service  LH

# 1662 service

Your coming in and going out

As I have loved you

So you must love one another

 (John 13:31-35)

Readings for Sunday 28 April

Acts 11:1-18  &  John 13:31-35 (WF 8:00, MB & LH 11:00)

2 Samuel 7:4-13  &  Acts 2:14a, 22-32 (WF 11:00 & LH 18:30)

Please pray for

the soul of Dorothy (Dod) Vince,

 a new Vicar for the Benefice,

 Tony Clements, Dianne Gant, Hugh Houston,

Gladys Leach

 and

 all who have asked for our prayers.

 St. Andrew’s Spring Clean

 The annual Spring Clean of Wormingford church will take place (weather permitting) on the morning of Saturday 11 May. Help is required for a variety of indoor and outdoor jobs. A light lunch for helpers will be provided afterwards at the Crown. Please let the Churchwardens know in advance if you are able to come and help. Thank you.

 More Information

 To volunteer to help with running your church during the interregnum, or for more information about anything in this Bulletin contact your Churchwardens or Deputies, or see your parish websites:

www.wormingford.com, www.littlehorkesley.com or www.mountbures.com

Items for inclusion next week by Thursday please to:

Churchwardens or Deputies.

The post BENEFICE BULLETIN – Sunday 28th April 2013 (5th Sunday of Easter) appeared first on Wormingford Benefice.

Services for Sunday 21 April 2013

09:15  Family Communion MB

11:00  Family Communion  WF

11:00  Morning Service  LH

18:30  Evening Service + Communion  LH

# 1662 service

Services for Next Sunday

(28 April 2013)

08:00  Holy Communion  # WF

09:15  Parish Communion MB

11:00  Parish Communion  LH

11:00  Morning Service  WF

18:30  Evening Service  LH

# 1662 service

Your coming in and going out

And this is God’s command:

To believe in the name of His son, Jesus Christ

And to love one another as He commanded us

(John 10:11-18)

Readings for Sunday 21 April

Acts 9:36-end  &  John 10:22-30 (MB & WF)

1 Kings 17:17-end  &  Luke 7:11-23 (LH 11:00)

Genesis 7:1-5,11-18,8:6-18,9:8-13 &  John 10:22-30 (LH 18:30)

Please pray for

a new Vicar for the Benefice,

Tony Clements, Dianne Gant, Hugh Houston,

Gladys Leach

and

all who have asked for our prayers.

Wormingford PCC Annual General Meeting

The AGM will take place in the church on Monday 22 April at 7:00 p.m. All on the Church Electoral Roll are welcome to attend.

Mount Bures PCC Annual General Meeting

The AGM will take place at the Thatcher’s Arms on Tuesday 23 April at 8:00 p.m. All on the Church Electoral Roll are welcome to attend.

St. Andrew’s Spring Clean

The annual Spring Clean of Wormingford church will take place (weather permitting) on the morning of Saturday 11 May. Help is required for a variety of indoor and outdoor jobs. A light lunch for helpers will be provided afterwards at the Crown. Please let the Churchwardens know in advance if you are able to come and help. Thank you.

More Information

To volunteer to help with running your church during the interregnum, or for more information about anything in this Bulletin contact your Churchwardens or Deputies, or see your parish websites:

www.wormingford.com, www.littlehorkesley.com or www.mountbures.com

Items for inclusion next week by Thursday please to:

Churchwardens or Deputies.

The post BENEFICE BULLETIN – Sunday 21st April 2013 (4th Sunday of Easter) appeared first on Wormingford Benefice.