Parish Up-dates & Events To Come

After a busy September, there's a slight lull this week before we celebrate our Harvest Festival on Sunday (3rd October), complete with Parish Lunch. At the 10a.m. Sung Eucharist you can bring Harvest Produce to support the work of the People's Kitchen in Newcastle - and money offerings will support USPG's Harvest Appeal.

And the following week (Sunday 10th October) there's a special Victorian Evensong, designed to be as authentically near to what you might have got in 1850, when St. Cuthhbert's Church was consecrated! It's an initiative by Joyful Noise, a local West Gallery group, and they are running a workshop for all who'd like to participate in the choir or as instrumentalists. Evensong will be at 6p.m. - free to all. The workshop costs £5 - from 1.30 for 2p.m. To register for the workshop, contact Win Stokes - winATclarence8.fsnet.co.uk or Chris Gardner - cgardner303ATbtinternet.com (you need to adjust these addresses by susbstituting @ for AT, of course, to make them work).

Full details of what we're planning for October can be found in our new issue of the Parish Magazine. Give it a click and then use the tools to navigate around - you can read it in Full Screen if it helps. Here's this month's "View from the Vicarage."


Note to self…

Rather hastily during September I found myself writing this note:

Having grown up in Hartlepool, I’m now in my 30th year of ordained ministry - all of it served in our Diocese. Living on the edge of the Diocese (Vicar of Benfieldside), I’m concerned with communication and perception; and to counter the temptation to isolationism. I’ve served as an Area Dean and for 15 years or so on the Diocesan Panel working with potential ordination candidates. I work in a tradition which is sacramental and inclusive; hopefully out-going, prayerfully-attuned and theologically-focussed. Single parent of two sons - and I enjoy walking, my mountain bike, poetry and cinema.

It’s the nearest I’ve ever got to writing an election manifesto, though technically it was a “Biographical Note” which I submitted to the Diocese. The occasion was a bye-election to represent the clergy of Durham Archdeaconry on Bishop’s Council. Having been prompted to stand, I decided that at last this was my moment - and readied myself, not exactly for battle, but knowing that there was expected to be another candidate. In the event, though I know at least one other priest was proposed, no other nomination papers were submitted. So there was no election, I was duly declared a member of the Council, and no one got to read the “Biographical Note.” Until I thought to print it here.

And why? Having thought what I could say about myself - as required - in less than 100 words, I realise I still need to live up to it. I’ve not gone on to the Council just to fill a place - and we don’t at present have a Diocesan Bishop to impress. I mean what I say about the importance of the sacramental tradition and prayer and getting things right theologically. When politicians describe something as theological they imply that it’s nit-picking small print and quite unimportant. When I say it, it means it’s about God - so at the very heart of everything.

Similarly I hope you get the drift that I think “vocation” is important - the sense of personal calling. That’s not just about testing vocations to the priesthood. It’s about encouraging people to discern just where God wants them to be - whoever they are, whatever the abilities they think they possess. And inclusiveness is important because God calls to all - each of us has a place in his divine purpose. But do we recognise it? A critical moment for me was the move from saying “someone ought to do something about this” to recognising that that “someone” was me. How about you?

Martin Jackson

Harvest Time is here again

... and you're not going to find a scripted sermon to go with it.

I've some ideas as to what I'll say tomorrow morning - and some visual aids. But visual aids and homilies are rather superflous, I suspect, on a Harvest Festival Sunday. The whole church will be a visual aid - thanks to the skill of those who decorate it. And it's an occasion for real participation as people bring up their harvest gifts - we encourage everyone, but it will be the children who take the lead.

This year we're going to use an introduction to the Offering of Harvest Gifts from Common Worship's volume Times and Seasons. It starts like this:

Let us bring forward symbols of the harvest,
gifts that God has created and his sun and rain have nurtured.
Thanks be to God.

Bring forward the harvest of the cornfields,
the oats and the wheat, the rye and the barley.
Thanks be to God.

Bring forward the harvest of roots,
the swedes and mangolds, turnips and sugar beet.
Thanks be to God.

Bring forward the harvest of seeds for next year’s crops,
for clover, for hay and for corn.
Thanks be to God....

And continues in like manner. Because we take our Harvest offering to a centre which works with homeless people we ask people to bring dried food, tins, tea, coffee, toiletries etc which can be stored. So we may invite people, "Bring forward the mangolds!" but we'd have a long wait if we expected them to appear.

And what is a mangold? Also known as a mangel - and more properly as a mangold-wurzel - I think it's time we brought it back into our harvest services. It's a form of beet, generally fed to cattle, but also popular - it seems - for hurling (at whom or what?). I guess you have to move in the right circles. See the picture to recognise it when it's in growth mode.

R. S. Thomas, famously grumpy Welsh priest and poet - and a very good thing - mentions the mangel in his poem, A Peasant:

Iago Prytherch his name, though, be it allowed,

Just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills,

Who pens a few sheep in a gap of cloud.

Docking mangels, chipping the green skin

From the yellow bones with a half-witted grin

Of satisfaction, or churning the crude earth

To a stiff sea of clods that glint in the wind -

So are his days spent, his spittled mirth

Rarer than the sun that cracks the cheeks

Of the gaunt sky perhaps once in a week.

And then at night see him fixed in his chair

Motionless, except when he leans to gob in the fire.

There is something frightening in the vacancy of his mind.

His clothes, sour with years of sweat

And animal contact, shock the refined,

But affected, sense with their stark naturalness.

Yet this is your prototype, who, season by season

Against siege of rain and the wind's attrition,

Preserves his stock, an impregnable fortress

Not to be stormed, even in death's confusion.

Remember him, then, for he, too, is a winner of wars,

Enduring like a tree under the curious stars.

All rather better than the sugary fare which many might prefer for Harvest Thanksgiving. Perhaps it should be required reading in place of a homily?

Meanwhile, a team of St. Cuthbert's folk has been getting things sorted out in preparation for our Harvest Lunch. I suggested that perhaps I should miss out the preaching bit tomorrow. "Oh no, you can't do that," was the response. "We need time for the jacket potatotoes to cook."

You can learn more about mangel-hurling by clicking on this link. The site is well worth a look!

http://www.mangoldhurling.co.uk/html/the_mangold.html