Minister’s Letter (2025)
[2022 letters], [2023 letters], [2024 letters]
A letter from the Joint Council’s Lay Chair, Flora Skinner
Trinity Sunday Service at Evenley Wood Gardens, June 15th 2025
‘the inter-connectedness of everything’
We were blessed with fine weather once again for our visit to Evenley Wood Gardens (many thanks for their hosting us!) to enjoy worship and sharing a BBQ together in the woods. We had all brought chairs - though we didn’t spend the whole service sitting in them.
Liz began by outlining the inter-connectedness of the Holy Trinity and, in parallel, our inter-connectedness with the wonder of Creation. Genesis reminds us that Adam was put into the garden of Eden to ‘work it and take care of it’ and we each took a label to identify ourselves as ‘sunshine’, ‘air’, ‘water’, ‘tree’, ‘plant’, ‘animal’ etc.so that we could then form a circle and connect to eachother using wool until we had formed an intricate web in the centre. Liz showed how easy it is for this to begin to breakdown by cutting a few strands … and the web began to fall away :
Liz read Alice’s Reflection which recounted her experience of doing some school assemblies on the Trinity : a quiz where the children had to say whether some bible stories featured Father, Son or Holy Spirit and it turned out that there were all sorts of right answers - Father, Son and Holy Spirit are so interconnected. And God created a world that works similarly - all interconnected, a carefully balanced system that keeps itself going, renews itself. No one creature, no one plant lives in isolation. God entrusted the earth to us and asked us to care for it, but in the last couple of centuries we have managed to destabilise many of those wonderfully balanced natural cycles.
We heard words from Pope Francis :“Peace, justice and the preservation of creation are three absolutely interconnected themes, which cannot be separated and treated individually.”
The Choir sang to us about new beginnings, and then we were out of our chairs again to seek from among the trees the pieces of a big prayer jigsaw to link together as we said each prayer :
We took home a dibber marked with the Triquetra of the Holy Trinity and coated with mustard and cress seeds to plant in a windowsill pot, a symbol of new tomorrows – but not before we had written on them our own personal pledges to make one small positive change to help in the restoration and preservation of Creation.
The morning finished with a meat and veggie BBQ tended by Gary Skinner, along with our bring and share salads and desserts, and much relaxed fellowship in the afternoon sunshine.
The last word is also from Pope Francis:
“Everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity."
June
MARRIAGE AND THE WEDDING AT CANA IN GALILEE (JOHN 2:1-11)b>
In ancient Judaism, wine represented a blessing and joy, and was associated with life, God’s blessing, and the Kingdom of God. It was a symbol of fertility and renewal, as grapes and vines were important agricultural staples in ancient Israel.
The Church has seven sacraments, and marriage is one of them. In John 2:1-11, we read that Jesus was invited at the wedding at Cana in Galilee. In fact, he went with twelve of his Apostles and we also hear that his mother was present. Most ancient Jewish scholars say that a proper Jewish wedding would run for about a week. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus and the Apostles arrived on the third day. Probably the twelve, being strong man and most of them being fisherman, joined in and drank all the wine, and it quickly ran out. Remember this was the third day and the wedding was supposed to run for eight days. In most cases in the weddings at which I have officiated, people will not remember how handsome the man was or how beautiful the woman was - instead they remember how much wine or beer they drank on the particular day. If Jesus had not intervened, the wedding at Cana was going to be disappointment and a talk of the village for a long time.
There were other weddings during the same week, that is why the gospel of John says Cana in Galilee, so that we focus on this one. Jesus was particularly invited to this one because it was a special wedding. In fact, it was a wedding of a poor couple but Jesus did not focus on that. Being the third day, and the wine having run out, people could have easily left the venue to go to other weddings out of Cana, but we read that everyone remained at the wedding. Eventually we know that people were instructed by Mary the mother of Jesus to do as Jesus would say and Jesus blessed the water and it became wine, and joy, blessings, the Kingdom of God and everything was restored at the wedding.
Now my dear friends let us draw parallels between marriage in general and the wedding at Cana in Galilee. Just like at the wedding, in marriage a lot of things can change or run out and to whom can we turn? Men and women take vows on their wedding day that they will love each other in poverty and in plenty, in sickness and in health, but in many cases, we see divorce or fighting if there is no more money or good health or if the husband or wife develops a pot belly. This means the wine in marriage will have run out just like it did at Cana. Blessed were the people at Cana for they depended on Jesus. Is there still wine in your marriage? if not where did it go? It is time to ask Jesus to restore joy, peace and happiness in our marriages because Jesus is the same yesterday, today and in the near and far future. Stay blessed and enjoy your marriage and ask Jesus to replenish it if love, money, peace and blessings have run out in your marriage. In the name of Jesus.
Fr Alex MahlavaMay
This article by Lucy Hannah was written in the Summer but seems equally appropriate for the dry, sunny weather we experienced in March and early April.
Searching for the ShadeAs I write, summer has arrived with a wallop. Forgive me, dear reader, if it is lashing with rain where you are right now; here, my skies are an almost cloudless blue. The sun reigns uncontested in the sky. As an artist, I appreciate the value of light and shade; one without the other results in lack of depth. Shade is a veiling of light - a softening, so that the light we experience is not the full, relentless glare of the burning sun. As the earth turns on its daily cycle and the sun appears to ‘move’ across our skies, light and shade play with pattern and placement. Shadows can be mini works of art, the light painting a picture round the pieces it can’t fully reach.
Often when we talk about light and dark, we cast darkness as the metaphorical villain. We use it to describe the difficult, the distressing, even the ‘evil’ in life. But at another level, shade and shadow are valuable. The heat at the height of a summer day can be scorching. To find a shady corner of a garden where the leaves soften the glare and protect us from heat can be a huge relief! I struggle to sleep when it is light and appreciate the nurturing blanket of darkness over my tired eyes and busy mind.
Darkness can be seen as hiddenness or even protection. The darkness of ‘unknowing’ can be frustrating, but sometimes acts as a subtle veiling of something too bright for our eyes. I recently had my first experience of a flotation tank - floating in a big ‘bath’ of magnesium-salted water. I could choose to have gentle light or darkness. In the end I chose the dark. It gave me a sense of privacy and peace. In the darkness, I became aware of all the tension I was holding from past pain and present stress.
Depriving myself of external sight in some ways helped me ‘see’ more. The hidden places can hold for us great wonder; we can find those ‘treasures of darkness’ and encounter the God who sees in the dark. That’s not to say it is easy, not one bit. However, sometimes darkness - in the sense of hiddenness, of shelter, of unknowing - can be the gentlest place for us to grapple with our personal traumas and pain in manageable doses, until we are ready to walk out into the light.
God is described as light in the Bible, but at other points as ‘shade’ – a personal, protective presence giving shelter from the heat and dazzle of uninterrupted light. Sometimes we cry, quite rightly, ‘Lord, be my light’! I suggest it is equally valid to whisper, ‘Lord, be my shade’, when things are a little too bright for our weary, sensitive eyes.
The article is reproduced, with permission, from The Sign.
Lucy Hannah is a writer and artist: www.lucyhannah.com
Psalm 121.5-8
The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and for evermore.
April
Saying Please, Sorry, Ouch, Wow ….. ..... and Saying Nothing at All
Our small home group has been looking at a Lent Course from the Diocese of Lincoln entitled ‘Teach us to Pray’. Prayer is a mystery that deepens with experience and understanding. The course explores prayer through the lens of some of the simplest things we learn to say: please; sorry; ouch; and wow.
A final session looks at the kind of prayer in which nothing at all is said.
Saying Please
The Bible encourages us to ask for things for ourselves, also for other people and situations. But few Christians would claim that every time they ask God for something in prayer, they receive exactly what they have requested! The most important insight comes from a phrase in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. ‘Please’ prayers - petitions and intercessions - attempt to tune in to God and pray in accordance with God’s will.
Saying Sorry
Scripture teaches that that no one is without sin, that we need to confess our sins to God, and that if we do confess our sins God will forgive us (1 John 1.8-9). During Lent the focus for Christians is on turning away from wrongdoing and
seeking to follow Jesus more faithfully. However, receiving God’s forgiveness does not take away our responsibility to seek others’ forgiveness for the wrong things we do to each other.
Saying Ouch
Sometimes the only thing we can bring to prayer is our pain. Expressing pain to God in prayer is sometimes called lamentation. Many of the Psalms come from a place of deep suffering and lamentation. On Good Friday we recall how Jesus took words from
Psalm 22.1 as his own when he cried out on the cross, ‘my God, why have you forsaken me?’
Saying Wow!
There are many encouragements in Scripture to praise God, for example,
Psalm 150.2,6: ‘Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his surpassing greatness! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!’
At Easter Christians praise God for the resurrection of Jesus, the ultimate reason for saying ‘wow!’. Hymns are particularly important in praise and thanksgiving. St Augustine observed that music joins the prayer of the mind to the prayer of the heart. At Easter hymns are full of alleluias. (Alleluia means ‘God be praised’.)
Saying Nothing
Some Christian groups practice silent prayer when they come together for worship. By contrast Anglican worship is ‘word-centered’ so it is sometimes a struggle to make space for silent contemplation.
Contemplation involves stilling oneself to receive what God has to say
and give, rather than over-filling prayers with words, so that God can’t get a word in edgeways!
A helpful verse is Romans 8.26, ‘The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.’
These brief highlights do not do the course justice. The full course can be found at: https://learn.lincoln.anglican.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Diocese-of-Lincoln-Lent-Course-2025.pdf. It really is worth a look.
Liz Welters, Associate MinisterMarch
An opportunity to refocus Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, is the feast day before the start of Lent. This year it falls on Tuesday 4th March. It is apparently an ancient custom: Ælfric of Eynsham's "Ecclesiastical Institutes" from around 1000 AD states: "In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him.” Hence ‘Shrove Tuesday’.
The pancake bit related to Lent traditionally being a time of fasting, prayer and almsgiving. Shrove Tuesday was the last opportunity to use up eggs and fats before embarking on the Lenten fast – and obviously pancakes are the perfect way of using up these ingredients.
The call to confession was signified by the ringing of the church bell which became known as the ‘Pancake Bell’. The ‘Millenium History of Finmere’ quotes J.C. Bloomfield’s ‘History of Finmere’ where he notes that in 1880 Finmere Church still rang the Pancake Bell at 11.30 am on Shrove Tuesday, but that its religious function had declined and it had become a signal for the preparation of pancakes!
The Millenium History also describes the pancake race that used to be organised by the WI from about 1959 through to 1977, when it was replaced by a pancake party in the village hall. It was a matter of fierce competition between the Wis from Ambrosden, Bucknell, Finmere and Stoke Lyne. In Finmere, the race was from the Jubilee Tree, up Mere Road to the school. The winner was presented with a shield for their WI, and something like a new frying pan or a recipe book.
Wikipedia tells me that the pancake race is credited as having begun in Olney in Buckinghamshire, when in 1445 a woman of Olney heard the shriving bell while she was making pancakes and ran to the church in her apron, still clutching her frying pan. The Olney pancake race is now world famous. Competitors have to be local housewives and they must wear an apron and a hat or scarf. Each contestant has a frying pan containing a hot pancake. She must toss it three times during the race. The first woman to complete the course and arrive at the church, serve her pancake to the bellringer and be kissed by him, is the winner.
Father Alex was telling us how about how in Zimbabwe people empty their pantries before Lent of all the disturbances that would hinder their fasting. They bring to the church any luxuries or foods that they have in excess, any wine, and any clothing that they don’t want to keep. And after Mass, they all go into the hall and feast together on the foods they have brought. The clothing is given to those in need as an act of almsgiving. This practise of feasting before the start of Lent is symbolic of emptying the heart or mind of all the events that can be a disturbance in walking or journeying with the Lord.
That got me wondering about the things in my life that are a disturbance or a distraction in my walk of faith. Lent has become for most of us something we give little thought to. We might give up something like chocolate or alcohol – possibly more for health reasons than for spiritual ones, and we might perhaps try to do something positive – give some money to charity, for example. But if we stop and think about the things that really disturb or distract us from our spiritual path, we might well come up with some rather different and probably more difficult to give up ‘habits’. The constant distraction of our phones? The tendency to fill every moment of the day with activity? Our tendency to be looking to our own needs or the needs of our family to the exclusion of all the other need and injustice in the world? I wonder what it would be for you?
For the Christian, Lent can provide a good opportunity to do something about some of the disturbances that distract us from following Jesus and living faithfully. But whatever your world view, perhaps Lent is a good time to pause, reflect and clear out some of the unhelpful distractions or disturbances from our lives. Perhaps Lent is a good time to rebalance.
Whatever you do, however you do it, whether from a faith perspective or some other, may you have a very blessed Lent, one where you can refocus on your spiritual path.
Alice GoodallFebruary
Almost as soon as Boxing Day is over the Christmas lights have been turned off, the decorations have been put away in their boxes, and bare Christmas trees lie forlornly on the roadside waiting for the local authority to take them away for recycling. Yet ecclesiastically speaking the season for rejoicing lasts for 40 days and only ends on 2 February when we celebrate the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. This day is often called Candlemas because traditionally, during the church service, the congregation would process around the church holding candles representing the baby Christ “a light to the Gentiles and the glory of his people Isreal”.
Soon after Christmas, on 6 January, comes the feast of the Epiphany which marks the visit of the wise men to the baby Jesus. Where churches have a nativity crib set up, the figures of the wise men often do not get placed in the crib until 6 January. Instead, they can be seen in different places in the church, slowly making their way to the stable. Epiphany tide is a time rich in symbolism – we too are on a faith journey; we too have been led by a ‘star’ – whatever vision or dream that prompts us to seek God; we too wander in a world fraught with sorrow and danger wondering whether we have taken the right path, or not. “In this season of Epiphany”, says the introduction to the Epiphany Carol Service for Church choirs across the Thames Valley, which was held on 18 January in Christ Church Cathedral, and which members of the Shelswell Choir attended -
“we celebrate the glory of God made visible in Jesus, the child of Bethlehem born to be God with us. The three Magi, guided by a star to worship the holy child, represent God drawing every nation into the family of grace. Yet this is a story in which the gift of God is rejected as well as accepted: the Magi who come from lands far away to worship Christ are juxtaposed with Herod, to seeks to cling to his own power through slaughter. Our celebration of the Epiphany is of the revelation of God in Christ, who provokes both faith and hostility; and of the love of God, which can never be destroyed. As we consider both the pain and the joy of the Epiphany story, we know that our lives are also composed of intermingled pain and joy, and yet in these very ordinary and very human lives, God can be revealed”.
This is probably my favorite season of the year because everything speaks of the mystery of God - the hymns, the carols, the readings; and of the challenge of faith - “we are called to trust that in a world peopled by tyrants, God remains with us; in a world suffused by evil, God’s healing is at work”. Amen, let it be so.
Penny WoodJanuary
WALK WITH JESUS ( LUKE 19:1-10)
Life is lived in a futuristic way but with a lot of reference to the past. People prefer to stay with what they know rather than to imagine the future. Many of us can talk about Covid for example, because it affected or infected us in one way or the other. It is an experience that we know. But the old year is gone and the new has come. We are in a new year and we thank God for the gift of life and health. Let not the negative experiences of 2024 continue to affect us in 2025.
In the gospel of Luke 19:1-10, we are encouraged to leave our past, turn over a new page and walk with Jesus. The story of Zacchaeus is very relevant to those who want to choose Jesus as their master and Lord. Zacchaeus was a rich man; he was a tax collector and lived a better life than most of his fellow Jews although they were all under the Roman government. Although wealthy physically, Zacchaeus was very far away from salvation in the spirit.
Zacchaeus lived in Jericho and for a Jew, the further away you were from Jerusalem, the more unholy you became. But when Jesus was passing by Jericho, it seems Zacchaeus had heard of the miracles that Jesus had performed and wanted to have a glimpse of him.
Scholars suggest that because of his wealth, pride and way of life, Zacchaeus may have had no intention of talking to Jesus - he just wanted to see what Jesus was like from a distance. Since Zacchaeus was short, he had to find the highest point in Jericho and it turned out to be a tree. Rich people don't climb up trees but when Jesus comes into your life the impossible becomes possible.
The main issue about walking with Jesus is not climbing up the tree which Zacchaeus did, but swallowing one's pride and accepting to come down and listen to and walk with Jesus.
I don't know the kind of tree you were on in 2024 or are still on in this new year but Jesus is saying come down and let's walk together and your life will be great. Don't remain on a tree of hatred, malice, jealous, gossiping, fear or not having faith - come down and meet Jesus.
We pray that leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza and Israel silence the guns and come down to the table for peace.
May the Good Lord bless you in this new year and fulfil all your resolutions in 2025.