We are pleased to announce the release of the parish magazine for the month of January 2019. Some featured articles include:
- Page 8: Pilgrimage – reflections by Christopher Pancheri
- Page 17: Tales from the Tower
45th bazaar a great success
Ruby Ditcher, who started Tavistock Parish Church’s annual Christmas Bazaar 48 years ago, is still playing an active part – helping man the jewellery and accessories stall at the event in the town hall on Saturday November 17.
Ruby, left, with Tavistock mayor and mayoress, Councillor Paul and Mrs Jane Ward, and Chris and Sarah Hardwick
The day proved a huge success, swelling the Bazaar Fund (which includes Friendly Fridays coffee mornings) by £5,730, towards church funds.
Organiser Barbara Miller said: ‘Ruby continues to be an active member of the church after 45 years and still contributes by running a stall. She is amazing and we cannot thank her enough.’
She added: ‘The bazaar not only raises money but is part of our outreach to bring the church to the community. Thank you to everybody – the helpers, the promoters, the buyers, also to our coffee morning visitors. Our success was an all-round effort from virtually every group within the church.’
Church candle wax used for cup and saucer novelties were among an array of items the Craft Group busily recycled for the bazaar.
Janet Kennerley and Ruth Glanville are in the craft group which meets in the parish centre fortnightly on Wednesday afternoons to stitch over cups of tea. ‘We could call it sew, knit and natter’, said Ruth. ‘It’s very good because people who are on their own can come along – we welcome everybody, even if they are not big crafters.’
The group’s wares vary from Christmas ‘pressi’ bags, soft toys, wreaths and hangings, to gift tags, recycled cards and sideboard decorations.
The knitters regularly run a stall at our Friendly Fridays coffee mornings and so far this year have raised £635 for church funds. Janet, a chorister, and Ruth also sell cards they make from recycled ones after Sunday morning services.
Janet believes the craft group was started more than 20 years ago by the wife of the then vicar, John Rawlings, making cushions for the pews. Ruth said they were grateful to people who kept the members going with wool, cards and other materials.
From the Vicarage
At Christmas, our attention is focused on the birth of Jesus in a Bethlehem cave. It was completely unexpected. The star, which the wise men followed, did not stop at a royal palace, but at a stable used for sheltering animals. Perhaps we are amazed and surprised that God should come to us as a helpless and dependent child, of poor parents, far from home, and who were soon to become refugees in Egypt? Perhaps we are disappointed because in our search for God we tend to look for the spectacular rather than the ordinary? We should not be. The Christmas story tells us that God is to be found right before our eyes in every day places – in the people and situations that perhaps we take for granted. By choosing to be born in such a humble and desolate place, away from the public eye, and away from the world’s palaces and riches, God turns our worldly understanding of the spectacular, of celebrity and success, upside down. God gives us a clear message about the need to see Grace and goodness among the very poorest people, and in most desolate and ordinary places. This is good news. The first to share with Mary and Joseph the joy of the birth of God’s Son were country people, shepherd’s guarding their flocks by night on nearby hills. Their presence at the birth was the assurance that God was accessible to ordinary people carrying out their everyday work.
Our celebration of Christmas is more than a remembrance of the happenings in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago. It is a reminder that God loves us so much that he sent his only Son to be with us, to show us the ways of God, and to journey with us in our lives. That night, a new-born child became our living link with God.
Christmas focuses not only on what Jesus did by making his home with us, but on what we must do also, for it reveals that we are part of God’s family. This means that we should reverence each human life, and that raises tough questions about our treatment of other people. As Christmas approaches, we are invited, once again, to celebrate God who makes himself known to us. The simplicity of it challenges us to rid ourselves of falseness and pretense, and to recognize in the new-born child a Saviour who will show us a new life with glorious possibilities. We need to be a part of the story ourselves, and we need to rediscover the joy and wonder of the Christmas message. God comes to us to show us how to live and how to love. Our life, all human life, is part of this story; it is the story of God’s care and concern, and of involvement with the world in which we live. As God’s Son, Jesus comes into all the complexities of human living and shows us that through his birth, life, death, and resurrection, we call all share in this new life. Life can be different, and life can be changed. St John, speaking about the birth of Jesus at the beginning of his Gospel, says this: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” As we celebrate the love of God seen in the Christ-child this Christmas season, may we all come to know the good news of the Christmas story and be transformed by it.
Please come and celebrate the closeness of God with us in any of the Churches of the Benefice. Everyone is very welcome. Details of all the services are printed in this magazine.
Confirmation 2019
Look ahead, I want to encourage both adults and young people who would like to explore the possibility of being Confirmed in 2019 to get in touch with me over the coming weeks please. The Confirmation service will be held on Sunday, 23rd June.
May the joy, peace and love of the Advent-Christmas season be yours.
Chris Hardwick
Making space for Advent
As I was driving across Dartmoor early in November I drove past a pub with a large banner outside boldly declaring Christmas Season. My immediate reaction was, ‘but we aren’t even halfway through November, we haven’t got to Advent yet!’
It is so easy to think of December as the Christmas season. After all, town centre Christmas lights are usually switched on in November, the shops have been selling Christmas goods for weeks and Christmas dinner menus run throughout December in our local restaurants, but in the Church calendar the Christmas season begins at Christmas and most of December is the season of Advent.
How can we make space for Advent, a time of reflection and waiting, waiting patiently for the Nativity? It’s such a busy time as we dash from shop to shop, write cards and send presents, plan our parties and celebrations and look forward to spending quality time with our families. I love carol services, Crib services, Christmas tree festivals, concerts, Nativity plays, pantomimes and parties and, of course, the joy and excitement of my grandchildren as they wait for ‘Santa’, but in all our busyness it is so easy to forget why we are celebrating. Somehow we need to make space for God. We need to give God quality time too; after all without the birth of Jesus, the Son of God, whose birthday we celebrate at Christmas, there would be no parties, no presents, no Christmas dinner and certainly no carol services.
To make space for God, some of us within the Mission Community are spending a day quietly reflecting at Buckfast Abbey. I love spending time there and the drive across the moor is all part of the day. It’s part of the journey, a sort of pilgrimage. The time of quiet, whilst enjoying the countryside (unless the mist is down) is time well spent, preparing for a special time with God, our God who is delighted when we set aside time to be in his presence.
It was on a short visit to the Abbey that I passed the pub declaring the Christmas season. I wanted to go into the Abbey church and sit quietly in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel but first I enjoyed looking at one of my favourite trees. I love the Monterey Pine growing in the centre of a flowerbed between the church and the restaurant in the grounds of the Abbey. There is a notice from the head gardener in front of it which intrigues me, it begins like this:
The area has been re-designed to prevent compaction of the tree roots (Monterey Pine).
The notice then goes on to list the types of bulb that are planted in the flowerbed, flowers that won’t choke the roots of the pine. The roots need space to provide sufficient nourishment for the tree to flourish.
It reminds me of Jesus’s parable of the sower where only the seed that fell on good ground grew up to bear fruit. That’s a parable about the word of God and how, so often, we fail to listen to it. Sometimes we take no notice. Other times we are delighted by what we hear, but then times get difficult and we forget, or become distracted by all the other things that are going on which get in the way. That’s why it’s good to make an effort to give time to be with God, to strengthen our roots, to allow him to nourish us through the word of God and refresh us with spiritual living water. St Paul in his letter to the Colossian Christians wrote:
Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. Col 2:6-7 (NIV)
Our lives need to be firmly rooted in Jesus. It’s important to give him quality time, so sometimes I like to go somewhere special so I can really focus. The monks of Buckfast Abbey offer the space and peaceful setting I need to become more rooted in Jesus and I am pleased they are also seeking to provide the right environment for their Monterey Pine to flourish too!
In the run up to Christmas please make space for Jesus; it’s time well spent.
Hazel Butland (Reader)
Parish Magazine – December 2018
We are pleased to announce the release of the parish magazine for the month of December 2018. Some featured articles include:
- Page 6: From the Vicarage
- Page 26: Gulworthy Notes
- Page 30: Brentor News
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- …
- 27
- Next Page »