Articles from Landmark

I attended this service, it was a wonderful, encouraging time. The Sunday morning after I was telling two friends in the Hall about it and they immediately remarked “oh, you must put it in the magazine!” So here goes —

Bishop Arun led the service and during his sermon told of being born in Birmingham of Asian parents, his mother a Hindu. His father died young and it was left to his mother to bring him up. As a child Arun loved football and longed to go and watch a match at the Aston Villa ground but his mother wouldn’t allow it, she was afraid of racial fighting.

However, when in his teens Arun got his chance – it was when Billy Graham came to preach at the Aston Villa ground. He pestered his mother for permission to go and because it wasn’t football she allowed it! At last Arun would see the inside of Aston Villa FC!

He knew hardly anything about Jesus, had never heard the Gospel but by the time Billy Graham had finished his talk and began inviting people to come forward and received Jesus into their lives, the Holy Spirit was at work and Arun gladly came forward. It was the start of his Christian life!

The confirmation candidates then came forward for the laying on of hands by the Bishop, who quoted words from the former Archbishop; “the best thing you can do in life is to be a follower of Jesus”.

The music during the service was great! Top class! The Choir Anthem was Rejoice the Lord is King, sung to a newer tune. The service finished with Hail the day that sees him rise – halleluia! It was wonderful! Praise God!

At moments of great significance one often remembers where one was when first hearing about what had happened. In my lifetime two such events were the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States of America. To that list people of my parents’ generation would add the assassination of President Kennedy. What those three moments in history all share is that they were completely unexpected; part of what made them significant was not just the awfulness of what had happened but the shock which accompanied it.

I learned of the death of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II from a notification on my phone whilst at a work event in London. News of the death of a ninety-six year old lady whom I had seen getting frailer as the years took their toll could hardly be described as unexpected and yet it was shocking nonetheless. The day had finally arrived which so many of us had convinced ourselves, even against all reason, would never come.

As I made my way from Canary Wharf to Green Park that soaking wet evening the sun was setting in the sky and I knew an epoch had drawn to a close. Just as we measure years before and after Christ, The Queen’s death will stand as a punctuation mark in my life. Yes, there is already a new King and his own succession is secure; life will go on of course but for those of us who have lived through the second Elizabethan age there will simply be before and after the day The Queen died; she was a constant, always there, and now she is gone.  

It all started with a ‘golden eagle’, fondly known to some older members of the congregation of St Mary’s Whitkirk as ‘the brass budgie’. The story of this imposing bird begins with the re-ordering of our church building back in 1980. Bearing God’s Word on his back, he has stood proudly in various places in our church, originally perched in the Sanctuary but latterly finding himself – in very reduced circumstances – in pieces in a cupboard in the base of the tower. After the re-ordering there just wasn’t a safe place for such a large lectern to stand and so he stayed in his dark cupboard, gathering dust and forgotten by most.

Now the story moves to Ripon Cathedral where the Precentor, the Reverend Canon Paul Greenwell, was moving on to pastures new, namely The Charterhouse, Hull where he was to take up his appointment as Priest Master of this Almshouse where, for 700 years, men and women from Hull (not the same ones!) have been housed as ‘a community and a family which has Jesus at its centre and its heart’.

It was in a chance chat with Joan Williams and Giles Taylor, in their capacity as St Mary’s Ambassadors to Ripon Cathedral, that we heard of the Georgian chapel at the Almshouses which was in need of a lectern. Well, we just had one to spare and with the help of Canon Matthew and the Parochial Church Council permission was gained to gift our banished ‘golden eagle’ to the Almshouses so that he could once more proudly carry the Word of God, this time for the people of Hull.

Dear Friend,

Music shops always intimidated me when I was younger. They would be populated with musicians who seemed far better than me testing out the latest equipment. I would hardly ever play anything and I probably looked too young and without much money for the sales team to waste time on. These angst-ridden days of youth came to mind when the other day I happened to go into a music shop again. When strangely enough the sales team seemed much more interested. And so, I ended up trying some electronic drums. It was marvellous fun and unlike my younger self, I didn’t really care what anyone thought. Thankfully the drums stayed in the shop but it reminded me of how we change through our lives. How that which once caused anxiety and worry does no longer. That doesn’t mean that worry magically disappears – more that it changes as our lives and their priorities do.

Over the last twenty years, I’ve had a spiritual director. And though the person has changed during those years the role has retained its importance. For a spiritual director is a person who has encouraged, challenged and helped me make sense of my life and of how God’s story is weaved with my own. These special people have helped me establish (to return to the drums) a rhythm of life and create the space to pay attention to God’s presence. The importance of the role continues as I get older and make new discoveries.

Last year as the pandemic came to the forefront in all our lives, the rhythms of life that had sustained us changed. In some ways that was good, we were forced to stop and live differently. But now as we continue to work out how best to live with the virus and return to some degree of normality we need to re-establish good rhythms for living, rhythms that help us to pay attention to God’s presence in our lives.

As a community we are trying to do some of this at St. Mary’s and part of that discernment is in and through a ‘Rhythm of Life ‘course we shall be running from Thursday 20 January. It will be in the church, start at 7.30 pm and be led by Joan Williams and Jean Bradley, two members of our church family who know the value of a rhythm of life. Do please come and join us as we try to grow in love in 2022 and hopefully find a good rhythm for our lives.

With love and prayers,
Matthew

Towards the end of January we were invited to celebrate the conversion of St Paul. The Book of Common Prayer (1662) appoints a lesson from the Acts of the Apostles 9:1-22 which describes Paul (then known as Saul) on the road to Damascus. He was not on this road by coincidence; he was not out taking the air or exercising, but was embarked on a journey specifically to seek out “any of this way”, by which of course he meant Christians, with the intention of bringing them “bound unto Jerusalem”. We are left to ponder as to what fate would have awaited our brothers and sisters upon their arrival; I think it fair to conclude that their welcome would not have been a hospitable one since we know that Saul was deeply hostile to Christians.

As he travels the road “suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven”; so bright in fact that he was blinded and brought to his knees, whereupon he heard a voice – the voice of Jesus. After this, still blinded but with the assistance of his fellow travellers, he followed Jesus’ instructions, and continued on his journey.

Meanwhile, the Lord is busy giving instructions in a vision to his disciple Ananias: that he should visit Saul and by touching him restore his sight. Now Ananias was skeptical, for Saul clearly had a reputation, but the Lord explained that Saul was “a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles”; so off he went to carry out the Lord’s instructions.

And so it came to pass that Ananias found Saul in Damascus, and he restored him of his sight as the Lord had commanded. Saul was “filled with the Holy Ghost” and “straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God”. Saul had become Paul.

As a child you probably learned the story of Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist in the novel commonly known by that name, written at the beginning of the 18th century by author Daniel Defoe. The full title of the book hardly trips off the tongue, “The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, All Alone in an Uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River Oroonoque; Have Been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, Wherein all the Men Perished but Himself, With an Account how he was at Last Strangely Delivered by Pirates”; but it is at least instructive of the central theme of the story: that Crusoe found himself “all alone in an uninhabited island”.

In these present times, living with the restrictions imposed to try and repel the threat of Covid, many of us will have felt alone, cut off from most of life’s social interactions that we had taken so much for granted; and our homes, which once played host to visiting friends and family coming from near and far, have become their own uninhabited islands. What then might we learn from the story of Crusoe, as he grappled with circumstances recognisable to us?

Asylum seekers are often the bottom of the pile when it comes to support and sympathy.

Each person has their own story of how and why they have made the difficult decision to leave their home and maybe their entire family, to make a long, often terrifying and dangerous journey to another country. They are frequently traumatised, bewildered and confused by the hostile reception they get from the Home Office, when they finally get to the UK.

They are people like us, who had a home, a job, a normal life and a simple wish to continue living in peace. War, persecution and discrimination are common reasons for their need to escape, sometimes to save their lives. The choice is not made lightly, and their hope is to rebuild a life somewhere free from persecution and conflict. Sadly, they are likely to find the UK a less welcoming place than they hoped and have the added issues of language, isolation, poverty and unemployment to deal with.

Asylum seekers will initially be given Home Office support if their case is thought to be worthy of consideration. If their case is turned down after further consideration, they will then be left destitute, with no recourse to public funds and no accommodation. This can happen very quickly, leaving them street homeless.

One of the most distressing problems for destitute asylum seekers is lack of shelter. They rely on charities to find them accommodation of some sort and, of course, anything is better than being on the streets and vulnerable.