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From the Vicar
Hello All, I hope you are coping with the weather? It was only a week or so ago I was complaining about how autumnal the summer was. And suddenly it's baking - though the heat might have broken, even by the time you read this. As usual I this website has a Cross and Crown for the week, and also an Order of Service, because it is an All-Age Eucharist on Sunday, when we will be celebrating the feast day of Mary Magdalene (a day early!). On the subject of orders of service, a reminder for you: on Thursday the PCC will meet and discuss the orders of service we have been using for our 'normal' Sundays. If you have any comments about them, please let me know before then. Today, the Linsdale Singers are giving a concert in Church. After last week's error, I have checked on their website, and this one definitely starts at 7 pm! It includes 'Captain Noah and his floating zoo'. So if the heavens open, you know who to blame! The PCC meets on Thursday in the Lady Chapel, as noted already, and next weekend, the last in July, is the Canal Festival. Some of you may remember Isobel Richardson. In my time, she mostly came to the 8 am service, but she was a faithful member of the church for many years before she became too frail. She has now died, and her funeral will be in St Barnabas on the 15th of August at 11 am. Please come to the service if you can, and please certainly pray for Isobel and for her family as they grieve. You may know that I went to the cricket on Thursday, at Lord's. I was talking to someone about that recently, and they thought that I had said Lourdes, the French shrine to the Virgin Mary! They were quite confused, and so was I, until we sorted ourselves out, and I had to explain that though Lord's cricket ground is very nearly sacred, and is certainly a place of very devout pilgrimage, the Virgin Mary has not, as far as I know, ever appeared there! I wonder what sort of cricketer she'd have made, if she had? I think she would have been a bowler with excellent control of line and length and very hard to score off: she'd have bowled lots of maidens! (That's a cricket joke, and a very bad one). Perhaps I should stop before I get into trouble: religion and humour are uneasy companions, because religion is about such serious matters, about life and death, and life after death, and meaning and purpose, while humour is often about poking fun at important things, and undermining them. They seem to be on opposite sides. But of course, they are not. We as humans are in a continual struggle to keep facing the truth. The truth is God, and He is totally loving, but also totally honest and all-knowing. So looking at Him means seeing the truth about ourselves and what we have done. And this is hard. So we often try to hide, as Adam and Eve did in the story of the Garden of Eden. We can use humour, and even religion, as ways of hiding from God - as fig leaves. But both religion and humour can also be ways of making us face the truth. They can be ways of taking the veil away from our hearts and eyes, and making us see. God always sees us. He sees, and He loves. We must learn to look as truthfully as He does: to see, to love, and to repent, and to give thanks. God bless, Fr Bernard The Rev'd Dr B Minton Team Vicar of Linslade Ouzel Valley Team |