We publish a Parish Magazine 4 times a year and in each Magazine there is a letter from the vicar or a member of the ministry team. Here is the latest one:
As we approach the beginning of June, we are almost halfway through the year.
This can signify various things, often depending on our stage and age. For some it is taking final exams at the end of a course, which may affect future careers or that next important step in education. For others it will be a time of relaxation as a summer break is enjoyed, or perhaps anticipation of one still to come later in the year.
I am sitting at my desk the day after our Annual Parochial Church Meeting, where we spent a happy (?) hour and a half looking back at the past years works, activities, endeavours and finances.
We gave account of ourselves as a church and worshipping community. Yet it was also important to look forward to what we hope and pray will happen in the next year and years to come.
For me it has been an opportunity to see how my life and ministry has changed in the last twelve months. As this magazine is published, it will be a year since I accepted the post of Priest in charge at St John's. After the busyness of these twelve months, I am looking forward to a rest, an opportunity to slow down and make time to relax away from the stresses and strains of my hectic day to day routine. With longer summer evenings beckoning, and slightly less in the diary, it should be possible to rediscover some spiritual and human equilibrium.
Church-wise, we will be well and truly launched into the long Trinity season. This is the green season stretching way ahead into what is also known as Ordinary time and seems so perfect and in tune with summer. Ordinary but not humdrum, summer is a reassuring season: normality after the excitement of the mood swings and excess of winter and spring.
Yet in the midst of this stretch we celebrate our Patronal festival, the feast day of St John the Baptist. We will mark this will a social gathering on Saturday 26th June and special services on Sunday 27th June. In the midst of the ordinary we can find time to mark the extraordinary. The life and ministry of St John the Baptist was indeed extraordinary - if you want to find out more, you'll have to come to church to find out!
Perhaps as the summer unfolds before you and you look back at was has been, and look forward to what is to come, you too can find some thing extraordinary to celebrate.
Our thoughts and prayers go to all those who in the next months have exams to sit and results to come.
With every blessing
Philippa Segrave-Pride
Philippa Segrave-Pride