Thursday 1 February 2024

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

It was good to see many of you at the ecumenical service at the Münster last Sunday. This Sunday, we will be back in St Ursula's as usual.

House Groups
Many thanks to those of you who have sent in your questionnaires expressing your interest in house groups. For those of you who are interested but have not yet done so, please return your questionnaire to the church office, or give it to me in person on Sunday. I am attaching a copy of the handout (distributed at the Open Forum) which gives more information, and also the questionnaire.

Church Clean Up Day
Every year we try to do a good tidy up and clean up of the church, the halls, the basement and the attics. Please come and join us: 9:00 - 13:00, Saturday, 10th February. This will be fun if it is a team effort! Snacks will be provided.

Shrove Tuesday Pancakes
Come and join us for pancakes, from 18:00, Tuesday 13th February in the Upper Hall. Adults and children are welcome and there will be gluten free pancakes available.

LENT

Ash Wednesday, 14th February. As usual, we will mark this significant occasion with a special Eucharist, 6.30pm. During this service there will be time for self-examination and confession and reflection on how we will use this period of Lent. We will also include the traditional ashing when we receive the sign of the cross in ash on our foreheads, reminding us of our sin and mortality, but also of the life and forgiveness there is in Christ.

Lent Programme: Let Us Pray
During Lent, we will be providing opportunities to discuss and explore different forms of prayer.

This will include:

Online Discussions, 7.30pm, Tuesday Evenings

• 20th February: Daily Prayer in the Church of England: introduction to Morning, Evening, and Night Prayer
• 27th February: Introduction to lectio divina (meditative prayer on Scripture)
• 12th March: More details to follow*
• 19th March: More details to follow*

* I have various ideas but it depends on the response to the previous sessions

Praying Together (online)

• Morning Prayer, 8am, Monday - Thursday mornings (beginning Wednesday 21st February
• Night Prayer (Compline) concluding our Tuesday online discussions (beginning Tuesday 20th February)

Making Space for God

'We mostly spend (our) lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual - even on the religious - plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.

...It must mean that some time, even though this may be a very short time, be given, and given definitely, to communion with God; and perseverance in this practice, even though at first we seem to get nothing from it. There are few lives in which there is no pause through the day. We must use even the few minutes that we have in this way, and let the spirit of those few minutes spread through the busy hours.'
(Evelyn Underhill)

With love in Christ,
Helen