Wednesday 7 February 2024

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I hope to see you at church on Sunday. It will be an All Age service with the children involved in the service.

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)

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 as soon as you can. I am attaching a copy of the handout (distributed at the Open Forum) which gives more information, and also the questionnaire.

Ash Wednesday Repentance

In our liturgy of self-examination and confession in our Ash Wednesday service we confess before God a whole range of sinful attitudes and actions. We acknowledge our pride, our greed, our apathy, our hypocrisy, our lack of prayerfulness and concern for our neighbour. One of the phrases of the liturgy is:

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us
Accept our repentance, Lord.

Malcolm Guite takes up this theme in his poem for Ash Wednesday below.

Receive this cross of ash upon your brow,
Brought from the burning of Palm Sunday's cross.
The forests of the world are burning now
And you make late repentance for the loss.
But all the trees of God would clap their hands
The very stones themselves would shout and sing
If you could covenant to love these lands
And recognise in Christ their Lord and King.
He sees the slow destruction of those trees,
He weeps to see the ancient places burn,
And still you make what purchases you please,
And still to dust and ashes you return.
But Hope could rise from ashes even now
Beginning with this sign upon your brow.

(Malcolm Guite)

With love in Christ,
Helen