Prayer Booklet for May during Covid 19

A Prayer booklet coronavirus covid 19 – May including a VE Day Service and sing along, Chrsitian Aid Week Service and Pentecost Sunday Service.

Prayer Booklet for those unable to attend a funeral

The prayer booklet brings together the different prayers on offer from the Church of England website there for funerals and remembering loved one at this time.

Prayer booklet For those unable to attend a funeral service 2

Prayer Booklet for those self isolating (Coronavirus / Covid 19)

Following the Church of England’s advise on their website re Coronavirus  I produced this  Prayer booklet coronavirus covid 19 using the recommended prayers from the Church of England website .

I also recommend our Diocesan Website for Worcester Diocese podcasts or other Worcester Diocese news

What Priests want you to know

What Priests want you to know

I came across this new blog with an interesting title – Dirty Sexy Ministry – written by two priests and found it very interesting and humourous – it’s worth a look….

Annual church meeting survival guide

My thanks goes out to the Church Mouse for the annual church meeting survival guide….this has made the meetings more light hearted and fun!

They are well worth a read especially when you have more than one!

Licensing Service (via Loveden Deanery’s Blog)

At the Licensing service held on the 12th January 2011 at Leadenham, there was a warm welcome to Rev’d Lilian Hall as she join’s Loveden Deanery and a farewell to Bishop John who leaves us at the end of the month. … Read More

via Loveden Deanery’s Blog

Part the curtains

I went with the Bishop fo Grantham to a Confirmation Service at St. George’s Church in Stamford.  It was a great service and there was a time of sharing of faith…why the candidates  had chosen to / been called to be confirmed within the service.  Katrina shared this poem she had written:

Part The Curtains

Does not beauty shine forth behind the clouds?

Does not light overrule the darkness?

 

God’s light is like the sun above the clouds,

Always present.

And when the clouds part, does not a banner of hope come forth?

 

A golden beacon,

A candle in the dark.

 

Does not a smile appear upon your face,

At the sight of such beauty and hope?

 

Don’t give up hoping,

Don’t live in despair.

 

Christ is watching from behind the clouds,

Waiting for you to part the curtains,

 And embrace the light.

By Katrina Sissins

I’ll sing a song for you (via Bishop Tim Ellis’s Weblog)

Advanced notice of an Evening with the Bishop of Grantham….it sounds like it’s going to be a great evening. I’d get your tickets quick as I’m sure they will soon sell out this unique event.

I’d like to give you advance notice of an event I’m involved in on the evening of Saturday 20 November in St Mary le Wigford Church (right next to the station in downhill Lincoln) to raise money for the Be-Attitude project for the homeless. There will be three main acts on the bill, with Tim Williams, the fine pianist and organist from St Wulfram’s, Grantham treating us to some excellent contemporary music; the Diocesan Director Ordinands Dr Jef … Read More

via Bishop Tim Ellis’s Weblog

Diary of a Church Mouse

It’s Harvest time again….here is a harvest poem….

The Diary of a Church Mouse  by John Betjeman

Here among long-discarded cassocks,

Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,

Here where the vicar never looks

I nibble through old service books.

Lean and alone I spend my days

Behind this Church of England baize.

I share my dark forgotten room

With two oil-lamps and half a broom.

 The cleaner never bothers me,

So here I eat my frugal tea.

My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;

My jam is polish for the floor.

Christmas and Easter may be feasts

For congregations and for priests,

And so may Whitsun. All the same,

They do not fill my meagre frame.

For me the only feast at all

Is Autumn’s Harvest Festival,

When I can satisfy my want

With ears of corn around the font.

I climb the eagle’s brazen head

To burrow through a loaf of bread.

I scramble up the pulpit stair

And gnaw the marrows hanging there.

It is enjoyable to taste

These items ere they go to waste,

But how annoying when one finds

That other mice with pagan minds

Come into church my food to share

Who have no proper business there.

Two field mice who have no desire

To be baptized, invade the choir.

A large and most unfriendly rat

Comes in to see what we are at.

He says he thinks there is no God

And yet he comes … it’s rather odd.

This year he stole a sheaf of wheat

(It screened our special preacher’s seat),

And prosperous mice from fields away

Come in to hear our organ play,

And under cover of its notes

Ate through the altar’s sheaf of oats.

 A Low Church mouse, who thinks that

I Am too papistical, and High,

Yet somehow doesn’t think it wrong

To munch through Harvest Evensong,

While I, who starve the whole year through,

Must share my food with rodents who

Except at this time of the year

Not once inside the church appear.

Within the human world I know

Such goings-on could not be so,

For human beings only do

What their religion tells them to.

They read the Bible every day

And always, night and morning, pray,

 And just like me, the good church mouse,

Worship each week in God’s own house,

But all the same it’s strange to me

How very full the church can be

With people I don’t see at all

Except at Harvest Festival.

St. James’s Churchyard Cross – Allington

Allington St. James 

Originally uploaded by ShellieMM

 

 

I’ve found a new gimmick on Flickr and I rather like the outcome….it’s called hypnotize.