VICAR'S LETTER FOR November

Dear friends

Sometimes I start singing a song and then cant remember the words. The great benefit of a computer is that you can Google them (Look them up) However when I was looking for a John Lennon song “So this is Christmas” I found instead another called “This Is Christmas “ and I rather liked these words
Don’t be discouraged, Don’t be dismayed
There's hope for all in this world, Cause this is Christmas day

Not great poetry I grant you but they do remind us of the hope that Christmas offers. A friend of mine reminded me that Christmas was a hopeful time for her because it was about God writ small. Much of the time thinking about God can be rather big and perhaps even frightening for us as humans. But at Christmas he shows himself as something small and vulnerable-as a human baby; like a tiny version of ourselves.

When we see a baby a normal reaction is to want to protect and look after it-to love it and to make sure nothing harms it. Perhaps at Christmas our reaction to that baby reminds of the best that is in us.

Just as God loves and wants to care for us, he invites that same response in us. He wants us to love him. He invites us to an attitude of love: not just to himself but to one another. He invites us to stop breaking and damaging things (from making wars to having family rows) and to take some responsibility for the weak, the powerless and those who cannot care for themselves. In a sense he invites us to be like God; to be ‘better’ than we could normally be or to “grow into his likeness”

So the hope is not in that Christmas routine of racing round growling at one another because we haven’t got the shopping and we cant afford everything we want and its all too loud and pressured. The hope is in seeing the ‘Word made flesh’-in the small vulnerable person of Jesus- who might just spark love in our hearts again.

I hope that your Christmas will be full of Hope and also contentment and peace. With love and prayers, Chris

VISITING THE CATHEDRAL. It was a great joy to visit the Cathedral in Late October with our choirs. They sang the services there over the 29-31 October. It was a wonderful opportunity, being the fifth Sunday that so many folk joined us for the 10.45am Sunday service. We certainly swelled the numbers at the Cathedral and were warmly welcomed, especially by the Dean . The choirs of St Matthew’s and St Edmund’s were their usual splendid selves and were much appreciated: there were many hugely positive comments made about their singing. We are very privileged to be able to field not one but two excellent choirs. They certainly deserve our thanks and congratulations.

Love and prayers Chris Dyer