December 2020 50P ONLINE EDITION
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The Parish of St Thomas , Mellor Registered Charity No. 1130414 Vicar: Revd Tracy Ward, The Vicarage, 51 Church Road, Mellor 312 9861 Phone 0161 484 5079 (Parish Office) Email [email protected] www.mellorchurch.org@stthomasmellor Parish Office The Parish Centre, Church Road, Mellor, Stockport SK6 5LX For all enquiries and bookings for the Church & Parish Centre Phone: 484 5079 The office is open Monday to Friday 9.30am to 12.30pm Reader Dave Shercliff 56 Ernocroft Road, Marple Bridge Parish Office Val Wallace (Mon, Wed & Thurs mornings) ONLINE EDITION Administrator See Page 34 Churchwarden Rachel Howling 3 Dove Bank, Moor End, Mellor 0161 427 5891 Chris Mann 55 Clement Road 0161 449 9414 Dep.Churchwarden Julie Elliott 64 Ernocroft Road PCC Treasurer Karen Greenough contact via Parish Office Assistant Gordon Johnson (Gift Aid and Envelope Scheme) Treasurers: David Butterworth (Income) Anthea Nicholls (Expenditure) Lynda Gwyther (Deputy Assistant: Income) PCC Secretary Julie Elliott 64 Ernocroft Road Director of Music Tom Howling (email: [email protected]) Outlook Editor Guy Nicholls (email: [email protected]) Elected Members of Ian Dayes , Julie Elliott, Richard Elliott, Karen Greenough, Clare Jackson, the PCC Kathryn Maxwell, Emma Wilson, Julia Mann Parish Safeguarding Officer, Kathryn Maxwell Diocesan/Deanery Judith Shiel / Mary Heijbroek Representatives Churches Together in Marple Representative Helen Kennedy www.mellorchurch.org Baptisms, Weddings and Funerals are arranged through the Parish Office December facebook.com/stthomasmellor @stthomasmellor Articles for Outlook should be sent to the Editor (preferably by email). 2020 instagram.com/stthomasmellor 50p The deadline for the January edition is 7th December 2 Vicar’s Viewpoint Christmas Services Because of lockdown restrictions we are unable to invite worshippers to our Advent… the meaning is in the waiting. ever popular Christmas Services this year, but we are doing our best to enable This year in particular we have all had to do a lot of waiting. Waiting during you all to be part of the celebrations by an invitation to join our online services periods of lockdown for a time when we can safely meet with family and friends. which will be on our YouTube channel “Worship from St.Thomas”. If you paste Waiting for test results to say whether or not we are Covid-19 positive. Waiting this link into your browser, you will be taken straight there: for the arrival of a vaccine. In a world where everything seems to be speeding up, https://bit.ly/2ynuqHq waiting can seem counter-cultural. Here you can join our morning service and night prayer each weekday at Advent in Church is also a time of preparation. 10.00am and 7.00pm and for Christmas you will be able to join our special It’s a few weeks breathing space in the busy month of December to take time to services for the festive season. Here are the details: look back at where we have come from, whose voices have shaped our faith, Sunday 20th December FESTIVAL OF LESSONS AND CAROLS where did we wander off track and where exactly is God in all of this. On our YouTube channel from 6.30pm The words of the prophet Micah remind us what it is that God asks of us: Thursday 24th December Christmas Eve CRIB SERVICE Do justice, Love kindness and walk humbly with God. On our YouTube channel from 4.00pm Looking back over the past year many of us will have consciously or not ticked th these boxes… There have been many acts of kindness reported both nationally Thursday 24 December Christmas Eve MIDNIGHT CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICE and locally. People have reached out to neighbours and strangers like never On our YouTube channel from 11.30pm th before. The Black Lives Matter movement has rightly highlighted to us all the Friday 25 December ChristmasDay A CHRISTMAS DAY CELEBRATION injustice and inequality experienced by many coloured people in the UK and On our YouTube channel from 10.00am globally. The Climate Change rallies have also woken us up to the environmental To add to your enjoyment of these services, a carol booklet will be available to crisis our planet faces. We have all been humbled by how the whole world has enable you to sing along in your own homes. This booklet will be available to been brought to its knees by an invisible enemy. Humbled and reminded that we download from the website’s Christmas page ready for the Festival of Carols on need to work together and put aside differences for the greater good of all. 20th December. I hope before we rush headlong in to the wonderful celebration of Christmas If you cannot get access to our website, you can call in to the Parish Centre that we will take time to pause and look backwards to see how far we have Office after lockdown restrictions have been lifted, or pick up a copy from the come. To take time to pause and reflect on what we want to hold on to and church, or ask for a copy to be posted to you. carry forwards. As we approach the end of of 2020 I am reminded of the words Furthermore, the Church will be open every day from 3rd December to the end spoken by King George VI in 1939 during his Christmas broadcast to the nation of the month for private prayer and to enjoy the festive decorations. All are where he read the words from a poem called The Gate of the Year: welcome to come and find a breathing space during the busy weeks leading up ‘And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: to Christmas. ”Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied: Because there is no Crib Service in the church this year, where toys are brought “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. for the Wood Street Mission, this Christmas toy gifts can be brought to the That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” church and placed in the donation boxes in the chancel. So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Peace-filled New Year. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.’ Revd Tracy May you and yours enjoy a peace filled-Christmas and a hope-filled New Year. We hope you like the enclosed Christmas card. This has the same information as Best wishes in Outlook. Do feel free to deliver or send the card to a neighbour, friend or Tracy x relative. 3 4 Editorial Meanderings Good Morning, Gentle Readers. I start by saying Mrs. Editor has always been interested in genealogy and started on her own family tree when she was quite young and she has now traced much of her family history back to about the 13th century. Genealogy has now, of course, become quite a popular subject because of programmes like Who do you think you are and the advent of companies like Ancestry.com online. Most people are interested in their family history but don’t Annual Box Opening Event Raises £2,366 bother to pursue It or don’t know how to go about pursuing it. Because of Mrs. Editor's interest in genealogy, however, one of our sons, together with his lady Cast your mind back to that Open Garage Day in October. How blessed we all friend, Stephanie, paid for Mrs. Editor to have a DNA test by Ancestry.com. and were with the dry weather and lovely autumn sunshine! Half of our 60 they decided that it would only be fair to pay for the old man to have one as well. box-holders brought their boxes and several neighbours came up the drive - full of So I did. We were sent particulars of the procedure by the company together with curiosity and with money in their hands. One of them, Julie Baines, won the raffle a little bottle each into which we had to deposit, as elegantly as possible, a sample basket - she was delighted. of saliva. I would add that we both executed this potentially inelegant procedure extremely decorously and off it went in the post. Fortunately, we didn't have to The following day a few phone calls caused a spate of boxes to tumble on to describe the contents of the package so the postman wouldn't think ‘Is this what doorsteps to be picked up; further phone calls caused a gentle drift of cheques to my life has now come to?’ We then waited in excited trepidation for the result. drop through our letterbox. Now, in the case of Mrs. Editor, as I said, she already had some knowledge of her family set-up. For instance, she knew there were French Huguenots on her family It is such a joy to live among a community with such generosity of spirit. I had tree who came over from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in sowed a seed with my suggestion that we might all top up our boxes this year - 1685, and I knew I had an English father and a Welsh/Irish mother. I was born in online shopping and the increased use of payment cards produce no small change Wales and brought up by a Welsh grandmother and an Irish grandfather from - and the harvest from that seed was overwhelming. In these difficult times it is Cork.