September 2016
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September 2016 The Churches St Deny’s, Severn Stoke, St Mary Magdalen Croome D’Abitot & St Mary the Virgin, Kempsey Rector: Reverend Mark Badger Curate: Rev Philippa Sargent Apple Tree Cottage 9 Plovers Rise 31 Napleton Lane Kempsey Kempsey, WR5 3SA 01905 820057 Mob 07828233049 01905 821012 [email protected] [email protected] Readers Sheila Cook Peter Fitzjohn 32 Lower Ferry Lane 8 Post Office Lane Callow End Kempsey Worcester Worcester WR2 4UH WR5 3NS 01905 831829 01905 820320 Paul Kemp Libby James 7 Byfields 7 Battenhall Ave Kempsey Worcester WR5 3NN WR5 HN 01905 821262 01905 353935 Church Wardens Kempsey Church Wardens Severn Stoke Ann Blackwell John Henderson 1 The Oaks, Kempsey, WR5 3PN Meadow Hill House 01905 820549 Severn Stoke, WR8 9JP Henry Morris Tel. 01905 371218 10 Napleton Lane, Kempsey, WR5 3PT Jim Spence 01905 820601 Tel. 01905 371351 PCC Secretary - Kempsey PCC Secretary - Severn Stoke Marian Walters MBE Joyce Westwood 8 Old Vicarage Close April Cottage Kempsey, WR5 3ND Severn Stoke, WR8 9JQ 01905 820558 01905 371351 Treasurer - Kempsey Treasurer - Severn Stoke Rev David Hassell Sally Linsey 14 Napleton Lane 1, Plover’s Rise Kempsey, WR5 3PT Kempsey, WR5 3SA 01905 828096 01905 820476 From the Editor Items for typing need to be delivered to Julia Grant, 34 St Mary’s Close, by 10th elcome back, hope that everyone September for the October issue, again it had an enjoyable summer! would be appreciated in advance of the W deadline. Items for Octobers issue need to be received no later than Monday 12th Call Kate Badger if you wish to have a September 3pm please. K.LINKS delivered 01905 820057. If you would like to advertise or send an Continued thanks to everyone who article for the magazine send to; supports our Parish magazine! [email protected] Susan Cawley 2 www.stmaryskempsey.org.uk Parish News The Vicar Writes We close our eyes our ears, our minds, don’t know about you but over the even our hearts to the fact that the I past weeks and months I have almost injustice, the oppression and the been afraid to get up and switch on the exploitation which have caused these news? I have been concerned when my cycles of hate, still exist in our civilised, children have been at any large gathering caring, world AND THAT WE TOO ARE or visiting a capital city and I have been PART OF THAT CYCLE! both sickened and brought to tears by the acts of hatred and violence human beings We convince ourselves that our cause can inflict on each other. I have had to is just and that we have the moral high explain to my small children why there ground yet do we know what it is to hold are people on the TV placing flowers and the limp bodies of our children in our lighting candles by the roadside and on arms, to watch our homes burn, to be street corners and why people sometimes the pawns in a power game for oil and hurt each other. money. In the midst of this I remembered myself Some history of course does not refer to as a child watching a man on TV being injustice now. It is stale and is handed on interviewed in the rubble of Beirut, he from generation to generation to keep had just been bombed out of his home. hate alive. I am not suggesting that we He was holding his small boy in his arms. should forget the past or ignore the perils He said: 'Now I shall fight to the death, of the present but that we learn from the and I shall teach my child to do the same'. past and open our eyes to what is really As my life has changed, as I have held going on around us now. The Holocaust, my own children in my arms, as I have the atomic bombs, must be remembered feared and fear for their future in a hostile as the most costly learning experience world I become more and more struck of humankind, as a warning of what we by the contrast between the tenderness human beings can do to each other. We with which that man held his son and the must also realise that most of have never venom in his words. Another brand had felt the true horror and cost of terrorism been burned into another family, scarred and war and we must wake up to the fact for perhaps three or four generations. that the terror, pain and death we see I look back and I wonder where that boy as some kind of perverse entertainment is today. I wonder if he is one of the many on our televisions, is real and bloody and masked gunmen who sow terror and vile! We must also wake up to the sinister harvest tears in a world that speaks of fact that there is far more going on here peace but seems to know only hate and than what we are fed and cajoled to vengeance. believe! Sometimes when we see these cycles None of this is new of course, and at of violence we feel trapped by the past. times like these people of faith do well We can't believe why in our brave new to return to their story. Some centuries civilised world we cannot rise above before Christ was born a man looked such base instincts and childish warring. out over his word and saw that the little Worse, we sit in our ivory towers and we land in which he lived had proved to look down on those who for centuries we be the place over which great powers have exploited and oppressed, deceiving fought; his people were a kind of pawn ourselves that gone are the abominations in the unscrupulous hands of competing of our lust for empire wealth and nations round about. What could that conquest, gone are the bad old days of man say or do or where could he find slavery, genocide and dictatorship. confidence in a world like that? Enquiries to [email protected] 3 Parish News The Vicar Writes We don't know who this man was but Each small cog when interlocked with from the poem he wrote, we can deduce another and another and another can that he was a man of the world, one who become the greatest machine an engine kept his eyes open. But his vision was for change that exerts such pressure that not confined to what his physical eyes it cannot be stopped. saw or by the propaganda he was fed. He was a man of faith and he had the I also want us to remember where the answer to the question of where to find Psalmists put their trust, in a greater confidence in a world gone mad. 'God is power! Remember too that a greater our hope and strength,' he said; 'a very Psalmist, Jesus Christ himself, dared, in present help in time of trouble. the face of all the terrors of his day, to call God Father and King. In the face I speak, of course of the Psalmist, his and of persecution, terror and perverted other similar writings breathe a superb notions of God he proclaimed God, A confidence. 'GOD REIGNS,' they say, God Heavenly Father who seeks the love has not abdicated, despite what men of his children; WHO SEEKS LOVE AND may do, GOD REIGNS, GOD LOVES, and PEACE FOR HIS CHILDREN and WHO GOD CARES. Despite the distance in time COMMANDS HIS CHILDREN TO LOVE ONE and space men like these can become a ANOTHER! Jesus dared to hold, in life means of hope and strength to us who and in death that GOD REIGNS, that he live in even more troubled days than LOVES; that he CARES. theirs. Jesus also proclaimed that God is not There are many today who are appalled dependent on the battalions, armies, by human insanity and man's inhumanity or even super powers to do his work. to man, many who at this very moment He showed us that God has a way of are desperate to bring to an end the working through minority groups, carnage of the hatred and violence that through individuals, through the weak is happening across the world. There are and powerless, through undistinguished many who weep because of atrocities people, even through men and women far from their own homes even nations. who are unconscious of being agents Those of many faiths and indeed of of his power. God works through the none who are enraged by the violence ‘still voice of calm’ through the flickering perpetrated in the name of faith and of candle flames of love and hope, those God! Those who despise our willingness placed in compassion and defiance in the to destroy to hurt and to kill, and all face of acts of insanity and inhumanity! who are all the more appalled because they feel that they can do so little about God works through you and me, far it. They are people like you and me though we may be from what most those who do not occupy the seats of people conceive of as corridors of power, power; whose world perhaps avails little; we can be the a centre of serenity in a who seems to be very small cogs in a world that seems to have gone mad. If vast impersonal machine. Those of us the room where we live becomes a place who perhaps feel it futile to protest, to of prayer and if our hearts are turned try and make our voices heard.