Chronicle THE MAGAZINE FOR APRIL 2021

The altar and corona above at Hereford Cathedral. Like many of our churches, including our own, the Cathedral re-opens for worship at Holy Week (in fact for the annual Chrism Mass on Wednesday 31st) and for the Easter celebration. It will be good to celebrate the risen Christ back in our churches - and I love the corona above the cathedral altar, which to me speaks of the crown of thorns become a crown of glory. 1

THE CHIRBURY HILLS GROUP OF PARISHES is part of the Pontesbury Group Ministry, comprising the parishes of Chirbury, Marton, Middleton w Corndon Marsh, Trelystan & Leighton. Rector: Revd Bill Rowell (01938 552064 or 07711 298104, [email protected]). Hon Assistant Priest: Revd Eric Brazier (01938 561450, [email protected]). At each church, contact the wardens as follows: Chirbury - Tony Sheppard (01938 561268); Marton - Maureen Jenkins (01938 561645); Middleton - Kay Yeates (01938 561640 or Emma Bailey-Beech (01686 669971); Trelystan - Janet Jones (07967 312460) or Rod Stevens (01938 580645); Leighton - John Markwick (01938 555043).

MORNING PRAYER - The Rector normally says Morning Prayer on Wednesdays at St Michael’s, Chirbury, and on Thursdays at Holy Trinity, Leighton, at about 10.30 am, and in each case the church then remains open in each case until 12 noon.

RECTOR’S OFFICE DAY - Revd Bill normally sets aside Monday of each week as a day for catching up with the stuff on his desk. This is therefore also a good day to catch him by phone!

OUR COVID PRECAUTIONS - All our churches are aiming to be as Covid secure as possible; these St Podwell’s are the rules we’re applying: As far as possible avoid touching door furniture and other surfaces as you enter and leave the church, and make use of the hand gel provided. Please leave contact details and/or scan the QR code if you have the NHS app. We need to maintain 2 metre social distance in church (and this is further than you might imagine), and wear masks unless there is a personal medical reason for not doing so. Singing is not allowed in church, so we will be listening to recorded versions of hymns. Should you experience symptoms that might be Covid within a week after attending service, or a test shows you have Covid, please “Sadly, Covid meant we had inform us straight away by contacting the Rector or to cancel the Easter Egg Hunt a church warden. These rules apply for public for this year. I wonder what worship, at funerals or if you enter church for any happened to all the eggs other reason, including for private prayer. Please though?” note that these rules continue to apply even if you have had a Covid vaccination. 2

SERVICES AROUND THE GROUP IN APRIL

DAY TIME CHURCH SERVICE______

1st - Maundy Thursday 7.00 pm Marton Holy Communion

2nd - Good Friday 9.30 am Middleton Morning Prayer 6.00 pm The Marsh Compline

4th - Easter Day 9.30 am Leighton Easter Communion 11.15 am Chirbury Easter Communion

11th - Easter 2 9.30 am Marton Holy Communion 11.15 am Middleton Family Service 3.00 pm Trelystan Service of the Word

18th - Easter 3 9.30 am Middleton Holy Communion 11.15 am Chirbury Holy Communion

25th - Easter 4 9.30 am Marton Holy Communion 11.15 am Leighton Service of the Word

This is a simplified form of services, and this month there will be no service at Chirbury on the second Sunday, at Leighton on the third Sunday, and the The Marsh on the fourth Sunday. All services will be a little shorter than normal, and 11.00 services have been moved to 11.15 to allow the Rector more time to wash and disinfect between services.

The simple service made available each week as a Word document and recorded on Youtube will continue. If you would like to receive this and don’t as yet, please let the Rector know ([email protected]); he will be glad to add you to the mailing list. Or the service can be accessed from the “A Church Near You” site for each church on the web. A few copies are placed in the notice boards at Leighton and Chirbury, and at the back of Middleton Church. The Rector is now also sending out a short “Hymn of the Week” commentary, with the words of the hymn and a recording, and there will continue to be some “live” services on Zoom. Details of these will be sent round to everyone on the mailing list.

FROM THE REGISTERS - Our sympathies and good wishes to the families and friends of Barry Griffin, Henry Evans and Irene Buckland, whose funerals have taken place in recent weeks, and of Blanche Edwards, whose ashes have been recently interred.

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Nature Notes . . . Swans and Cygnets One of our best known and loved water birds is the mute swan. I see them often, when walking the towpath of the Montgomery Canal. They look sedate and stately as they drift across the water. Mute swans are resident in the UK, and nest in almost every part of the country. They particularly like still or sluggish water, and plenty of aquatic vegetation to eat, so our little-used and often overgrown section of canal is ideal.

I was nudged into writing about swans this month because there’s a pair I’ve been watching that still have their two youngsters from last year hanging about with them. Cygnets start off fluffy and pale grey, and they remain a greyish-brown, with grey bills, until at four or five months or so they start to gain their white adult feathers and can fly. Once the young swans are mostly white-plumaged, the parents will normally drive them away - though they will be two or three years old before they breed.

Sometimes the cygnets will stay longer with the parents, or perhaps travel with them to join a larger winter flock. These two were still around two weeks ago when I saw them, but the parents were beginning to get a bit annoyed, the cob (male) especially. I spent an enjoyable ten minutes or so watching him bearing down angrily upon the youngsters, plodding heavily along the towpath with neck bent well back, which is a hostile posture, and grunting and hissing at them (mute swans are not actually mute, despite the name). At last he chivvied the two of them into the water, but they were soon back!

Mute swans are quite quarrelsome birds, especially in the breeding season when the male will carve out a large aquatic territory which he will defend against all comers. The next is a substantial mound of reeds and other water plants, in which four to seven eggs are laid, incubated by both parents, but mainly the pen (female). It can take a month or more for the eggs to hatch, and to begin with the cygnets are quite vulnerable to predators like pike or feral mink. The two I saw were probably the only ones to survive from a larger brood. Cygnets when small will sometimes ride on the back of a parent bird, which affords some protection.

Graceful on the water, swans are somewhat ungainly and cumbersome on land, and that was certainly true of the cob I was watching, though I suspect some of the heavy stomping of his huge webbed feet may have been for effect. It takes a fair effort to get a swan into the air too, but once airborne they are strong flyers (and you can hear the steady hum of the wing feathers as they pass overhead. Whooper and Bewick’s swans, two species than visit us in winter, fly substantial distances on migration, as will our own mute swans as they search out new territories. The next time I passed the territory of this pair, the pen was inspecting a nest mound, on which she eventually quietly settled. I think the kids had finally gone, so now Mum and Dad have become “empty nesters” - at least until this year’s eggs are laid.

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DEANERY THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH - FROM GREG FORSTER

One of my favourite church chants is the ‘Easter Anthems’ - verses from St. Paul which sum up the Christian hope focusing on our Lord’s death and resurrection. You can find them in an old Prayer Book with the collects and readings for Easter.

Paul affirms the truth of Christ’s resurrection and assures us that it was not a one-off for him alone. No, he was a pioneer for all who trust him - that’s what Paul means by the ‘first fruits of those who sleep.’ (I Cor. 15 v20-22) He, a human being, came through death onto the other side, and that victory gives a promise for all who trust him. We are perhaps more conscious at present of our mortality - ‘as in Adam, our human nature, all die,’ even though we do not think much about it normally. The reassurance of Easter is that death is not the last word, not the end of our story. ‘Even so in Christ shall all be made alive.’ Caught up with him through our faith we can look towards richer existence beyond physical death, whenever and however that comes.

But Easter is not just about a promise of life beyond death. It is about a new quality of life before death. Paul’s picture is like a hostage situation; we were held captive, forced to go along with our captors’ ways of doing things. The captors? Our own tendency to break relationships, hurt each other and act selfishly - sin, in other words - while our mortality ensnares us too, limiting our possibilities. But for Paul, Christ’s resurrection broke the power of the hostage-takers, liberating their prisoners - ourselves. Just as Christ came out on the other side, so he brings those who love him out with him too, so that ‘sin no longer holds us hostage.’ We are as good as dead to it. It has lost its power (Romans 6 v9-11). Paul invites us to use this new freedom to live in a good relationship with God, and with each other. Easter puts a new slant on life. A new energy has been released, we have the freedom and motive to live right.

Christ died at Passover, and Paul uses Passover pictures to show us how to celebrate it. It’s not just having a party or clearing out stale food. Jews clear leavened bread from their homes, and for the festival use a special kind, like a water biscuit. Leaven came to stand for what was wrong in people’s lives, and Paul suggests that Christians celebrate the resurrection, Christ’s and our own, not just through worship and prayer, but by clearing out old, bad habits from our lives - he labels them as malice and mischief (I Corinthians 5 v7,8), but it could be anything that breaks right relationships with those around us - resentment, perhaps, or unforgiveness. No, we celebrate by living honest, supportive and helpful lives with ‘sincerity and truth.’

So what might that mean now, and beyond Covid-19? Over to you! But it may be what you are doing already, going out of our way to keep in touch with church members and other neighbours, offering practical help where we can, with care, sympathy and understanding, noticing and greeting people whom we meet, even if we are now not

5 supposed to stop and chat. But that quality of Christian love is not just for Easter, or Covid-19, but for all life. ‘So, let us celebrate the festival!’

From the Bishop of Hereford

I’ve lost count of the number of times people have said to me, “everything happens for a reason.” It is normally in response to a personal tragedy or unexplained event. I often wonder what evidence lies behind that assertion. The desire to see meaning in the apparent chaos of the world seems entrenched. Of course, It could be an evolutionary artefact, like seeing patterns in the clouds, leftover from a need to make sense of the world so our ancestors didn’t get eaten by sabre-tooth tigers! Faith in that sense would be believing something in spite of the evidence, or despite evidence to the contrary.

Christians use the word faith very differently. In the New Testament, it’s not seen as an abstract quality, where someone might have 15 units of it, another 30 or another 5. It’s always faith in something, much more akin to trust than a set of intellectual convictions. For the first disciples, it was staking their lives, both now and in eternity, on something they passionately believed to be true. The root of their (and our) conviction is that Jesus rose from the dead. They witnessed it with their own eyes. We continue to believe the evidence for this historical event is compelling and have experienced the life-changing reality of encountering Jesus. To speak of the resurrection as a metaphor or in spiritual terms like ‘he rose in their hearts’ would have made no sense whatever to the disciples. The reality was difficult to comprehend, but they couldn’t deny the evidence of their own eyes and fingers as they reached out to touch him.

The resurrection was the final evidence they needed that the claims Jesus made during his earthly life were true. This was more than just a man, but in a real sense, God squeezed into human form. St. Paul put it very starkly, “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God!”

How very joyous then, that He has!! Christ is risen: He is risen indeed, Alleluia.

+Richard

Items for the May magazine A reminder that Emma is still collecting items for should reach the Rector by Sunday the Secret Art Sale that will now be later in the

18th April - thank you! See also year. Please donate a piece of your work, to be our A Church Near You sites sold “anonymously” to raise funds for our (ACNY) for pictures, events etc - churches! Contact Emma at via www.achurchnearyou.com [email protected], or on 01686 669971.

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Forest Church . . . Forest Church didn’t happen last year (apart from the Stone Circle service) because of Covid, but there will be a series of services again in 2021. The service at Mitchell’s Fold will be on either 27th June or 4th July (depending what else is happening!), but before that there will be a special service for Rogation Sunday, 9th May, when traditionally our prayers focus on the land around us and those who farm it. This will take place at Trelystan at 3 pm, partly in the church itself, but also in the churchyard, from which there are views across to Corndon, Stapeley and the Stiperstones (and more besides). This will take the place of Trelystan’s usual service for that day. There will be a list of Forest Church services in next month’ magazine. ANNUAL PARISH MEETINGS The Annual Parish Meetings of our churches have to take place by 20th June, and should if possible be ‘real’ meetings, usually in church, rather than on-line, so that everyone can attend. This means that those meetings already pencilled in for April may now be moved on into May. Before the Annual Meeting we need to review the electoral roll for each church, and would be glad to hear from anyone who would like to join the church electoral roll (those already on the roll do not need to do anything). Please look out for details of your Annual Meeting on the church notice boards and in next month’s magazine. Please note - not all our parochial church councils are as strong as they need to be, and we have several warden’s posts left unfilled. This leaves our churches - and your rector - not as well supported as they need to be. Please do attend your Annual Meeting! CELEBRATING OUR HISTORY The Rector is thinking of organising a “Celebrating our History” weekend towards the end of the Summer, with exhibitions in several of our churches of the history of the churches themselves and the area around. The aim is to encourage people both from within and beyond our communities to visit our churches, and to attract some new friends for our church buildings. At the moment this is just an idea, as we are still waiting to see how things unfold as regards Covid restrictions, and what safety will allow. NEW ARCHDEACON The new Archdeacon of Ludlow, Fiona Gibson, is in the process of moving into the diocese, and will be “collated” into her new post in Ludlow on Sunday 25th April. She will be meeting with Rural Deans and Lay Co-Chairs in the ensuing week, and is looking forward to getting to know her new “patch”, and visiting deaneries and local churches. The post of Bishop of Ludlow, meanwhile, is not being filled.

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CHURCH FINANCE We would like to express our gratitude for a number of very generous donations to our churches over recent months, while our “plate collections” and fund raising efforts have been curtailed due to Covid. Your support has meant a great deal to us. Thank you also to those who give regularly in other ways, including via standing orders, or by direct debit using the Parish Giving Scheme. Covid has knocked quite a hole in our finances - as a deanery we are some £60,000 short in what is promised this year, more or less the cost of providing one member of the clergy, and the diocese is anticipating a shortfall of some £900,000 over the year. We do not want to be in the situation of reducing clergy numbers, as has been happening in some other dioceses - but that’s where we could be if we don’t turn things round. LIVING IN LOVE AND FAITH This is a new report on matters of faith, sexuality and human identity, which the Church is asked to discuss at every level this year. The Rector will be attending a day conference on this in April, and it will be a major agenda item at the next Deanery Synod (20th May), after which we will need to decide how to tackle this difficult but hugely important subject in our parishes. AN IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARY Some people may be aware that the Rector passed a significant birthday milestone earlier this year, which went largely unmarked because of Covid. He does intend to celebrate it in early July, tying it in with the fortieth anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, which also falls this Summer. More on this anon . . .

MARIAN STAFFORD It is with great sadness that we say farewell to Marian, whose musical skill, Christian faith, kindness and good humour have contributed so much to our churches over many years. The picture shows the memorial to her on the gates of Leighton Church (thanks, Jane, it’s really lovely). Marian passed away peacefully after a short illness, and with so much done and given in her life, but lots left to do and to give too. We shall miss her very much, as will folk in many other churches and chapels, and lots of other places as well. She was simply a good friend to everyone she knew, and very much at the heart of her family. Our good wishes, sympathies and prayers go to Ericson and all the family in their loss. 8