THE ANCHOR & KEYS Bi-Monthly Parish Newsletter April / May 2021 St Clement with St Peter, Dulwich The Parish Directory Priest in Charge : Rev’d Cécile Schnyder Mobile No : 07384 464 885 Email : [email protected] Parish answerphone 020 8693 1890 website : http://[email protected] Twitter: @stclementwithstpeter Facebook : St Clement with St Peter, East Dulwich Churchwardens : Miss Phyllis Anderson & Mr Brian Scott Organist Mr Chris Caine Magazine Editor Miss Jane Packman [email protected] The Editor’s Notes….. Easter already and we’re not yet quite out of lockdown but hopefully we’re now on the right path. Plenty of things to keep you occupied again in this edition, remember if you have any articles you might like to share please do send them in. A reminder that Stewardship Matters is now only appearring to provide details of how to make your donations —our finances remain a great concern and should not be forgotten. The deadline for me to receive the June/July articles will be Sunday 23rd May please. Happy Easter to you all! Take care and please stay safe! Jane Dear Friends…. Christ is risen! After the kind of year that has passed, this season of Paschal joy carries so many additional notes of thanksgiving, reflection and new beginnings. It has been wonderful to be able to gather once more in a place that holds so many memories and that lifts our hearts towards God. We have missed seeing each other and we have missed the fuller participation in the Sunday Liturgy that we have had to forego for so much of the last year in order to keep each other safe from the virus shaping our lives so unexpectedly over that time. My overwhelming emotion is one of deep gratitude, not only for the ability to gather once more, but also for the extraordinary faithfulness of our community over the last year. We have not been hibernating, but have continued to pray together, support one another, make plans, learn together, care for our building and deepen our faith through these very significant challenges. We have done so much – perhaps more that you imagine. Much has happened during the last lockdown: We had Bishop Christopher with us to celebrate our Silver Jubilee, we joined Inclusive Church (finally after a huge delay), the PCC has voted for St Clement with St Peter to become an Eco church and our churchyard and St Clement Orchard are looking beautiful. All this is very exciting and you will hear more about each of these events in the upcoming months. As we emerge from the lockdown I am inviting you and the members of the PCC to think creatively in how we can bring our community together safely. As we regain some of our meeting places we may want to contemplate restarting the coffee mornings on a Thursday. Outdoors perhaps. We may want to think as to whether the knit and stitch group could start again and we could aim to have an outdoor tea party in the summer. All this needs to be done slowly and safely – but is really something to look forward to. Easter is reminding us that death has not had the last word but hope has. As we journey as Easter people may we re-discover how much we have grown this past year, personally but also as a community. I wish you all a happy Easter! With love, Cécile & Lina APCM - ADVANCE NOTICE! Due to lockdown restrictions last year which were all very new to us we were unable to hold our annual AGM/APCM and therefore our PCC Officers who were voted in at our 2019 meeting continued in post. It is planned that we will have a joint 2020/2021 AGM/APCM in some form or another on Sunday 16th May - please make a note of the date! NOTES FROM THE CHURCH MOUSE... Hooray, we’ve got people back in church, how lovely. I know we’ve all still got to be very careful and safety conscious—remember Face, Hands, Space! But isn’t it lovely to be able to greet people again even if socially distanced…... We got back together just in time for Mothering Sunday and the Anniversary of 25 years since the St Peter’s Congregation first started worshipping here with us and we became 1 church. We also had the privilege of having Bishop Christopher join us in person for this wonderful event and then to top it off he went round and blessed our new community garden… what a way to reboot our journey out of lockdown! We have so much to look forward to now what with Summer months and hopefully warmer weather to come and with luck all restrictions being lifted in June, so let’s hope the numbers continue to fall and please remember you can play your part and take that vaccine if it’s offered to you, I’ve been reliably informed by many of our friends that it doesn’t hurt and they didn’t have any adverse reactions so for now take care and look after yourselves and hopefully see you on Sunday. Until next time……. Clementine Bishops lead churches’ call to take up Covid vaccine Church of England Bishops have joined an NHS-backed campaign calling on congregations, communities and individuals to play their part in encouraging everyone who is offered a Covid-19 vaccine to take up the opportunity. With concerns over misinformation and significant numbers indicating mistrust, including in some UK BAME communities, the bishops were speaking as part of a recently launched united churches campaign called Give Hope. The Archbishop of York, together with the Bishops of Dover, Durham and Truro added their voices to a video which was launched on Sunday, together with members of other churches and groups. It is hoped that faith communities will use their networks to share trustworthy information about vaccines, helping to bust myths and reassure those who have been offered a vaccine of the true levels of associated risk. The Give Hope campaign is being run by YourNeighbour.org, a convening group working with Government, the NHS and faith communities in response to the challenges of ensuring a wide uptake of the vaccine. It encourages communities to • Have a conversation, • Offer information, • give Practical support and • Engage through communication channels such as social media. St George’s Day The film How to Train your Dragon is set in a Viking village under attack by dragons, who steal livestock and burn down houses. Hiccup, the village Chief’s son, invents a machine to capture them. However, when he catches the most dangerous one, Night Fury, he cannot kill it. This is because when he looks into the dragon’s eyes, he sees that he is just as frightened as himself. Through their friendship, the people and dragons eventually come to live in harmony. It’s appropriate to think about dragons this month, when we remember St. George, England’s patron saint, famed for slaying a dragon. Whether he actually killed a dragon is open to question! We do know that the original George was a Roman soldier at the time of Emperor Diocletian. He refused to renounce his faith, as commanded by the Emperor, resulting in his death on 23 April 303 AD. So, we have here St George who slayed a dragon, while Hiccup refused to kill one. They seem like opposites: one a brave soldier and the other a weak boy! However, both acted according to their conscience, going against what people expected and not worrying about the cost to themselves. St George was martyred for standing up for his faith in Jesus, while Hiccup risked rejection by his father and village because of his compassion. Today, we are still called to stand for Christ against wrongs and injustice in a daily life, despite the personal cost. We need to look into the eyes of apparent enemies and meet their hostility with love and compassion. And for all of us the most important place where we need to slay evil is in our own hearts. Don’t forget that we have the power of the Resurrection at our disposal! The Revd Dr Jo White continues her Reflected Faith series with what it can really mean to ‘wait.’ Reflected Faith: with all your soul, strength and mind This month I’m thinking about what we are all ‘doing’ in times of ‘waiting’. It’s very easy to just sit quietly and let the time pass by or just fill it in. Not exactly wasting time, but not using it for any useful purpose either. But as Christians we live in expectation all the time, don’t we? We live in the hope and promise of Christ’s return – even though we don’t know the ‘when’ or the ‘where’. Of course, there’s waiting and there’s waiting. I won’t say I’m the most patient person I know! If the internet goes down or something mechanical takes a few seconds too long to process, you can often hear me chuntering. But there are other times when the waiting itself is precious. I’m thinking this month of when we receive the bread and wine at the distribution of Holy Communion. Perhaps you have avoided church since the original lockdown in March, or been going but not receiving communion, or indeed you have been participating with an online service with your own equivalents at home. Whichever it is for you, cast your mind back to when you were last in that position – or indeed look forward to when we are all able to gather together again and we ‘queue’ to approach the altar.