Amberley Parish Magazine December 2007/January 2008 For your Cornish Holiday SOUTH TRELOWIA BARNS Peaceful location 4 miles from Looe B&B and self-catering Keith & Beverly Madley Tel: 01503 240709 Email: [email protected] www.southtrelowiabarns.co.uk 2 Services for December & January Sunday 2nd Dec 8 am Holy Communion Advent Sunday 10 am Parish Eucharist (Speaker: Mr John Fox, Trustee of Cecily Fund) 5.30 pm Advent Carol Service Wednesday 5th Dec 8 am Holy Communion Sunday 9th Dec 8 am Holy Communion (Methodist) 10 am Parish Eucharist Wednesday 12th Dec 8 am Holy Communion Sunday 16th Dec 8 am Holy Communion 10 am Family Service Tuesday 18th Dec 10 am Amberley Ridge School Carol Service (Everyone Welcome) Wednesday 19th Dec 8 am Holy Communion 2 pm Amberley Parochial School Carol Service (Everyone Welcome) Thursday 20th Dec 7 pm Amberley Parochial School Carol Service (Everyone Welcome) Friday 21st Dec 6 pm Service of Lessons and Carols Sunday 23rd Dec 8 am Holy Communion (1662) 10 am Parish Eucharist Monday 24th Dec 5.30 pm Christingle Service (see later article) Christmas Eve 11.30 pm Midnight Mass Tuesday 25th Dec 8 am Holy Communion Christmas Day 10 am Parish Eucharist Sunday 30th Dec 8 am Holy Communion 10 am Celtic Eucharist Tuesday 1st Jan 8 am Holy Communion (Circumcision of Jesus) Wednesday 2nd Jan 8 am Holy Communion (Basil & Gregory, bishops) Sunday 6th Jan 8 am Holy Communion Epiphany 10 am Parish Eucharist Wednesday 9th Jan 8 am Holy Communion (Continued on page 4) 3 Sunday 13th Jan 8 am Holy Communion Baptism of Christ 10 am Parish Eucharist (Methodist) Wednesday 16th Jan 8 am Holy Communion Sunday 20th Jan 8 am Holy Communion 10 am Family Service Wednesday 23rd Jan 8 am Holy Communion Friday 25th Jan 8 am Holy Communion (Conversion of Paul) Sunday 27th Jan 8 am Holy Communion (1662) 10 am Parish Eucharist 6 pm Unity Service at Woodchester Priory Wednesday 30th Jan 8 am Holy Communion (Charles, king & martyr) Sunday 2nd Feb 8 am Holy Communion 10 am Parish Eucharist Julian Group (Silent Prayer) every Friday, 9 am - 9.30 am in the Littleworth New Room – Everyone welcome ‘Common Worship’ Morning Prayer every weekday at 8 am. Evening Prayer every Thursday 5 pm. Both in Holy Trinity Church – Everyone welcome Rector’s Letter Last year it was Santa Claus, reindeer, snowmen and Christmas Trees. This year it is angels and Madonnas and Child. I’m talking of course about the Christmas issues of Royal Mail postage stamps. Many of us are pleased that, while not mind- ing our envelopes being gaily decorated as last year with stamps celebrating the secular and commercial side of the festival, this year each letter or card delivered by the postman will bear a stamp reminding us of the deeper significance of Christmas. The first of the Madonnas and Child, that on the second class stamp, is by Wil- liam Dyce, a Victorian artist who was influenced by the Italian Renaissance paint- ers such as Raphael and who was a forerunner of the more famous Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Dyce’s painting is of a beautiful young mother standing in a lovely mountainous landscape and affectionately holding her baby son. This is very much in tune with the rather sweet sentiments expressed in many Christmas car- ols. More in its favour, to my mind, is the fact that Jesus is portrayed as a real child, and not as an adult head on a child’s body as in many Renaissance paint- ings. To me the reality of Christ’s childhood points to his real sharing of our hu- manity, from birth to death, rather than his being a heavenly outsider looking in 4 on our earthly existence. The other Madonna and Child stamp is very different. It is an area of detail taken from a larger picture painted around 1400 by the artist Lippo di Dalmasio, not of the mother and child as in the nativity stories in gospels of Matthew and Luke, but rather of the mother and child described in Chapter 12 of the Book of the Revelation, right at the end of the New Testament. This book sets out Saint John’s vision of the end of the world and the establishment of Christ’s kingdom on earth. As depicted in the painting when viewed as a whole, John sees the woman clothed with the sun and wearing a crown of twelve stars, and persecuted by a dragon. The Woman gives birth to a male child, who is carried to heaven by angels before the dragon can devour him. The church has traditionally identified the woman with Mary and the child with Christ, whose return to earth results in the defeat of the dragon, giving way to a millennium of peace. What a contrast between the child born into beauty and safety and the one born into strife and risk. But is this not precisely the tension in Jesus’ life we find in the Gospels? In the wilderness this highly-gifted man is pulled between using his gifts to his own comfort and advantage and using them in the way God intended. Similarly in the Garden of Gethsemane he is pulled between saving his own skin and facing inevitable death for our sake. The other four stamps are of angels, creatures that appear in the scriptures as God’s messengers. These specially commissioned renaissance-style paintings are by the Italian illustrator Marco Ventura, and depict the Angel of Goodwill, the Angel of Peace, the Angel of Joy and the Angel of Glory. These four titles come from the account in Chapter 2 of the St Luke’s Gospel, in which angels appear to the shepherds, bringing “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people” and praising God saying “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good- will toward men”. The title “Goodwill” points to the fact that, through the life and death of this Christchild Jesus, we receive all the benefits of God’s grace, his freely-given love for us despite ourselves. “Peace” implies that he comes to bring freedom to the victims of those who misuse position, those on the edge of society who are excluded by the powerful, in his day by the Roman military occupiers and the Jewish Temple establishment. “Joy” indicates that, through the resurrec- tion that will ultimately come at the end of the child’s earthly life, we his follow- ers will be blessed by the deep-down happiness that comes through faith in the essential goodness of all things and in the ultimate triumph of all that is honest, good and holy. Finally “Glory” describes how the child will come to reveal God’s true and wonderful nature in his own being. Although the events surrounding the Nativity happened two thousand years ago, the significance of them, as I have tried to indicate, is as vital today as it was then. Symbolically the six stamps serve to bring these historic events into the present, in effect as though they are happening now. Could this apply to other issues of stamps, not just Christmas ones? There is an on-going campaign, entitled “Queen (Continued on page 6) 5 (Continued from page 5) and Country” and advertised on the website www.artfund.org, to persuade the Royal Mail to bring out an issue commemorating the British service men and women who have died in the conflict in Iraq. The charity The Art Fund is sup- porting a vision by the artist Steve McQueen for the photographs of those who have died to appear on the stamps, and is asking for all in agreement to add their names to the petition on the website. Some people will no doubt think this inappropriate. But I support the proposal for reasons not dissimilar to those I have described for the Christmas stamps. Each letter we receive would continue to keep alive the memory of that service person and all his or her dead and maimed colleagues, a memory that it would be more comfortable to forget. It would make us continue to face up to the awfulness of the present situation that, on our behalf, our forces are trying to bring to an end. It would continuously appeal to us to seek solutions other than the violence of war to resolve differences and to confront evil. It would continuously impress upon us the need to keep faith “in the essential goodness of all things and in the ultimate triumph of all that is honest, good and holy.” In a way the issue of such stamps would serve to carry the message of Christmas 2007 into the New Year of 2008. May the New Year bring you and those you love every blessing. Young People’s Diary Quest dates (6.45 – 8pm): 16th Dec, 20th Jan Youth Group dates: Junior (6.30 – 8pm): 3rd Dec (7 to 8.30), 7th and 21st Jan, 4th and 25th Feb, 10th Mar Senior (7 – 8.30pm): 3rd Dec, 14th and 28th Jan, 11th Feb, 3rd and 17th Mar Bible Storytime - 9.30am - in church Monday, 10th December 6 ACC Open Meeting There will be an Open Meeting of the ACC on Tuesday 8th January in the Little- worth Hall from 7.30pm on the subject of “The Involvement of Children, Young People and Families in Our Church Life”. We shall be joined by Revd Dr Sandra Millar, the Diocesan Children’s Officer. We hope very much you will be able to join us to meet Sandra and to consider this very important topic.