TWENTY FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
6th November 2011
Graphics and cartoons & liturgical material appear only in the printed version
THE BLUES
A five dollar note feeling blue met a sunny fifty dollar note. "Hey, where have you been?" asked the five dollar note. "I haven't seen you round for a while." The fifty dollar note replied, "I've been here and there, you know, hanging out at the casino and places like that. I went on a cruise in January, around the Pacific islands and then around the Caribbean, then back home, where I went to a couple of football games, did some shopping, the movies, that kind of stuff, never a dull moment. So how about you?" The five dollar note sighed and replied, "Just the same old stuff: church, church, church!"
THIS, THAT
AND THE OTHER (21)
Andrew Neaum
I have been resident in Australia for twenty six years. This means that I have now lived longer here than anywhere else in the world. My time in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe lasted for about twenty five years, and during that time there was a year and a half in England teaching, and two years and a half studying in South Africa.
A new citizen
With this in mind, a few months ago I decided to apply at last for Australian citizenship. It proved to be remarkably easy compared to the hugely complicated business of applying for a provisional Permanent Resident Visa for Diana. After submitting my application forms and certified copies of this, that and the other, I was phoned after but a few weeks by a friendly man with a strong Indian accent. He told me that all was well and that I would soon be receiving a letter from Canberra informing me of the approval of my application.
He went on to ask me why I had waited so long to apply. I told him that it was a mixture of idleness and inertia, which raised a chuckle. I then asked him if I would have to undergo the Australian Citizenship Test and he replied, "Oh no, there will be no need, we respect senior citizens far too much for that!" It was my turn to chuckle.
Ambivalence
Oddly, when I am in England I feel happily Australian and when in Australia happily English. In the United Kingdom I support Australian sporting teams, in Australia English ones. This ambivalence might be supposed to derive from uncertainty as to my identity and confusion as to exactly where I belong, perhaps arising from an early childhood spent in a variety of outlandish places. However I suspect it has more to do with a hard to account for, but deep-rooted perversity and scepticism in me that finds it easier and more comfortable to define myself by opposition rather than by belonging.
A born sceptic I tend to dabble in and worry myself frazzled in the writings of atheists in order to be assured of and hold on to God. I appreciate his likely presence by dwelling on his undoubted absence. I love paradox.
Pullulating timidly
Needless to say then, my favourite piece of Australian verse is not a rollicking bush ballad, nor a patriotic jingle like our less than admirable national anthem. Rather it is A. D. Hope's famous poem "Australia", expressive of an ambivalent, subtle, understated love of his native land that arises out of and also in spite of a clear-sighted, honest, critical disdain:
.....her five cities, like five teeming sores,
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state
Where second hand Europeans pullulate
Timidly on the edge of alien shores.
Yet there are some like me turn gladly home
From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find
The Arabian desert of the human mind,
Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come,
Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare
Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes
The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes
Which is called civilization over there.
Exercising the vote
Once I am pledged I will be required to vote. I have never voted in my life. My few years as an adult teacher in England did not coincide with an election. Nor was I ever a Rhodesian or Zimbabwean citizen in all my years as a resident there.
Will my first trip into a polling booth be as exciting to me as it was for all those long- deprived, black South Africans after the fall of apartheid? When it comes to voting in local government elections, will I be able to resist the blandishments of Mr Muto?
Walnuts once more
The walnut tree is covered with little green walnuts, and the cockatoos regularly send spies overhead to monitor their edibility. We eye them similarly ourselves because Diana has a Canadian/Greek daughter in law, Olga, who has introduced her to a Greek recipe for delicious, sugar-glazed, green walnuts (Glyko Karythi). We hope this year to beat the cockatoos to the immature nuts and work wonders with them.
This week we used nuts collected over the last few years to make walnut marzipan again. We wrap it around date and walnut cake to eat as a dessert with natural yoghurt and home made lemon curd. A curious but delicious combination of flavours and textures.
You can of course pickle green walnuts. However, like pickled eggs, they rarely live up to expectations, being too mouth puckeringly vinegary.
Down by the riverside
Last Sunday Diana and I enjoyed a splendid meal and the excellent company of the Murchison and Rushworth folk. After a pleasing Eucharist in the lovely Murchison church there were tasty nibbles in the church hall over a cuppa, then many of us made our way to the home of Robert and Heather Smith, which is set on the edge of the woodlands that flank the Goulburn river and which are alive with the calls of birds.
On every fifth Sunday the two congregations get together for a single service followed by an excellent meal in someone's home. There is an open invitation to all of us for these, the more the merrier. The cost is usually $20 and for catering purposes numbers need to be phoned in. So when notice of one such feast is given in this pew sheet, do take up the offer. The Fennels joined us last Sunday and were royally welcomed. A lovely day.
House blessing and Islam
On Melbourne Cup day Diana and I went to bless the fine new home of Handson and Lynett Nhanhanga on Verney Road North. The house blessing service I have refined and developed over the years is lovely, full of good biblical quotes and fine prayers. With young Comfort sprinkling the holy water, and robust little Blessing in his Dad's arm, it was pleasing to note that the word "blessing" and the word "comfort" both occur in the service, a fact noted by an alert Comfort. It was good too to bless a kitchen in full use, emitting delicious aromas to blend exotically with the incense. After a lovely meal we dashed off home to consider Islam in the good and lively company of our study group.
Next week's study will be the last until after Christmas. Diana and I head for New Zealand on the 14th of November for two weeks. We will reconvene the group to finish the course early enough to complete it well before Lent.
Daily journals
One of the most amusing facets of applying for Diana's permanent residence was the need to explain our relationship, and to give an account of its history. Mere friendship began twenty seven or eight years ago, and as proof of this we turned to my daily journal of the time. There we discovered not only compli-mentary comments about Diana and her family, but also rather less flattering ones, to her amusement and my embarrassment. Diana, Michael, Pula and Martha arrived on the island of St Helena in 1984. On July 31st my journal contains the following: "On Sunday though cold, to the Houghton's after St Martin's for what proved to be a very pleasant afternoon. Still think they are excellent..... roast chicken but with little imagination or finesse and bread and butter pudding - bottle of wine and sherry before. Went walk in afternoon round Mundens....." As Diana points out, she was feeding our family of five with her's of four after a morning involved at their church which included managing a Sunday School in her vicarage with sixty children. We were lucky to receive a cooked meal at all, with or without finesse!
A first journal
The first most personal, perhaps lurid and certainly most interesting journal I ever kept was when I was teaching in London in the very early seventies.
It was a time when I was courting a very Roman Catholic girl, was teaching in a succession of truly terrible schools and re-discovering the Christian faith. My faith, though not my attendance at church, had been sorely tried and all but shelved during my last years at school and right through university. I imagined at the time that it was reason and intellect that brought on my doubt. The wisdom that comes with maturity, coupled with hindsight, suggests the more probable cause to have been a combination of libido and hedonism.
Sadly I destroyed my first journal in a fit of timidity. I feared that it might reveal too much of what lay behind "the face that we prepare to meet the faces that we meet". Certainly I could not bear the thought of any unauthor-ised person reading it. So the record of one of the most significant periods of my life has gone for ever. I regret this enormously. I would love to make again the acquaintance of the man I used to be.
Cold water
The man I used to be was one who in an unlikely bed-sitter in Chiswick had at that time a most significant religious experience. He also had a kindly landlady who expected him to bath only once a week and who turned off the hot water for the duration of summer.
So perhaps it was cold water that doused my libido and hedonism sufficiently to allow faith to re-emerge and recapture me. If so it was cold water combined with listening to the singing of Psalm 37 on a cold weekday afternoon in Westminster Abbey choir stalls: "Fret not thyself because of the ungodly...." If so it was cold water combined with attendance at the Eucharist and evening Benediction in the smoking, gold-glittering gloom of All Saints' Margaret Street. If so it was cold water combined with a religious experience that came upon me as I was kneeling by the maroon bedspread-covered, narrow pallet of my tiny bed-sitter and reciting the Sanctus at the end of a poor attempt at prayer. As I did so I was overcome by a sensation of light and heat and a sureness of God's reality and presence.
After many vicissitudes these experiences led me to an ACCM Conference in Woking, to a theological college in South Africa, to a diaconate and first curacy in Salisbury, Rhodesia, to a rectorship in Gatooma in Rhodesia which while I was there became Kadoma in Zimbabwe, then on to a vicarship and archdeaconry on the Island of St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean and then to four rectorships in Victoria, Australia.
How stupid to destroy a journal that recorded the beginning of all of that!
Celebrating Rectory life
Since my time in London I have kept journals intermittently, and for the past ten years regularly, but no journal has ever been allowed to be too personal. I remember once reading an edition of Evelyn Waugh's journals. After making some more than usually outrageous statement he would add in brackets "future editor please expunge that comment", or words to that effect. My private journals also take account these days of possible future readers, authorised or unauthorised. I am careful and so nowhere near as interesting as I might otherwise be.
Like Waugh's journals, this diary column in the parish pew sheet, much of the raw material for which is extracted from my private journal, has an editor, myself, who all too readily expunges anything truly outrageous. My purpose is to celebrate priest-hood, parsoning, parish-life and pastoring, rather than to startle or dazzle.
In 1972, a large, jovial, big-bellied Arch-deacon at my Selection Conference in Woking said to us all at the end of the Conference that he had been a parish priest for thirty eight years, and that to be one had been the most interesting, glorious, and varied of privileges and vocations that could ever be. I could not agree more.
CONGRATULATIONS
Birthdays:
Kath Grills 8th Nov
Frank Harder 12th Nov
Wedding Anniversaries:
Rosemary & Norm Mitchelmore 6th Nov
Iris & Charles Grant 7th Nov
John & Jennifer Pleming 11th Nov
CHARITY CARD & GIFT SHOP
Scot's Church Hall, Cnr. Fryers & Corio St.
Opening Hours:- 9.30am - 4.30pm Monday - Friday.
9.30am - 12 noon on Saturdays
FATHER JOHN AND FAITH MARSH
Fr John Marsh takes the Eucharist on Wednesday 9th. Come along to the service and stay for a cuppa and chat with him and Faith.
FRIENDSHIP GROUP
The Friendship Group meets on Nov 15th at 2pm. Special guests: John & Faith Marsh. All welcome.
EVENING GUILD
The Evening Guild meets on Nov. 17th at 1.30pm for the Eucharist with a Meeting to follow.
"SUNDAYS @ 5"
The alternative worship service is tonight at 5.00pm in the Narthex it will be a Taizé style, reflective meditative service.
CALENDARS
The Anglican Calendars have arrived so if you have ordered one please pick it up from the office .
GRIEF SUPPORT - "MOVING ON"
A Dinner Meeting on Nov 8th at 6.30pm in the Narthex. The Guest speaker is Helen Mathieson, who is the Admissions Co-Ordinator for Shepparton Villages. Her topic: "Taking Control". Please put your names on the list on the Narthex table for catering purposes. All Welcome.
QUIET DAY
Saturday 10th December 10am – 3.30pm St Paul's church/hall Rushworth. All parishioners are invited to take a break from the Christmas frenzy in a beautiful setting to refresh and re-create through periods of silent reflection. The day will start with morning tea and conclude with the Eucharist. Please BYO lunch (just for yourself although we can eat as a group), a chair if you want to sit outside, something to read or just yourself.
CAROL SERVICE
We are beginning to practice for our Carol Service which is likely to be on Thursday the 15th of December. Anyone who would like to join us for this most enjoyable and worthwhile sing, come along on Thursdays at 6.00pm to practise.
POST MORTEM
The final meeting of the Parish Fair and Garden Party Planning Group will be held on Thursday 10th November at 4.00pmin the Narthex. Please come We would appreciate your suggestions for the future: "what went right" and "what could be even better".
EDUCATION FOR MINISTRY
– would you like to join us to deepen your understanding of the links between life, God, the bible and your faith? Our EfM group has had another wonderful year – we've learned and laughed lots! We've been at capacity this year and could run two groups next year if there is enough interest. You need no formal theological training, just an interest in reflecting on what is happening in your life and where this is touched by the story of God's people. It is NOT training for ordination, it is NOT asking you to DO more and it is SO MUCH MORE than Bible study (just ask any of the current EfM group)! EfM is a learning community that facilitates you coming to know God better as He acts in your life and through the ministry that you are already doing. For more information, ask Helen hmalcolm@bigpond.com, Victoria heeno@bigpond.com, Heather in the office, or any of the current group: Carole, Heather F, Heather P, Linda, Bev., Joan, John or Kate. Deadline for letting Helen know if you'd like to join us next year is 18th December.
EfM MISSION STALL
Sunday 20th November at the Craft Market: in the Queen's Gardens:The EfM group is to run a stall to raise money to support our parish's mission giving through ABM for water and education projects in the Philippines. We will be selling handmade craft items such as bookmarks, beads, novelty pencils, Christmas decorations etc. and there will be a raffle. We would encourage parishioners to assist us by supplying new/as new craft items of paper/wool/cloth/ wood/pottery eg baby clothes, soft toys etc. and also by patronising the stall on the day. Raffle prizes: 1st prize: $100 shopping voucher; 2nd prize: set of 4 coffee cups and saucers; 3rd prize: potted plant; 4th prize: lady's pamper pack. Tickets $1 from anyone in the EfM group. For more information contact Helen or Heather in the office.
READINGS NEXT WEEK
Judges 4:1-10, 14-25, Thessalonians 5:1-11
FOR THE DIARY
Nov 6th Sundays@5/Alternative worship service
Nov 8th "Moving On" Grief Support Dinner Meeting
Nov 12th Wedding 2pm
Nov 15th Friendship Group 2pm/Narthex
Nov 17th Evening Guild/Eucharist & Meeting 1.30pm
Nov 19th Wedding 1pm
Nov 19th Wedding 3pm
Nov 26th Wedding 2pm
Dec 3rd Women's Breakfast
Dec 10th Parish Quiet Day
Dec 10th Men's Breakfast
Dec 10th Wedding
Dec 15th Carol Service
Dec 16th Concert: Sempre Cantare
Oct 20th 2012 Parish Fair and Garden Party
Duties for 6th November 2011
Readers 8.30 Victoria Heenan, John Wellman
Readers 10.30 Nancy Noonan, Charlotte Brewer
Servers 8.30 Beth Brewer, Michelle Woodyard
Servers 10.30 Rick, Sam & Braden Coates
Intercessors Pat Griffin, Andrea Fisher
Euc. Assts 8.30 John Griffin, Bev Condon
Euc. Assts 10.30 Jenny Pleming, Joe Fernandez
Welcomers 8.30 Eileen Quaife, Anita Saville
Welcomers 10.30 Jenny Moran, Frank Steen
Sidespeople 8.30 Trevor Batey, Joy Campbell
Sidespeople 10.30 Jenny Moran, Charlotte Brewer
Tea 8.30 Gwyn Cowland
Welcoming Table Beverley Walsh
Mowing Margaret & Brendan Carroll
Altar Linen/Nov Ella Egan
Duties for 13th November 2011
Readers 8.30 Jeanette Smith, Norm Weaver
Readers 10.30 Verna Pestell, Greg Pestell
Servers 8.30 Michelle, Beth
Servers 10.30 Greg, Eve, Grace
Intercessors Norman Weaver, Children
Euc. Assts 8.30 Bev Condon, Heather Fitzgerald
Euc. Assts 10.30 Greg Pestell, Christine Evans
Welcomers 8.30 Gwen Betson, Shirley Dean
Welcomers 10.30 Sandra Simonis, Nola Brewer
Sidespeople 8.30 Joe Pearson, Norman Mitchelmore
Sidespeople 10.30 Nola Brewer, Mitch Macheda
Tea 8.30 Val Bambrook
Welcoming Table Dorothy Cook
Mowing none this week
Altar Linen/Oct Ella Egan
REQUESTS FOR PRAYER
Nicole Ackland, Margaret Aldous, Alan & Hilary Akers, Liam Bognar, Joy & Ian Carmen, Ross & Helen Dainton, Anna and Heather Fitzgerald, Beryl Goodfellow, Frank Harder, Katherine Holt, John & Kate Horder,Elsie Lieschke,Olive Paez, Margaret Kidman, Albert Oxenbury, Val Rose, Ethel & George Rumble, Patricia Sparkes, Peter Swindells, David, Peter, Val, David & Judith, Kaye, Pat, Lewis.
Rest in Peace: Bill Stagg
Anniversaries: Jessie Mitchelmore, William Elliott 6th, Doreen Hamer, Gwenda Brown 7th, Valerie Church 8th, Verna Green 9th, Dick Philp, Peter Davis 10th, Patricia Lbrahim, Dick Turner 11th, Horace Peston, Alice Warren 12th.
THIS WEEK IN THE PARISH
Monday 7th November (Rector's day off)
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
Tuesday 8th November
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
11.00am Shepparton Aged Care
11.00am Social Responsibilities meeting/Library
6.30pm Grief Support Dinner Meeting/Narthex
7.30pm Islam Study - Rectory
Wednesday 9th November
7.45am Mattins only - Lady Chapel
10.00am Eucharist - St Augustine's
12.30pm Deanery Meeting - Numurkah
4.30pm Vestry Meeting
5.30pm Hospice meeting
6.00pm EfM - Roz's Room
Thursday 10th November
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
10.00am Eucharist - Mercy
11.00am Eucharist- Ave Maria
11.00am Eucharist - Harmony
4.00pm Parish Fair post mortem meeting - Narthex
5.30pm Choir Practice - St Martin's Chapel
Friday 11th November
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
5.30pm Wedding Rehearsal
Saturday 12th November (Associate Priest's Day off)
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
11.00am Baptism
2.00pm Wedding
6.00pm Vigil Eucharist - Lady Chapel
22nd Sunday after Pentecost 13th November
8.30am Sung Eucharist - St Augustine's
10.30am Eucharist - St. Augustine's/Kid's Church
8.45am Eucharist - St Luke's
10.45am Eucharist - St. Mary's
9.00am Morning Prayer- Rushworth
11.00am Morning Prayer-Murchison