FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
10th July 2011
Graphics and cartoons & liturgical material appear only in the printed version
FROM SCOTLAND
The rain was pouring and there was a big puddle in front of the pub. A ragged old man was standing there with a rod and hanging a string into the puddle. A tipsy-looking, curious gentleman came over to him and asked what he was doing. "Fishing," the old man said simply. "Poor old fool," the gentleman thought and he invited the ragged old fellow to a drink in the pub. As he felt he should start some conversation while they were sipping their whisky, the gentleman asked, "And how many have you caught?" "You're the eighth," the old man answered.
Question: What do you call a skeleton in a kilt?
Answer: Boney Prince Charlie.
"Aha", said the Customs officer, producing a bottle of whisky. I thought you said your case contained nothing but clothes." "Correct," Hamish replied, "that's my nightcap."
THIS, THAT
AND THE OTHER (4)
Andrew Neaum
With Islam resurgent and playing a growing part of our society it is important that we know something about it, especially in relation to Christianity. With this in view I have ordered a sample copy of a thirteen week Church Group Study Course on Islam in relation to Christianity. If it is as good as it sounds I will be offering a weekly evening session at the Rectory soon. Should enough people be interested we might also put one on in the daytime. There will soon be a list in the narthex for the names of those interested.
St Philip Larkin for Atheists
Every time I drive back from Melbourne to Shepparton I am reminded of Philip Larkin, a favourite poet. This is because on the Hume Highway, somewhere near Tallarook, there is a road sign for Dockery Road. One of Larkin's best and most characteristically pessimistic poems is called "Dockery and Son". It ends:
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.
I love Larkin and consider him to be the perfect patron saint for atheists. An un-believer, he wrote one of the most despairing, depressed and unutterably bleak poems in our literature. It is called "Aubade" and ought to be read at the funerals of atheists, especially arrogant ones. It is brilliant, a superb depiction of terror and funk at the prospect of death and annihilation and of the hopelessness of existence without the Gospel. Mind you, it dismisses religion as any consolation at all, calling it memorably if unfairly: that vast moth-eaten musical brocade created to pretend we never die.
The poem is ruthlessly honest. Few atheists would be fair dinkum enough to ask for it at their funeral just because of that. On such occasions, in my experience, they tend still to cling to the farcical notion that an individual life makes some sort of sense and has some sort of purpose, even when there is nothing to be viewed of it except the backward glance over the shoulder, no hope, no promise.
Apparently one of Larkin's most favoured aphorisms was: "Life is so flat that you can see your own tombstone at the other end."
Birthday partying
I went to a delightful birthday party on Sunday, for which I wrote a special Grace, though it was hardly a Grace, more a tribute to the birthday girl. God will forgive me, I am sure. It was rather different from my usual verse graces, more reminiscent of a W. S. Gilbert "patter song", consisting largely of a long, polysyllabic, rhythmical catalogue of the birthday girl's many virtues.
At the party I sat between two delightful ladies and enjoyed some animated con-versation. We touched for a while upon a great interest of mine, namely "nostalgia". I wrote a sermon on the subject not long ago, noting that nostalgia was once known as the Mal du Suisse, because the infamously effective sixteenth and seventeenth century Swiss mercenary soldiers were particularly prone to an intense form of it. It was appar-ently so severe that it sometimes led to their death, the only remedy being to send them back home to the mountains, alp horns, cattle bells and edelweiss they pined for. The word nostalgia means literally "aching for home" or more generally "aching for the past".
Music and nostalgia
Later that day I was typing away at a letter to Diana while listening to a magical piece of Mozart, one of his lovely, easy to listen to piano variations. I remarked upon this in my letter, going on to say that on reflection it was the theme itself, rather than the variations upon it, which seemed especially magical to me. The variations held my attention in part, simply by promising to redeliver the theme in its perfection, but they didn't. All they offered were versions, reminders, snatches and hints. Which is a bit like nostalgia. The past is irrecoverable, the magic moment departs forever. To revisit it is never to recover it. Even when apparently unchanged on a revisitation, its context is very different, in that we view it from a different time and place and so our perspective has radically changed. Nostalgia is always therefore bitter sweet. Things can never be the same again, the aching never entirely goes away.
Nigh unto death
A part of growing old, it seems, is learning to accommodate yourself to decline not only physically and mentally in the self, but also in much of what we hold dear outside of the self. I love the Church, especially in its classic Anglican forms, but its decline, especially in Australia, appears inexorable. Then there are all sorts of traditional pursuits that are nigh unto death as well, not least of them Scottish Country Dancing. In days gone by there would surely have been an active group in a town of the size of Shepparton, but not nowadays, and many of the large groups in Melbourne have all but died. On Tuesday evening I headed all the way to Wodonga to participate in a resuscitated group in my old parish. I have to admit that this was less because I love Scottish Country Dancing than because I find it difficult to say "no" to heart-felt requests. It was fun to be back dancing at St John's, a parish of which I was Rector in my prime, but it was a small and elderly band of dancers and the dickens of a long way to go. The survival of the group is in the balance. I got back by midnight.
Decline need not lead to despair, for which there is no room in sure faith. The decline of the Church in the only form that I find congenial should not worry me over much. That whatever is good, true, lovely and of God cannot die permanently, is part of what the doctrine of Resurrection is about. I have great faith that this is so.
The fact that the only successful forms of Anglicanism these days seem to me to be loud, unsubtle, banal and even ugly, is no cause for despair. Judaism, during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, became narrow, fanatical, xenophobic and lost any notion of Isaiah's great vision of the nation and faith being a "light to the Gentiles". However it was arguably the ugliness, narrowness of vision and xenophobia that helped Judaism to survive in difficult times, so enabling the great burst of light to the gentiles that occurred in Bethlehem a few centuries later. All will be well, all manner of things will be well. We simply hold on to all that is good, beautiful, lovely and loving and trust God and his goodness.
Traditionalists
On Wednesday mornings for Mattins and on Saturdays mornings for both Mattins and the Eucharist, John Price and myself are usually on our own. We therefore indulge ourselves with the old rite. We love it, not least for the escape it offers from the grammatical contortions that are necessary to accom-modate "inclusive language," and for the sweet music and anachronisms of Coverdale's translation of the psalms. Best of all, though, is a sense of solidarity with one's parents, grandparents and ancestors in allowing their worship to chime more exactly with ours. The actual, worn Book of Common Prayer I use for Mattins is the one that my father's eyes traversed for years and years and years before he died. Lovely. The Roman Catholics have a new translation of their missal. I have not looked at it except cursorily, but wholeheartedly approve of the change back to the old response to the versicle: "The Lord be with you". It is now once more the sweet, traditional form "and with your spirit" instead of "and also with you".
Roz at rest with us
We laid the ashes of Roz Dunlop to rest in the Memorial Garden on Thursday, the anniversary of her death. It is a simple little service but altogether lovely, especially for someone to whom St Augustine's was a spiritual home. I love the whole idea of having the mortal remains of the faithful as part of the very fabric of the Church or gardens. When we are at Eucharist our loved ones are closer to us spiritually than at any other time, a truth easier to apprehend if their physical remains are with us too. Which reminds me of the lovely poem by John Betjemann called "House of Rest" which tells movingly of an old clergy widow and ends:
Now when the bells for Eucharist
Sound in the Market Square,
With sunshine struggling through the mist
And Sunday in the air,
The veil between her and her dead
Dissolves and shows them clear,
The Consecration Prayer is said
And all of them are near.
The can of worms
Trolling the newspapers on the Web early this morning, I noticed an advert for a program on Channel Ten called "Can of Worms".
I never watch Channel Ten because I cannot abide adverts and so am unlikely ever to see the program advertised. The form of the advert in the newspaper on the Web was so vivid that my evasive eye simply could not escape it. It blinked, winked and beckoned me to say either "yes" or "no" to the question Is it wrong to tell your kids there is no God?
Not only do I avoid adverts as assiduously as possible, I also refuse to participate in polls. So I averted my eyes and instead went on to read all about carbon taxes and Julia Gillard. That soon drove me to get on with this pew sheet. Much of what we skim in the daily papers is tedious enough to make the dullest of sermons appear exhilarating.
Is it wrong to tell your children there is no God, though? Strictly speaking it surely is. No one, to my knowledge, has ever been able to come up with irrefutable proof of God's non-existence, let alone of his existence. God, by definition, is outside of and beyond what we normally mean by "proof". So to tell children unequivocally and without qualification either that he exists or does not exist is wrong. We can tell them that we personally are sure that he does or doesn't exist, and why, but also, should they enquire, that in such matters "proof" is impossible and undesirable.
This was implicitly acknowledged by the Richard Dawkins sponsored atheists who decided to spread their "good news" by way of adverts on London Buses. All they could come up with was: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." A pretty feeble slogan, but not dishonest. The the weak word "probably" is debatable though.
Richard Dawkins said of this bus-slogan campaign (in his nasty and arrogant way): "....to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think - and thinking is anathema to religion." This is such arrant nonsense that you cannot help but wonder about the sort of person Dawkins is. The medieval Christian philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas is one of the greatest thinkers of all time. His philosophy remains of huge interest and relevance to philosophy today. Moreover there are hugely significant and impressive twentieth and twenty first century Christian thinkers too. Karl Barth, Jurgen Moltmann and Rene Girard for a start. No wonder that a postgraduate philosophy friend of Rachel's said to her once, "Dawkins makes me almost ashamed of being an atheist".
A VISIT FROM THE BISHOP
Next Sunday, July 17th,we are to be visited by the Bishop. He is due to be present at both the 8.30am and 10.30am Eucharists at St Augustine's. He is, as we know, the most amiable of fellows, a good preacher and an excellent thing. Do make a point of being present to welcome him.
CONGRATULATIONS
Birthdays:
Adrian Evans 10th July
Pat Gibson 11th July
Betty Pleming 14th July
Jon Daivis 14th July
Dorothy Cook 14th July
OUTREACH DEADLINE
The next edition of Outreach will come out in mid-August. Please have any material for publication by 31st July to Helen via the church office or at hmalcolm@bigpond.com
PARISH FAIR AND GARDEN PARTY 23rd October 2011
The Organisers are pleased to give advance notice of the displays to be viewed in the Church on the occasion of the Parish Fair and Garden Party:
In the Narthex:
Members of the Shepparton and District Gem Club, Inc., will exhibit their display cases; they will also give demonstrations. The Club President is Maurice Brodie who, with his wife, operates The Rockery at Longwood (which our ladies' groups have visited). There will be no sales, of course.
Adjacent to the Sanctuary:
A small display of Character Jugs, Humidors, Ginger Jars and Asian artefacts will be presented by Greg and Verna Pestell (they were featured on the ABC television show "Collectors" last year).
In the Library:
A Colonial Military Australiana Display by the Northern Victoria Arms Collectors' Guild. A similar exhibition, some years ago, was very popular and attracted many gentlemen to our Parish Fair and Garden Party.
The next meeting of the Planning Group is at 4.00pm on Thursday 11th August. Please come with your new ideas and/or your interest in helping to make this annual event a great success.
VESTRY MEETING
There is a meeting of the Vestry in the Library on Wednesday at 2.30pm.
POLL
An organisation called "Scripture At School" has asked me to advertise a Channel 7 poll about whether or not taxpayers should fund school chaplains. They encourage churches to vote on the issue to show their support for the chaplaincy program. For those who are computerised the link is:
http://au.news.yahoo. com/polls/popup/-/poll_id/ eeddd01e-93fb-31a6-8e80-34b84a0e8b41
BLOOD DONORS PLEASE
If anyone is free to donate blood on the 22nd July at the Donor Centre, 94 Fryers Street, please do so. Local supplies of blood are very low at present. Queries to phone: 131495
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES
There is a meeting of the Social Responsibilities Committee in the Narthex on Tuesday the 12th this week.
"MOVING ON"
Grief Support Group: Tuesday, the week, at 7.30pm in the Narthex, Kerry from Shepparton Villages will be talking on the topic, an important one for many of us, "Taking Control".
DATES FOR THE DIARY
July 12th Social Responsibilities Meeting 12.00 noon
July 12th "Moving On" Grief Support Group
July 17th Bishop's Visit
July 19th Friendship Group 2.00pm
July 21st Evening Guild 1.30pm
July 30th Garden Working Bee
July 31st Combined Parish Worship & Bring & Share
Aug 11th Parish Fair & Garden Party Meeting
Aug 20th Wedding
Aug 21st Thanksgiving Sunday
Aug 27th Garden Working Bee
Sept 3rd Women's Breakfast
Sept 10th Harvey Norman Sausage Sizzle (Fete)
Sept 17th Men's Breakfast
Sept 22nd Parish Fair & Garden Party Meeting
Sept 24th Wedding
Sept 24th Garden Working Bee
Oct 1st Wedding 2pm
Oct 8th Wedding 2pm
Oct 8th Wedding 3.30pm
Oct 22nd Parish Fair & Garden Party
Oct 23rd Confirmation
Oct 29th Wedding
Oct 29th Garden Working Bee
Dec 3rd Women's Breakfast
Dec 10th Men's Breakfast
Dec 10th Wedding
READINGS NEXT WEEK
Genesis 28:10 - 19a, Romans 8:12-25
Duties for 10th July 2011
Readers 8.30 Heather Peason, Pat Griffin
Readers 10.30 Jenny Moran, Jenny Pleming
Servers 8.30 Eucharistic Assistants
Servers 10.30 Jenny, Eve, Grace
Intercessors Victoria Heenan, Children
Euc. Assts 8.30 John Griffin, Carole Henderson
Euc. Assts 10.30 Jenny Pleming, Greg Pestell
Welcoming 8.30 Dulcie Ackland, Eileen Quaife
Welcomers 10.30 Frank Steen, Charlotte Brewer
Sidespeople 8.30 Trevor Batey, Joy Campbell
Sidespeople 10.30 Charlote Brewer, Nola Brewer
Welcome Table Dorothy Cook
Altar Linen for July Ella Egan
Tea 8.30 Shirley Dean
Mowing none this week
Duties for 24th July 2011
Readers 8.30 Heather Fitzgerald, Liz Gyles
Readers 10.30 Nancy Noonan, Linda Prosser
Servers 8.30 Volunteers or Volunteered
Servers 10.30 Volunteers or Volunteered
Intercessors Norm Weaver, Mary Pearson
Euc. Assts 8.30 Heather Fitzgerald, John Griffin
Euc. Assts 10.30 Joe Fernandez, Jenny Pleming
Welcomers 8.30 Shirley Dean, Beth Reither
Welcomers 10.30 Jenny Moran, Frank Steen
Sidespeople 8.30 Joe Pearson, Norm Mitchelmore
Sidespeople 10.30 Jenny Moran, Charlotte Brewer
Tea 8.30 Gwyn Cowland
Welcoming Table Dorothy Cook
Mowing 2nd July None this week
Altar Linen for July Ella Egan
REQUESTS FOR PRAYER
At the beginning of each month this list is cleared and ALL names need putting down again on the list in the narthex and signed in. No names should be listed without a person's permission. The list for names of those to be prayed for is kept in the top drawer of the little plastic box of drawers on the narthex table.
Alan Akers, Deb Bagley, Liam Bognar, Marlene Bovaird, Ian Carman, Kath Grills, Frank Harder, Katherine Holt, John & Kate Horder, Michael Green, Ross Judd, Bronwyn Mitchell, Lyn Morcom, Margaret Kidman, Albert Oxenbury, Isabelle Richards, Sandra Simonis, Peter Swindells, Patricia Sparkes, Fay Warren, John Young, David, Krystina.
Rest in peace: Colin Cato
Anniversaries: Florence Williams 10th, Carl Harrison, Bill Dimitropoulos, Eleni Damianopoulos, Gertrude Grimes, Ian Downing 11th, Frances Crosby 12th, Nellie Crosby, Jean Dwyer, Velicka Rendevski, Nancy Cowan, Donald McCann, Valerie Westwood, Sue Humphreys, John Doherty, Caroline Knight 14th, Lorna Best 15th.
THIS WEEK IN THE PARISH
Monday 11th July Benedict (Rector's day off)
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
Tuesday 12th July
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
11.00am Shepparton Aged Care
12.01pm Social Responsibilities Meeting - Narthex
11.00am Eucharist - Shepparton Aged Care
7.30am Grief Support - Narthex
Wednesday 13th July
7.45am Mattins only - Lady Chapel
10.00am Eucharist - St Augustine's
2.00pm Interment of Ashes (Joy Fisher)
2.30pm Vestry Meeting
5.30pm Hospice Meeting
6.00pm Efm - Roz's Room
Thursday 14th July
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
11.00am Eucharist - Harmony
5.30pm Choir Practice - Rectory
Friday 15th July
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
11.00am Eucharist- Ave Maria
Saturday 16th July Associate Priest's Day off
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist (trad rite) - Lady Chapel
11.00am Grave Blessing - Shepparton Cemetery
6.00pm Vigil Eucharist - Lady Chapel
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost 17th July
8.30am Sung Eucharist - St Augustine's
10.30am Eucharist - St Augustine's
8.45am Eucharist - St Luke's Dookie
9.00am Eucharist - St. Pauls Rushworth
11.00am Eucharist - Christ Church Murchison