TWENTY FIFTH SUNDAY after PENTECOST
18 November 2012
Graphics and cartoons & liturgical material appear only in the printed version
THE MORNING AFTER
A young fellow went to a casting agency to do an audition. While he waited to be called, he saw an assortment of jugglers, fire-eaters and magicians. When at last it was his turn, the casting agent said, "Hurry up now. I'm a busy man. So what is it you do, exactly?" The boy said, "Well, actually, I do a bird impersonation." The casting agent's face clouded over and he said, "Listen, boy, don't you realise that this is the 21st century? You will never get anywhere doing bird impersonations. Get out of here and stop wasting my time." So the boy said, "Blow you then," and flew out of the window.
THIS AND THAT (59)
Andrew Neaum
The bats are back, tearing messily and destructively into the fruit of the white mulberry tree outside the Rectory. They drop noxious substances, squawk, grunt and noisily beat the air with leathery wings. Fascinating but not endearing.
I awoke this morning, Thursday, with a fairly severe case of vertigo, most unpleasant. As I tap away it still affects me every time I move my head. Dr. Wikipedia or the Internet Surgery baffles and bores me with verbosity and an excess of information, but I notice with interest that the complaint can be related to tinnitus, a condition I have lived with quite amicably for some years. The singing of crickets is constant but unnoticed except when there is nothing else to listen to.
Violoncello in Benalla
Benalla is a regular and happy destination for Diana and myself these days. Primarily because there are three little granddaughters to revel in, but also to buy excellent bacon and sausages and last Saturday to listen to a fine cellist play two of Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello. This is music as pure and intimate as it gets, and the acoustics in the Art Gallery are so resonant it meant that the mere sound of the instrument was a revelation, richly sonorous and luscious. The cellist was Zoe Knighton, a superb player who teaches at Melbourne University and is, I gather, the founder member of the Flinders Quartet.
All of my Complete Works of Bach have been downloaded onto my computer and I do much of my listening through very good speakers attached to it. However I am forced to acknowledge that my recorded Bach’s Cello Suites seem lifeless in comparison to Saturday’s rendition. I do love the cello and listen to it a great deal. The composer Boccherini played the instrument himself and his sonatas and concertos are a staple of my musical diet.
Breakfasting with magpies
Breakfast at the Rectory is taken in the kitchen, looking out on to the garden where a family of magpies has been entertaining us on and around our bird table. So we share breakfast with them, they munch as we munch, more cleverly though, with no hands. They have been especially fortunate recently, we have been treating them to gourmet food. This being all the the rind of a large ham minced with freezer-burnt brown bread, a heady mixture. Excellent tucker to balance or augment all those scratchy insects. Another treat for them we concocted from the residue fat left in the pan after cooking the finest Benalla bacon (sliced thinly to order). In this fat we lightly fried chopped old bread and delivered it to the bird table’s grateful birds. They are intelligent and don’t binge feed as too many human beings do, they take only so much at a time, pass some of it on to their insistent young, and then depart for more conventional food to make a balanced diet.
An albino badger
Our young tomato plants are being stripped in a devastating and yet strangely delicate way, possibly by a possum. All the leader shoots and youngest leaves are nipped off and eaten. What should be robust and burgeoning plants have been set back three or four weeks at least. A cucumber seedling has had its heart nipped out as well and so is likely to come to nothing. We have not heard any possums, and an apple left out to tempt them to betray their presence has so far remained untouched. (Bingo: it was taken and gobbled last night!) We have elaborately fenced off vulnerable plants, has anyone a possum trap to loan us? My son in England tells me that he is at present engaged in a titanic struggle with an albino badger which invades his garden. Now there’s a thing.
Paedophiles
The current sound and fury over paedophiles might well cause us to reflect upon our own childhood and to be grateful if we escaped any such horror. I am one of those fortunate ones never, ever to have been propositioned, compromised or approached.
When we first went to Africa the Principal of the Mission Station School was an Englishman who eventually went to gaol and was then deported for paedophilic practices. I was too young to understand what it was all about, and he certainly never ever attempted anything nasty with my brother or me. His victims were pupils of his school to which my brother and I could not go due to the racist laws of Rhodesia in those days. Neither of the two boarding schools we attended were involved in such scandals while we were a part of them, as far as I am aware.
It became apparent to me at theological college that one of my fellow students had paedophilic propensities. He sang with me in the local Cathedral choir, and it soon became apparent that he was more interested in young and susceptible choir boys than music. He was thwarted and ultimately rejected as a candidate for ordination. Some years later he was murdered in unsavoury circumstances.
Predators gather wherever there is prey. Churches, certainly in days gone by, were great meeting places for a variety of children’s activities. The covering up of paedophilic practices is as reprehensible as the practice itself. When Jesus said “If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” he was surely warning, in his provocative way, against just this sort of thing. He was saying that family loyalty, be it to natural family or to Church family is not absolute. “My family right or wrong” is an unsound proposition to build your life on. One’s prime loyalty has to be to what is right and true, that is to God, even if it means spilling the beans upon fellow church or natural family members.
Now the continuation of an edited diary from Diana and my time in England:
Wednesday 15 August, 2012 6.35am
I sit in the living room of Martha and Llew having slept here on the couch. Martha is Diana’s daughter and Llew her husband, they have two sparkling children Max aged 8 and Bella aged 6. The couch is capacious and comfortable for sleep. I was very tired because the last night in Oxford I didn’t sleep after about 2.30am, partly because we needed to be up at 4.30 in order to catch the bus to London. This was easily achieved on a warmish morning. It required a short walk through deserted streets, past Ray’s new pad taking only about ten minutes. We took the front seat of the top deck of the double decker, the very best place, offering an unimpeded view. The journey took about an hour and a half as the day dawned. These buses from Oxford to London leave every half hour to start with and then every ten minutes. The public transport system in England, although often complained of, is excellent. I would not bother with a car if I lived there. It would be cheaper to hire one for the few times it might be really necessary.
On Tuesday I went off to meet David in town to be taken up the tower of St Mary the Virgin, the Church at which he and Rachel his wife are joint Associate Priests. Because Diana had phone calls to make concerning the tax man, I went on my own. The tower of St Mary’s provides possibly the best view in all of Oxford. It looks down on most of the colleges and in spite of all the restoration work at the church it was still accessible. We had to begin by ascending stairs in the scaffolding and then we went into the tower and up a tight spiral staircase. On top of the actual tower, under the spire, there is a narrow passage right round and so I was able to take some splendid photos. David then showed me over that part of the church not closed due to restoration. At present services are held in a side chapel of some size which has been restored in a style that in no way compromises its venerableness. Renewed, it still looks old and the pews along the side, which Diana and I later sat in, had been left pockmarked and worn. A good thing.
David then took me to Keble College where he has just stopped being an assistant chaplain. High Victorian architecturally it is the work of the famous William Butterfield. All of a piece it is quite stunning, colourful brickwork around a simple, sunken lawn in the main quad. The chapel is very beautiful, ornate and high. Unfortunately they were changing bulbs with the help of scaffolding so we couldn’t turn on the lights. The stained glass and mosaics are glorious. The use of white stone and white bricks to pattern and relieve the uniformity of all the red brick in this style of building is particularly pleasing. In a little side chapel, added later and of which Butterfield himself apparently disapproved, there is the original of the two Holman Hunt’s “Light of the World”. A painting which has been hugely appreciated and widely loved pretty well ever since it was produced. Later on, when reunited with Diana, she and I returned to Keble to look it over more closely. We were able to consider Hunt’s painting with more concentration. His second version, bigger and not so detailed, hangs in St Paul’s Cathedral. The painting is full of symbolism an apple, for example, harking back to that first apple and so to original sin....
We met up with a loquacious female gardener who showed us into the Warden’s private garden, all the while telling us of her plans and achievements, not least of them being clearing off the ivy and Virginia Creeper from the beautiful College walls. Regretted by many at the time probably, but a good thing, for such a building needs no disguise. Around the back we came across some additions to the college built in the seventies or thereabouts. Ugly, intrusive and aging badly. We then went on to wander the city a bit more. I am more appreciative of Oxford than Cambridge.
The city was crowded with tourists again. We bought a pork pie in Tescos, and a shower of rain took us back almost to St Mary’s as we looked for somewhere sheltered to eat it. Then the rain stopped and so on a convenient bench we broke the brute in two and ate it just as it was while the fascinating throng swarmed past.
We then made our gradual way to the home of a fellow I was at university with and whom I had not seen since. He was the most successful of our small Honours group, achieving a first class degree and so he went off to do a BLitt at Oxford. Now, after many vicissitudes, he lives there. He was standing on the street peering down the road for us in strange baggy cloth trousers and a pink polo shirt, instantly recognizable to me, both in voice and appearance. Gesticulatory, gossipy but fairly reticent about himself. His wife, whom I have never met, was not present wisely leaving him to renew old acquaintances on his own. After finishing his BLitt he joined, of all things, the Rhodesian Diplomatic Corp in the twilight of white rule. He was stationed for a time in Paris and his boss happened to be a man who used to sing in my Father’s parish choir, as did I, and with whom I stayed on my way to England in the early nineteen seventies.
He stayed on with the diplomatic service for a while after Mugabe’s accession, and actually once took notes in meetings between Mugabe and a representative of the Pope. He then became a part of the great Zimbabwean diaspora, initially in South Africa and then back in England. He is now well involved in a parish church, whereas his relationship to the church as a student I remember, perhaps wrongly, was tenuous to non existent.
FROM THE REGISTERS
Birthdays:
Nola Brewer 22 Nov
Gwenda Betson 23 Nov
Reg Wells 24 Nov
FRIENDSHIP GROUP
20 November 2pm Narthex
Don't miss the get together to plan our Christmas Party on 11 December.
CHURCH COUNCIL IN DOOKIE
21 November Wed 7.30pm
The Parish Council Meets this Wednesday in Dookie after a meal at the pub. We pool cars, meeting in the car park no later than 6.00pm. Apologies to Bev, or if you want to attend only the meeting, be at the Pub at 7.30pm and not for the meal. The Rector will buy you a drink.
PRACTICE FOR CAROL SERVICE
22 November Thursday 6.00pm
Come and practice with us this Thursday for our Carol Service (7.00pm on Friday the 21st December). The music is for sopranos and contraltos and is not too difficult, though varied and lovely. The Carol Service itself is invariably the the most interesting in town each year.
MANAGING DEMENTIA
22 Nov Thur 10am-12 noon Day Session
Rodney Park 30-50 Knight St Mooroopna Followed by light lunch 6 Dec Thur 6.30-8.30pm Evening Session Shepparton RSL, Wyndham St. followed by light supper, these free sessions are open to all,so spread the word. There are more details on the Church notice board. RSVP 4 days before each event to Family Care 58237081
ADVENT STUDY
Nov. 22, Nov 29, Dec 6, Dec 13. The Rectory: Thursdays 7.30 - 9.00pm.
These studies, led by the Rector, will take us through the life of Jesus in four weeks, based on a fascinating chapter from Francis Spufford's impressive book "Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity can still make Surprising Emotional Sense." Good preparation for Christmas, not to be missed. Sign up in the Narthex.
BE QUIET!
24 November Saturday 10am – 3.30pm
Parish Quiet Day: at St Paul's Anglican Church, Rushworth. Take a breather before Advent and the Christmas rush. Come for some/all of the day and refresh yourself. BYO lunch (not to share), ‘outside' seat if the weather's fine, book(s) to read if you'd like to. Starts with morning tea (provided) at 10am and concludes by 3.30pm after a concluding service. Meet at St Augustine's car park 9.30am to car pool. Enquiries to Helen.
OUTREACH DEADLINE
25 November Sunday
Articles to Helen (hmalcolm@ bigpond.com) or to the church office please.
ARISE 255-YOUTH GROUP
26 November 5.30-7.30 Monday - Hall
Wet Wild Water Night. Pack the bathers, wear the old clothes and bring a towel. Prepare to get wet, and maybe slimy. Supper provided and a $2 donation please.
MOVING ON-GRIEF SUPPORT
27 November Tuesday 6pm
Dinner meeting and discussion of ideas in regards to ways of coping with Christmas and other significant events, without our loved ones. Cost $5. Please indicate your intention to attend on the list in the Narthex.
CELEBRATING LICENSED LAY MINISTRY
1 December Saturday
This is a day to inform, renew and celebrate the whole ministry of our Church at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Wangaratta. Licensed Lay Ministers are invited to Morning Tea from 10:00am and then to informative sessions with a catered lunch and a Festival Eucharist at 2:00 with an address by Bishop John and the renewal of Lay Ministry Licenses for 2013.
PLEDGE ENVELOPES AVAILABLE
Please collect your Planned Giving envelopes from the Narthex Table. Any one who would like to give to their Church by envelope or direct debit please have a word with Diana in the Parish Office. We have plenty of sets of envelopes available and direct debit is easy, painless and costless to organise.
CURIOUS.....?
Are you curious about your faith? Do you desire to find out more about it, look at it from different perspectives and reflect upon it, all in good company? If so Education for Ministry could hold some of the answers. In a supportive learning community we discuss all the above questions – and we have a lot of fun doing it. Have a chat to Helen or another of the group members if you think you might like to join our EfM group next year.
FOR THE DIARY
Nov 20 Tue Friendship Group 2pm
Nov 21 Wed Parish Council held at Dookie
Nov 22 Thur Advent Study Group - Rectory 7.30pm
Nov 24 Sat Parish Quiet Day & Garden Working Bee
Nov 25 Sun Outreach Deadline
Nov 26 Mon Arise 255 Youth Group
Nov 27 Tues "Moving On" Dinner Meeting
Dec 15 Sat Men's Breakfast
Dec 21 Fri Carol Service, St Augustine's
Feb 13 Wed Ash Wednesday & AGM
June 02 Sun Patronal Festival
REQUESTS FOR PRAYER
Betty Adams, Hilary & Alan Akers, Joyce Auldrige, Heather Baker Margaret Bakker, Liam Bognar, Nola Brewer, Betty Bush, Ella & Michael Egan, Nancy Fennell, Liza Griffin, Pat Griffin, Frank and Joan Harder, Victoria Heenan, Bruce Hodgson & family, Katherine Holt, Dos King, Edwin Johnson, Elsie Lieschke, June McKellar, Colin MacKenzie, Merle Maskell, Lyn Morcom, Shawn Pleming, Lynda Saville, Nicole Sleeth, Suzanne Singh, Patricia Sparkes, Heather Steen, Joyce & Ray, Cheryl & Simon, David, Fr Peter & Paul.
Rest in Peace: John William Peat.
Anniversaries: Stanley Houghton, John Jeffery, Elizabeth Wallden(18),Edward Lacey, Victoria Reither (19), Catherine Baskerville, Edith Robins (20), Doreen Syer (21),
Alex Tarr, James Christoe(22), Stefan Fister, David Byrne, Jack Maskell(24).
Duties for Sunday 18 November
Readers 8.30 Jeanette Smith, Heather Pearson
Intercessor 8.30 Bev Condon
Servers 8.30 John Griffin Siobhan, Michelle
Euc. Assts 8.30 Joe Pearson, Heather Pearson
Sidespeople 8.30 Di & Gavin
Welcomer 8.30 Heather Nichols, Bev Ralph
Welcome Table 8.30 Dorothy Cook
Tea 8.30 Val Bambrook
Readers 10.30 Mary Pearson
Intercessor 10.30 Not required
Servers 10.30 Jenny Pleming, Olivia & Oscar
Euc. Assts 10.30 Volunteer, Joe Fernandez
Sidespeople 10.30 John Pleming, Mitch Macheda
Welcomers 10.30 Beryl Black, Irene Crawford
Welcome Table 10.30 Dorothy Cook
Projector 10.30 Sandra Simonis
Children's Church Grace Sharon
Mowing none
Monday Office 19 Nov Barbara Brown, Pat Gibson
Duties for Sunday 25 November
Readers 8.30 Victoria Heenan, Gwyn Cowland
Intercessor 8.30 Clergy
Servers 8.30 John Griffin, Siobahn, Michelle
Euc. Assts 8.30 Joe Pearson, Grace Sharon
Sidespeople 8.30 Norm Mitchelmore, Trevor Batey
Welcomer 8.30 Eileen Quaife, Shirley Dean
Welcome Table 8.30 Dorothy Cook, Bev Condon
Tea 8.30 Barbara Schier
Readers 10.30 Peter Martin, Andrea Fisher
Intercessor 10.30 Jenny Pleming
Servers 10.30 Jenny, Nick, Ella
Euc. Assts 10.30 Grace Sharon, Linda Prosser
Sidespeople 10.30 John Pleming
Welcomers 10.30 Kylie Milsom, Robert Gilbert
Welcome Table 10.30 Dorothy Cook
Projector 10.30 Black Family
Children's Church Diana Neaum
Mowing 1 Dec John Horder,Garry Grant
Altar Linen Rosemary Mitchelmore
Monday Office 26 Joyce Oxley, Bob Galt
READINGS NEXT SUNDAY
2 Samuel 2:31-7, Psalm 132:1-12, Revelation 1:4-8
THIS WEEK IN THE PARISH
Sunday 18 November
2.00pm Sudanese Church Service
5.30pm Evening Prayer- Lady Chapel
Monday19 November Elizabeth of Hungary
(Rector's day off)
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
5.00pm Evening Prayer- Lady Chapel
Tuesday 20 November
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
12.00pm Bishop in Council etc.
11.00am Shepp Aged Care
2.00pm Friendship Group
5.00pm Evening Prayer - Lady Chapel
Wednesday 21 November
7.45am Mattins - Lady Chapel
10.00am Eucharist - St Augustine's
4.00pm Banksia
5.00pm Evening Prayer - Lady Chapel
7.30pm Parish Council
Thursday 22 November
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
10.15am Grutzner
11.00am Ave Maria
11.00am Harmony Devotions
12.15pm Clergy Lunch
5.00pm Evening Prayer - Lady Chapel
5.30pm Choir Practice
7.30pm Advent Study Group
Friday 23 November Ember Day
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist - Lady Chapel
8.30am Narthex Breakfast
11.00am Memorial Service - Harmony Village
5.00pm Evening Prayer - Lady Chapel
Saturday 24 October Ember Day
7.45am Mattins & Eucharist
9.00am Garden Working Bee
10.00am Quiet Day - Rushworth
6.00pm Vigil Eucharist
Sunday 25 November 26th after Pentecost
8.30am Sung Eucharist - St Augustine's
10.30am Eucharist - St Augustine's
9.00am Rushworth local
11.00am Murchison local
8.45am Eucharist - St Luke's Dookie
10.30am Eucharist - St Mary's Katandra
2.00pm Sudanese Church Service
5.30pm Evening Prayer - Lady Chapel