Reflecting with Pamela – July 2010
Reflecting with Pamela
It’s all change at the moment; lots of hands to the plough to ensure that good things will happen. This of course, is appropriate as we approach the time of Ordinations all over the country. Many gifted men and women coming together in Cathedral and parish to offer who they are along with their time and talents for active ministry to the glory of God and for His people.
At this very moment, I am still in the throws of making preparation for welcoming Mark Dean to the Parish church of All Hallows as our newly Ordained Curate on Sunday the 4th July. Please read what Mark has written about himself and his family in this edition of the magazine.
I have received a couple of emails from the Chaplain to St. Paul’s Cathedral over the past couple of weeks giving last minute joining instructions to the clergy attending the Service. For those of you who have attended a Service at St. Paul’s you will remember how efficient they are in time keeping. I have sat with the ensemble of clergy for a variety of reasons and you can observe watches being looked at as we come to the final moments before the Organ strikes up a chord and all are summoned to their feet for the opening procession. Only once have I been in that great auspicious place when the starting time overlapped. I am sure someone had to answer for this error and thankfully it wasn’t me!
Cathedral and Parish life is very different in one sense but similar in another in as much as we are both places offering worship, hospitality and ministry to people on their life journey. St. Paul’s is a central location in the beating heart of city life. Architects in recent years have done wonderful things not only in as much as cleaning and repairing the building inside and out but also the surrounding working and social areas have been made more friendly and welcoming to locals and tourists alike. Gareth and I attended the Maundy Thursday Service in the Cathedral and afterwards sat in a café overlooking Paternoster Square. People from the offices were having their lunch breaks in similar places to where we were; eating, chatting and mobile phones in active service. There was an overall good feeling about the place and we enjoyed being caught up in it. As St. Paul’s gets its staff in order to make the Cathedral a place of service to the people for the Ordinations, we too at All Hallows make preparation to receive Mark, Erika and Anna into the fold of community life. We hope they will be happy with us for the next 3 years and we can give and receive from one another.
Once the large celebrations in the Cathedral are over and the smaller ones in the Parish Church come to a close, Mark will be one with us as he finds his feet in the common ground of day to day life which we all share. Life goes on for everyone and talents are shared between many to make our offerings more pleasing and acceptable for the good of God and his church.
Over the past weeks this has indeed been the case regarding a hive of activity taking place in the church grounds where a ‘project in hand’ is quite literally gaining ground in a more productive way. Those who have offer an assortment of gifts; some the skills of engineers who know the land, drainage, soil etc. Others are mechanical master minds, knowing the amount of water to cement mix to get the compound ready for mixing, pouring and setting. Others are skilled with the spade and fork and are not shy to turn up ready to get dug in deep! Luke, aged 16, is obtaining hours of community work for his Duke of Edinburgh Award, and by doing this has become an important member of the labour force along with others with the heart for community work. ‘Many hands make light work’ and the example of the church gardening is but one way to emphasise that we each need one another if we are to make good things happen.
Over the next month or two we will begin to relax a bit. This is a good time ‘to weed’ not only the flower beds, but to sort out our own lives too. I have quite a lot of this to do myself in the way of sorting out my study in order to make it more productive for the change in ministry I am now involved in. Painting and decorating will need to take place once the sorting of papers and books happen. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel but know there is a fair amount of work needing to be done first. Fortunately Gareth is good with a paint brush and especially painting the ceiling and skirting board; being a skill which he has developed over many years of being home owners.
Before I sign off for this month, keep each other in prayer as we go into times of rest and re-creation. Summer is a time to ‘let go’ and enjoy but do this safely. Remember that Sandra Welch is ‘calling’ for lots of jumble to be sorted in your homes over the summer which gives profit to the YMCA and enables the church to receive funds for the our Building Project which is just about to get started. Bring all jumble to the church and we will do the rest – very easy and very rewarding for everyone.
God Bless, have fun, and take care! Pamela