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Calendar of Upcoming events
Healing Services 2012
Healing services are held in the Convent’s Chapel on the 2nd Wednesday of alternate months starting at 7.15pm. The service usually has prayer, praise, and an opportunity for the laying on of hands.
Parking is available outside the front of the Convent or in the field close by.
See the Contacts page for our address and a map of how to get here.
Services coming up:
Wed 14 March
Wed 9 May
Wed 11 July
Wed 12 September
Wed 14 November
Sister Catherine’s Life Vows
What a wonderful gathering of close family, friends and Community for Sr Catherine’s life vows service at noon on Friday 3rd February.
Chapel was full for a joyous and profound occasion.
The Community’s life vows service begins by our front door. As you can see from the photo the sisters leading Catherine (back, right) in procession had barely begun the walk to chapel when a joke was being shared.
Bishop John Inge, our Bishop Visitor, presided and preached. He was thankful for email as there had been a slight panic at the Convent when it was realised that the Gospel reading in the service leaflet seemed to be from John 11 on the raising of Lazarus. In fact this was a typo and the correct reading was from John 13 about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. Bishop John’s sermon thoughtfully reflected on the latter reading as was intended by Sr Catherine.
He also remarked that to preach on John 11 was perhaps a bit too Carthusian for the Community on what should be a happy occasion especially for Sr Catherine!
At the end of the service we processed to the refectory for a special lunch, chat and more jokes.
SOUPER SOUP
“Let’s Do Lunch” - A Date for your Diary!
Come for a Souper Soup Lunch at the Convent from
12noon – 2pm, Saturday 31st March.
All are very welcome and proceeds will go to Christian Aid.
Newsletter 2011-12
Download the latest newsletter from the Community of the Holy Name.
A Retreat for Beginners, February 24th – 26th
God of our Journeying
Retreat guide – Sr Pippa, Community of the Holy Name.
The retreat will begin at 7pm on Friday with supper, but retreatants are welcome to arrive from 4 o’clock onwards to relax and settle down.
After supper there will be a quiet reflection leading into Compline, (Night Prayer).
On Saturday morning we will explore different ways of using silence as a pathway into prayer and into a deepening of our walk with God.Saturday afternoon will be free for rest, relaxation, and individual conversation with the retreat guide if that is helpful. After tea – a second quiet reflection. In the evening we will look at ‘difficulties in prayer,’ with discussion for those who wish to take part.
Sunday morning, a third reflection leading into quiet time to gather up the experiences of the weekend to ‘take home.’ Then a final time of prayer together. The retreat ends after lunch, but retreatants are welcome to leave in a leisurely way during the afternoon.
During the weekend you are welcome to join the Sisters for services in the Convent chapel as you wish, to use the library, and to wander in the garden (weather permitting).
The cost of the retreat is £50.00. We ask that bookings are in writing with a £10.00 deposit. You are welcome to ring Sr Pippa on 01332 670 483 with any queries. We hope the weekend will be relaxing and peaceful – and give retreatants an opportunity to find stillness with God in a protected place. You are welcome to take part in as much or as little of the weekend programme as you wish.
'Have you Not Seen, Have you not Heard?'....A Sermon for Third Sunday before Lent, Gerald Reddington
“Have you not known, have you not heard? …Have you not understood the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth…who stretches out the heavens like a curtain… He who brings out their hosts …calling them by name” Isaiah 40.21f
Every so often, in the Bible, we are given glimpses of that mystery beyond our comprehension and understanding beyond our narrow personal world. Every so often we are made to think about the relationship between that mystery and ourselves, what might be called the relationship between the cosmic and the personal, the infinite and the finite, between God and us. It is a huge challenge.
Today we can be excited by this reading from Isaiah which challenges us in inspiring language to try and stimulate some understanding of the Creator who creates the earth and its billions of inhabitants. Despite these billions of numbers, the Creator God knows each by name.
This is the hugely significant truth placed before us by Isaiah. The infinite God knows every finite creature. The cosmic Creator knows each person by name.
So staggering is this that we long to believe it but find it difficult to accept. It defies all reason.
Jesus of course confirms the truth that we are all known by God when he said, “but even the hairs on your head are all numbered” Mt 10.30 Jeremiah also told us that God “Knew us before we were born” Jer 1.5
These truths are part of our faith but we can’t prove them, what we do know is that when we are the centre of our own world without any reference to an external force for good, then we are diminished and inevitably self centred, and selfish. We have all been living in a society whose highest value has been individualism. There have been good aspects of this but something has got lost in the process.
Post-modernism has driven us to think in this self-centred way. However I detect a change in the wind. There is something going on ‘out there’ that makes me think that there is a change of thought taking place. People are beginning to ask what has been lost? Thinkers are beginning to challenge the Dawkins/Hitchens anti-religion viewpoint.
Alain de Botton, a secular Jew, has written a significant book “Religion for Atheists”, in which he says “Religions are too useful to be abandoned to the religious alone” Janice Turner in the Times, last week, who on receiving bad news on her mobile in the midst of the noise and mayhem of Oxford St fled into a nearby empty church and found a ‘mysterious place, where she drank in the peace and left restored’ .She wrote “God may not be great, but religion can be” and went on to say “Doubt is the Church of England’s most attractive quality”
Stephen Hough in the Telegraph the other day wrote an article “Do not touch me – the wisdom of Anglican thresholds” After attending Evensong in Westminster Abbey, he said “Evensong hangs on the wall of English life like an old familiar cloak passed through the generations.
Rich with prayer and Scripture it is nevertheless non-threatening. It is a service into which all can stumble without censure – a rambling old house where everyone can find some corner to sit and think, to listen with half-attention, trailing a few absentminded fingers of faith or doubt in its passing stream”
Both these writers direct us to think again about our lost sense of wonder and transcendence. It is not surprising in my view that Brian Cox and his stargazing talks have been so popular. They are in a sense a secular reflection of our longing to re-discover that ‘other something’ some meaning out there, which some of us call God.
One last comment to put the ‘boot in’ comes from someone who attended Lord Philip Gould’s, the Labour party’s Guru, recent funeral Service at All Saints Margaret St in London. Jenni Russell wrote in the Sunday Times “This traditional high church service was an unashamedly a compelling and dramatic event…The mourners left the church having lived through something extraordinary. Everyone I talked to was uplifted and dazed”
So, suddenly people are talking again about either the need for that ‘mysterious empty space’ or for the’ ritual that transcends the ordinary and lifts us into the extraordinary’.
All these writers are also saying that honesty about doubt is crucial for allowing for this mystery to be encountered by all of us. All of them are saying that this is one of the great attributes of the Church of England. Indeed it is, but of course it is the Achilles heel for all those who crave certainty.
However, religion in itself is not enough. .Religion is the packaging, God is the product. Religion is the precursor to God. Religion without God is like a body without a head.
The rediscovery of religion is the first step to the rediscovery of God. Religion is the outward sign of that longing of the Soul that lives in all of us..
To have focussed on the individual over the recent years has been a good thing.
Perhaps the pendulum swung too far and much about the other aspects of life beyond our understanding got lost. God got lost in the process. If there is a swing of the pendulum, a come back for religion, then with a bit of luck people may then discover that the point of religion is the belief in the unknown God.
Ritual, meditation, prayer are all simple ways of connecting to the unknown infinite, the cause of creation, the cause of love, the cause of our transcendence into the infinite.
So there seem to be signs that we should be encouraged to hold our faith and be honest about our doubts, as a witness to those others now seeking food for their souls in a relationship with God.
Have you not known, have you not heard?...Have you not understood the foundation of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth…who stretches out the heavens like a curtain…he who brings out their hosts…calling them by name”
All of us long for that re-assurance that God who created all things, knows us by name. That is our faith, that is what all our souls long to have affirmed. Gerald Reddington
A Simplified Life
Sister Verena writes of her experience as a solitary Sister
Sister Verena writes of her 25 years living a solitary and rugged life in her small cabin set in the wilds of the Llwyn Peninsula, facing out into the wild sea and towards Bardsey Island in this newly published book.
There are many different strands to the book; first the practical challenges of living in an isolated corner of the world, with few of what society considers absolute essentials: cooking on a two ring Calor gas cooker and a small gas fridge, no telephone or TV and little access to books or music. A small radio to keep abreast of world events. The practicalities of shopping and fetching the mail. And of trying to plant a garden that wouldn't be ravaged by either the weather or the local wildlife!
Sister Verena interweaves the history of the local area and of Bardsey Island (Ynys Enlli in Welsh: 'the island of the tides'), the burial place of twenty thousand 'saints' into the story of her coming to love and live in tune with the timeless quality of the place where thresholds can be crossed with glimpses of the "songlines of the land".
There is also the story of the personal journey she undertakes in her 'cell', the task of moving closer to God as she learns to put down the business of this world and pay attention to the business of God through prayer and solitude - a search for a place of stillness and personal space that is within us all - the stillness that allows us to see the world through God's eyes.