St. Piran & St. Michael's Church Newsletter

Newsletter January 2012

2011-12-21T08:07:00.004Z

All the festivities are over for another year. Some of us will be hoping that the winter
won’t be too long, and that soon the daffodils will peep through giving us a
glimpse of the coming spring. I foundthis poem that I would like to share with you. It’s based on the magi that travelled so far to worship the Christ Child. They are warned in a dream not to return to King Herod, and to go home another way.

After the star, the dim day.
After the gifts, the empty hands.
And now we take our secret way
back to far lands

After the cave, the bleak plain.
After the joy, the weary ride.
But journey we, three new-made men,
side by side.

Came we by old paths by the sands.
Go we by new ones this new day,
homewards to rule our lives and lands
by another way.
Author unknown

January is a time when we remember the old, and look forward
to the new. What will this New Year bring? You may not see me as much during January and February as I am working a placement at Madron and Gulval Parishes as part of my training towards Ordination. It will be interesting to see how life and worship goes on in these places and to take an active part in the services.

In the light of all the celebrations and worship we have shared together this last Christmas, I hope that the Christ Child has inspired us to live ‘another way’, just like the magi. May God be with us as we face all the challenges that 2012 may bring.

Blessings,

Annie

December Newsletter

2011-12-02T08:55:00.000Z

Holding onto the Divinity of Jesus

Now it is truly winter, our season of celebration is about to begin. We have lots of great events to look forward to: ‘Christingle Services’ at Ludgvan & Perranuthnoe, the lighting of many Christmas trees and ‘The Christmas Tree Festival’ at Marazion, many, many Carol Services and Nativity Presentations in churches, school halls and pubs to enjoy, as well as our own preparations, card, food and present-buying to accomplish by December 25^th.

In recent years much stress has been placed in theological circles on the ‘humanity’ of Jesus: ‘He was just an ‘ordinary’ baby, born to an unmarried teenage mother, in a cold, out-house stable’. Indeed, the birth of the Christ-child prefigures and sanctifies the coming of all new human life into the world (in whatever circumstances – however ‘poor’ or ‘mean’ or ‘lowly’) and the Nativity Story provides us with a template for our own private ‘nativities’: how many grandparents have not made long journeys bearing gifts to welcome a new child into a family?

However, all our ‘coo-ing’ and ‘aaah-ing’ at Nativity plays and Children’s Services of Light should not lull us into a feeling that we are just welcoming ‘another’ baby into the world: Jesus is not an ‘ordinary’ baby: he is the Divine ‘Son of God’, the ‘True Light’, ‘The Word made Flesh’ as the opening Chapter of St John’s Gospel informs us. John, Chapter One will surprise us once again as it is read out at many Carol Services in the Christmas Season and as it elucidates the sheer scale, grandeur and poetic vision of Who it is we are celebrating coming to us at Christmastime: the Christ-child is the pre-existent ‘Word of God’, who has been with us since the dawn of time, he is our God made human, come amongst us.

The wonder of God trapping himself in human form is enough to behold, but Jesus comes into the world not only with a need to be loved and cuddled and provided with a ‘baby-grow’ (he gets ‘swaddling bands instead!): the Christ-child comes to us with a challenge. As we read the predictions of the prophets Isaiah, Zephaniah and Malachi in the Advent lead-up to Christmas we learn how Jesus comes with ‘the zeal of the Lord of Hosts’ to challenge rulers and to judge the world, ‘to bring down the Mighty from their seat’ (Luke 1:52) and bring in and establish his reign of justice, righteousness and peace: the prophet Isaiah tells us the Messiah is ‘Mighty Counsellor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace’ (Isaiah 9:6).

In all our joyful Christmas celebrations let us keep hold of the majesty of the Event we are celebrating: God coming to be made with us in the Christ-child, to bring challenge and Light to ‘the principalities and powers’ of this ‘present darkness’ and this ‘passing age’ (Ephesians 6:12), to establish his rule of justice, mercy and peace forever.

I very much hope to see you over the Christmas period, (and, not forgetting, our celebrations in the Benefice continue in January, with the Celebration of St Hilary Feast on 15 January, Ludgvan Feast on 22 January and Candlemass on 29 January).

May all your own preparations and celebrations go well and may your hearts be made ready this Advent to welcome Jesus, the Divine Son of God.

Revd Nigel Marns

Rector, The United Benefice of Mounts Bay

(Ludgvan, Marazion, St Hilary & Perranuthnoe)

Newsletter November 2011

2011-10-30T14:58:00.001Z

What a day we had with Bishop Tim on 4 October. His visit was accompanied with the hottest weather in October for many a year and provided us with the best of all worlds to walk the Pilgrims Way from Ludgvan, where he blessed the magnificent mural in the Murley Hall, then on to Marazion for the wonderful 150^th anniversary celebrations and then, after a splendid lunch, some of us walked on to Perranuthnoe for tea and cake and blessing of the Church Rooms.

From there we all moved back to Marazion to the School where we had a great deal of fun in our outdoor worship with the Bishop (who remembers the Superman Grace he taught us?) parents, children and staff in their new outdoor facility. Well done Dom for creating this worship time.

Not to mention….more lovely cake and scones and cream and jam and tea and coffee and ……….I am sure you get the picture!

I unfortunately was unable to do the walk because someone had to carry the Bishop’s jacket! (That’s my excuse and I am sticking to it) but well done those who did do any part of the walk).

During the service in All Saints Marazion the Bishop blessed a newly restored alter frontal, a whole lot of new pew bibles and he also licensed me as Associate Priest in our Benefice.

So what does “Associate Priest” mean? And why wasn’t Lilian made “Associate Priest?” Why was Lilian a perpetual Assistant Curate? I have been asked.

The answer lies in the new – since February of this year – Common Tenure for all clergy in the Church of England.

Under Common Tenure my old 5 year Licence, given at my priesting in 2008, has been revoked and my new Licence has been granted. My new Licence from the Bishop is given because I am now deemed to be fully trained in the ways of the priesthood so no longer a Curate but a fully fledged Priest.

Dom will remain a Curate until he too has completed his training then he will, in all probability, leave us and take on his own Parish where he will be the Associate Priest, or Vicar or Rector or whatever.

Annie will also become a Curate next year and she will then start her next phase of training with Nigel and Dom.

If all of this sounds very “Church of England” then please be assured – it is! I had thought all this through and researched as best I could when I came across the fact that “Associate Priest” isn’t a new title - there have been Associate Priests in the Diocese for many years – long before Common Tenure was thought of but I have no explanation for that – maybe they’re not as Associate as I am!

So your clergy team now consists of our Rector Nigel, House for Duty Priest Noel, together with Reader Lesley, Associate Priest Beth, Assistant Curate Dom and Ordinand Annie along with the indispensable retired priests John, Frank, David and Leslie who do so much to help in the Benefice and without whom the whole thing couldn’t work.

I do hope that clarifies the situation – just a little bit anyway.

Having sorted out what we are called, we now have to put our vision of the future forward – much more important.

Who knows – except God Himself – what the future will bring but some of our plans for the next exciting year in our Benefice for 2012 are:-

the Easter Celebrations – watch this space, the Benefice visit to Westminster Abbey on 17^th June, the Ordination of Annie and the Priesting of Dom the following day at the end of June followed in October by Dom and Hannah’s wedding.

We journey on with God and while He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow I am very pleased to say that our God also delights in doing a new thing. I hope and pray that we do too.

All love, from your new and very excited Associate Priest, Beth xx

Newsletter October 2011

2011-09-30T12:33:00.001+01:00

HOPE

A dictionary definition of the word ‘hope’: is a small bay, an inlet; a haven – perhaps a suitable description for parts of our United Benefice here at Mounts Bay.

A further definition is: a desire of some good, accompanied with an expectation of obtaining it, or a belief that it is obtainable; an expectation of something which is thought to be desirable.

This time of year we are all filled with hope, we hope for a good harvest and for not too harsher winter. We hope that the children get back to school ok and we look on during the coming months for those who face uncertainty in their jobs as they hope for clarity and those that face difficulties with finances as they hope for some ease to help them.

As I move around our benefice I too am filled with hope because there is so much happening:

·Today I have left the Murley Hall at Ludgvan, which was filled with people eating bacon butties and buying fruit and veg at the autumn fair.

·There is a real sense of excitement in the air in Marazion as preparations pick up a pace for the Bishop’s visit on the 2^nd of October.

·St. Hilary’s heritage centre is thriving with the hope that this will continue and grow

·Perranuthnoe are filled with expectation at the launch of the new churches together youth group ‘Alive’ and

·We approach our home group with hope that we can come closer to our Lord Jesus through his ‘I am Saying’s.

Hope: a desire of some good, accompanied with an expectation of obtaining it, or a belief that it is obtainable.

But what do we do when hope dies?

Our hearts and prayers go out to the community and families in Wales as the BBC headlines read ‘Welsh mine tragedy: Hope ends in tears for families’ and the country reflects on what for them must seem like a hopeless situation.

Christians have a sure and certain hope, the hope of resurrection through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Another word for ‘hope’ is ‘confidence’. By substituting this word we have: Christians have a sure and certain confidence, the confidence of resurrection through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Those of you that are attending the home groups will be spending time looking at Jesus’ saying in John, chapter 11: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me, will never die”.

I don’t want to spoil the home group for you, but just to say that this is the saying that we hinge our hope, expectation, and anticipation on, this is an amazing claim to hear from Jesus, both in its context after Lazarus’ death but also today in 2011.

I pray that the families, friends and community of the Welsh miners may find hope and comfort in these words and my brothers and sisters, Jesus’ words of hope and resurrection are for you also.

As we enter this next month in the life of the benefice there is lots to be hopeful for, a lot to be confident in and a lot to look forward to - but can I urge you to take a moment to stop and remember those who have trouble in finding this hope. Pray for them to seek and find the hope of Jesus Christ our Lord.

When the headlines speak of hopelessness and the world seems a dark place, remember that Christ is our light, our hope, our confidence and our courage.

Revd. Dom Jones
Assistant Curate The United Benefice of Mounts Bay (Ludgvan, Marazion, St Hilary & Perranuthnoe)

Newsletter September 2011

2011-09-09T07:16:00.001+01:00

‘May we live simply so others may simply live’.

This telling phrase came to mind as I have noticed that many hardware or furniture shops now offer sections entitled ‘Storage Solutions’ - all sorts of ingenious little boxes and hangers so that we can tidy away all our stuff.

Jesus seemed oddly interested in our storage arrangements too, how we keep and hoard so many possessions that we have to build bigger extensions and barns to house it all (Luke 12:16-30). Jesus instructs us to sit lightly to all we own, otherwise ‘rust and moth decay’ and ‘thieves break in and steal’, as the big stores of our land (the ‘Sony Warehouse’s and ‘Staples Superstores’) recently discovered.

A contrasting picture that has haunted me over recent weeks was the picture of young men lifting a plasma television screen out of a ‘Currys’ shop-front window in Clapham Junction and a woman in Ethiopia carrying all the wood she could manage on her back to a refugee camp to escape from her village and the famine in the Horn of Africa. Both were carrying what they saw as ultimately valuable.

The pictures from the Horn of Africa are once again shocking. Even after so much effort was poured into relieving the situation there, despite all the emergency relief aid given in the 1980s and the long term development aid, the area remains resolutely poor, the need is too vast and huge, and the population dependent upon subsistence farming. Due to the recent drought (which has now lasted for three years) the region has once again plunged into famine.

There is such a disparity between these two pictures, isn’t there? Between the fortunes of our own society obsessed with the collection of the latest consumer durables (sometimes at any cost) and needing ‘Storage Solutions’ and my Ethiopian woman with her pile of wood and the millions who have lost everything: farm, home and village. Perhaps we can bear them in mind as we are coming to the time of Harvest Celebrations, as the season turns, and as there is a nip in the evening air and the nights noticeably drawing in,.
We pray that our own local farmers may have good yields but we also pray for those in our world who have little or nothing, and we pray that we give generously to alleviate their need. ‘To us to whom much is given, much more is expected’, Jesus says (Luke 12:48). A Prayer written by a Parishioner for our recent ‘Sacred Space’ Prayer on the theme of ‘the healing of the nations, captures this for me:

‘For ourselves that each in our own place that we may be people of peace and well-springs of hope.’

This Harvest-time, as we give thanks for all God’s gifts around us, may we too think about our own acquisitive needs and chose to live more simply so that others may simply live.

Revd Nigel Marns
Rector, The United Benefice of Mounts Bay
(Ludgvan, Marazion, St Hilary & Perranuthnoe)

Newsletter August 2011

2011-08-01T09:47:00.001+01:00

Most of you know that I am now about to begin my second year in training with the South West Ministry Course and a number of you have helped me over the last year by filling in questionnaires relating to a local survey, assessing my sermons and leading worship. Thank you for the time you have taken over this and also, for all the encouragement and support.

This week, I was asked to take my first funeral with Beth at my side, and I thought I would share the latter part of my address with you. I think we all need reminding sometimes how awesome, wonderful and BIG the love of our God is.

“As a Christian I believe in heaven. It’s hard for us to imagine, but I believe that heaven is just like coming home, where everything is perfect – just like God always intended our world to be. Jesus tells us that He is the Way and that he will come and take our hand to lead us home – home to the Father God.

God’s love is SO BIG, and that - for us mere humans, is also hard to imagine. Nothing can separate us from God’s love, not even death. God’s love is like a river that flows on from this world to the next. God’s love is so big that he can hold everyone in it. Even those who may not think they want to be held in it. God’s love is so big that he loves us just as we are, warts and all! And God loves us all far too much to ever, ever let any of us go.”

Love and blessings
Annie

July Newsletter

2011-06-25T22:03:00.002+01:00

‘Welcome’ & ‘Hospitality’

‘Welcome’ said the mat on the floor, and the ‘Welcome’ really was a genuine one, as I was greeted with a smile, a handshake and made a warming cup of tea. ‘Welcome’ and ‘Hospitality’ are what the Cornish do well, and, if you are visiting Cornwall for the first time, a lot of preparation has already taken place prior to and in preparation for your visit: house and shop-fronts have been painted and much tidying up and sprucing up has taken place. As well as the readiness and preparation of shops, campsites, pubs, hotels and B & Bs, those traditionally involved in providing ‘hospitality’, many residents in Cornwall will also be preparing to welcome friends and family to their homes in the next two months. And as well as providing a genuine ‘Welcome’ we hope to learn and gain from our visitors, from their own insights and pilgrimage through life.

‘Welcome’ and ‘Hospitality’ are very much Christian virtues. Jesus enjoyed the hospitality at many peoples’ homes: at Mary and Martha’s home (Luke 10:38-42) and at Zacchaeus’ home (Luke 19:5), and Jesus could soon detect whether the ‘welcome’ was genuine, as he did when he visited Simon the Pharisee’s home (Luke 7:36-50). Jesus told his disciples that when they visited a town or village, they were to look for someone to welcome them and stay with them. Jesus said: “When you go into a house say, ‘Peace be with you’. If the people in that house welcome you, let your greeting of ‘Peace’ remain there”. (Matthew 10:11-12).

If you are visiting us, we hope that you will find a genuine ‘Welcome’ in this traditional place of Christian Pilgrimage at all four churches of our Benefice, if you’ve just ‘popped in’ to have a look around or if you’ve come for a Service. We are a lively, prayerful and active Christian community. And there is much for you to join in with in the months of July and August.

At Perranuthnoe on Thursday afternoons Cream Teas are served outside our Church Rooms there, and there will be a Churches Together Sing-a-long on Sunday 31st July at 6pm (with Pasty Supper to follow).

At All Saints, Marazion we are in our 150th Anniversary year, and we are holding two concerts, one in July and with the ‘Richmond Singers’ in August. We are also hoping to hold a Wedding Exhibition 10-12 August.

We celebrate St Hilary Pilgrimage on Wednesday 10 August at 7.30pm with the Archdeacon of Cornwall.

Family Services are at 10am at Ludgvan 17 July & 28 August and at 11.15am at Perranuthnoe 10 July & 28 August. You are warmly invited to our United Benefice Beach Service with Baptisms at Marazion Red River on Sunday 21 August at 4pm.

If you are looking for something more quiet and contemplative, Choral Evensong will take place at 4pm on Sunday 10 July at Ludgvan and Sunday 7 August at Marazion. Sacred Space, our quiet, silence and chant-based Service will take place at Marazion, every day Tuesdays-Saturdays 4-4.30pm in August.

In our Benefice too, ‘Welcome’ and ‘Hospitality’ is very much on our mind, as we are delighted to welcome our new Curate, Revd Dom Jones, who will be made a Deacon at Truro Cathedral on Friday 1st July at 7.30pm and we have a special United Benefice Welcome Service for Dom on Sunday 3rd July at 10am at Ludgvan, with a Welcome Bring & Share Lunch to follow. Dom has written an introductory piece about himself elsewhere in the Magazine, and we really hope and pray that Dom will be happy here with us for the next three-four years of his Curacy, and find our welcome and our hospitality both genuine and heartfelt, and that we may learn from him and his own ‘walk with God’.

So in July and August we put out our ‘Welcome’ mats for all our visitors, and particularly, as we welcome our new Curate Dom here amongst us.

God Bless you throughout this Summertime,

Revd Nigel Marns
Rector, The United Benefice of Mounts Bay
(Ludgvan, Marazion, St Hilary & Perranuthnoe)

June 2011 Newsletter

2011-05-30T22:47:00.001+01:00

Dear Friends,

John Wesley tells us in his journal that his heart was strangely warmed when he attended a meeting of the Moravians. People down through the ages have encountered the presence of God in so many different ways. Pascal,the French philosopher and practicing Roman Catholic, describes a dramatic moment in his prayers when he had a burning bush encounter like Moses. He describes it as Fire, Fire the God of Abraham and Isaac!
Sadly the church has frequently lost this encounter with the divine. In the sacrament we can talk of the real presence but ,in truth, it lacks any spiritual umph because it is merely nice churchy words. We can talk about finance but forget the fire. We can devise endless programs of training and finish as ineffective as when we started. There is a world out there searching for fresh meaning to living and we remain incapable of saying anything that means something to our contemporaries.
On that first day of Pentecost Peter spoke to the crowd with immediate effect. We are told 3000 were baptized. Somehow we need a new Pentecost. The third great festival of the Christian year has become a bit of a Cinderella feast. It is the one thing we all need to rediscover the presence of the living God in our lives and in our churches. Where do we begin?
This Pentecost we could undertake a simple reflection in our prayers to empty ourselves of self promotion, naked ambition, and preoccupation with the secular and expect the encounter with God to be for real. We need to wait as they did to be clothed with power from on high. People about us are searching for fresh meaning in their lives. With this power from on high we can build bridges to them. We can draw them into the reality of God that we have discovered ourselves.
When I was first ordained I read a book about the post War Diocese of Coventry entitled Fire over Coventry. Of course, it was a play on words for a very different fire had brought terror and destruction to that ancient city during devastating air raids. The church with its new cathedral was challenged to renew lives as well as the building. For that the fire of Pentecost had to be discovered afresh in its life and in its members. The same fire needs to be over our churches and our Benefice. We need to encounter the God of the burning bush and to know that when He tells us “I am” has sent us such a reality fills us and surrounds those we seek to help. Renewed in spirit may we be ready to face the world with a fresh understanding of what it means to go into all the world and make disciples.

God bless you this Pentecost
Noel Michell.

May 2011 Newsletter

2011-04-30T16:32:00.002+01:00

Being ‘Easter People’

I don’t know which stage of life you feel you in at this present moment?: we talk of people being in the ‘autumn’ of their lives or at the end of their days going to live in ‘Winter Heights Nursing Home’ (or some such name), or whether you feel you are in a wilderness time, struggling with ill-health, the death of a loved one or family worries.

As Christians, whatever we are feeling or whichever stage of life we feel we are in at this present-time, we are called, above all else, to be ‘Easter People’, reflecting the joy of the Risen Lord’s eternal presence with us, and living in the light of Jesus’ glorious Resurrection from the dead: that is why Christianity’s principal Holy Day is on a Sunday, the Son’s Day, the day of Jesus’ Resurrection.

Although we may not feel like it all the time, every Sunday should be an Easter Day, a Celebration, a celebration of Jesus conquering sin and death once and for all time. The early Church were attuned to the seasons and they cannily knew what they were doing when they placed Easter, Our celebration of new life, in the emerging Springtime, amongst all the new verdancy, vitality, new blossom and the warming up of the Earth.

Throughout May and Eastertide this year, we are treated to the some of the most sublime and beautiful stories Sunday by Sunday in our Bible Readings: the stories of the Risen Jesus’ encounter and re-acquaintance with his friends: we will hear Mary in the Easter Garden call Jesus ‘Rabboni’ and Jesus injunction to Mary ‘not to cling to him’; we will go with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus who exclaim that their ‘hearts burned within us as he talked to us on the road’, and whose ‘eyes were opened’ when Jesus broke the bread before them, we shall see Jesus appear to his disciples in the Upper Room, encouraging them to ‘not be afraid’ and persuading Thomas to place ‘his hands in the wounds of his hands and his sides’, we shall smell Jesus cooking fish ‘very early morning’ by the shoreside for his fisherman friends. These Easter moments are mysterious, almost mystical, encounters occurring in the haze of Spring dawn-light. There is much cantankerous talk about there being too many holidays during May, but, as C.S. Lewis would tell us, we can’t live in the winter forever, and after a very, long, cold and hard winter and relentlessly bad news for months and months people need to revel a bit in the Springtime Celebrations of Easter, Weddings, May Day, Whitsun – they are good for us all.
A very big thank you to everyone who joined in our glorious Procession through Marazion on Palm Sunday.

As a ‘Pilgrim People’ as a Benefice we will be on the move again, on Rogation Sunday, travelling from Church to Church blessing fields and crops and enjoying together God’s bountiful Creation. This will take place at the end of the month - I hope you will be able to join in with some or all of it.

As ‘Easter People’ let us enjoy and revel in Our Season of Hope, new Dawn and new Light and may we all enjoy the May-time, the flowers, the blossom and Jesus’ Risen presence with us all.

Happy Eastertide,

Revd Nigel Marns
Rector, The United Benefice of Mounts Bay
(Ludgvan, Marazion, St Hilary & Perranuthnoe)

April Newsletter

2011-04-03T20:54:00.001+01:00

Earthquake in New Zealand, hundreds dead. Earthquake tsunami and nuclear threat in Japan, thousands dead. Civil war in Libya, huge disruption in Bahrain, Egypt and Tunisia the list goes on and on – all this disruption in our world and to add to the doom and gloom the Lectionary readings are coming from Jeremiah – is this the end of the world as we know it?
The news at the moment just isn’t too good – one could be excused for thinking that maybe God has gone on holiday.
But look again.
The Japanese people are astounding the world with their behaviour to each other. Locals are sharing their scant supplies of food, water and bedding with refugees.
Workers at the nuclear plant at Fukushima are battling – at huge risk to their own lives, trying to cool the damaged reactors. One sent an email to his family asking them to continue to live well – “I wont be home for some time” he said.
As I write, Comic Relief has just announced the biggest ever contribution in their 23 year history – and this in a recession ravaged Britain! People have still managed to remember those poorer and more disadvantaged than themselves.
Acts of random kindness in all the stricken areas of our world are happening all the time but of course the media don’t always report them. Bad news sells more newspapers.
We as Christians must remember that we have the Good News – Easter is coming and we remember that Jesus is risen from the dead.
We continue our Lent journey in the Benefice with our Lent course on “Not a Tame Lion” which has started in Perranuthnoe and Ludgvan. It’s a very challenging course and I am sure we will all get a lot out of our study together.
Christianity Explored continues in the Cutty Sark in Marazion and plans are being finalised for our grand Palm Sunday parade. What a day that will be. We are doing a completely new thing and trusting God for a good turnout and a blessed time together as a Benefice.
This is something I hear more and more – that we now feel more like a Benefice and the more we do together the more we get to know and love each other. Sacred Space in Marazion, supported by all our churches continues to give those attending a peaceful and uplifting half hour each day – a really good discipline to take just that half an hour and refresh ourselves in God’s peace. I am sure you will want to join me in thanking Nigel, Penny and all those who make this such a wonderful experience – thank you one and all.
We have started our prayer meetings for “When Dom comes” and look forward to having Dom and Hannah join our community after his Ordination in July.
What a lot to look forward to. No – God has not gone on holiday – He is working in His world through ordinary people - just like you and me. He always has and He always will – may we, during this Lenten period, just give Him the time and space in our lives to lead us into a deeper relationship with Him.
Thought I would close with a bit of humour and a reminder just how great our God is.

A priest is driving to London and gets stopped for speeding near Swindon. The policeman smells alcohol on the priest's breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car. He says, "Sir, have you been drinking?" "Just water," says the priest, fingers crossed. The policeman says, "Then why do I smell wine?" The priest looks at the bottle and says, "Good Lord! He's done it again!"
May God Bless you and yours for this coming Easter Season.
Rev Beth Whyte

March 2011 Newsletter

2011-02-28T21:12:00.001Z

Feasting and Fasting

‘The Lord Almighty will prepare a banquet for all nations of the world: a banquet of the richest food and the finest wine’ (Isaiah 25:6).

It seems strange to encourage you to ‘Feast’ in this coming Season of Lent, which we usually associate with ‘fasting’, denial and Jesus’ refusal to ‘turn stones to bread’ in the wilderness, despite his hunger (Matthew 4:3-4).

The Medieval Calendar was constantly punctuated by ‘high days and holy days’, days of ‘fasting’ and abstinence as well as days of ‘feasting’ (particularly on a Saints Day or a Sunday). All the rich colour and variety of that Medieval pattern of life and work, of denial and celebration, has been lost to us more than six centuries on: perhaps, the only things that still remain is the tradition of having fish on Fridays (‘fasting’ as Friday is the Day of Our Lord’s death) and the Family Roast on Sunday (‘feasting’ on the Day of Our Lord’s Resurrection). So just donning ‘sackcloth and ashes’ for the forty day Season of Lent and making ourselves miserable is not ‘the kind of fasting God requires’ (Isaiah 58:3-5).

In Lent, we have an opportunity to strip away all that has accrued to us over this past year (a spiritual ‘Springclean’) to concentrate on what truly matters, our relationship with God and to deepen our walk with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. By following Jesus into the wilderness and to watch his temptations, we can better understand our own temptations in life, and so, Lent, as well as being a time of ‘fasting’, can be a time of ‘feasting’ too, as we draw nearer to Christ and his life lived for us.

And there is much for us to ‘feast’ on in our Benefice this Lent. After the United Benefice Ash Wednesday 9 March Service at Perranuthnoe, where those who would like to can receive the Imposition of Ashes, the following day (Thursday 10 March) Lent Sacred Space begins at Marazion and will run throughout Lent most days (except Sundays & Mondays) at 4pm until Maundy Thursday. If you need a time of solace and reflection, please drop into Marazion anyday. We shall be following a lively new translation of St Matthew’s Gospel by Tom Wright for our daily Bible Readings in Sacred Space.

The following Wednesdays (beginning 16 March) at both 11am at Perranuthnoe and 7pm at Ludgvan our Lent Course begins. ‘Not A Tame Lion’ is a Lent course based on the writings, thinking and films of C.S. Lewis: we shall be watching film clips from ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ films and the story of C.S.Lewis’ late blossoming love to Joy Gresham) to explore the rich ‘feast’ of Lewis’ writings and imagination to draw us closer to the life of Jesus and his call and meaning and purpose in our lives. We will be considering themes of loss, suffering, God’s absence and Resurrection.

Wednesday 17 March (and subsequent Wednesdays) will see some fine soups
(I remember from last year) at Marazion for the Lent Lunches and there will also be a Lent lunch after the Sunday Service on 13 March at Ludgvan and at Perranuthnoe after the AGM and Celebration Service on 20 March. Many of the proceeds from these more frugal and restrained meals will go to our Benefice Lent Appeal: through the lunches and by saving the money we would otherwise spend on indulgences (chocolate, alcohol etc we give up during Lent) we hope to raise £750.00 to ‘Send a Cow’ to an African village and to do ‘the kind of fasting God requires (Isaiah 58:6).

Lent is this strange mixture of ‘fasting’, but also ‘feasting’ on God too. May we recapture something of the ancient monks’ understanding of both celebration and denial, resistance and joy in our Benefice this Lent. May we have a good ‘Feast’ and a good ‘Fast’ in Lent 2011 and come well-prepared, well-fed , watered and nurtured to celebrate the greatest ‘Feast’ of them all: the Passion, Death & Resurrection of Jesus in Holy Week and on Easter Day.

Revd Nigel Marns
Rector, The United Benefice of Mounts Bay (Ludgvan, Marazion, St Hilary & Perranuthnoe)

February 2011 Newsletter

2011-02-01T17:10:00.001Z

‘Christianity Explored’

As the New Year dawns upon us, and the festivities and joy of Christmas recedes into distant memory, it is good to take up a new challenge, and to do a new thing.

I came upon a new and exciting course, run by a Cornishman and a rugby man, Rico Tice, called ‘Christianity Explored’. The course will run for ten weeks, beginning on Friday 4 February (and Fridays following) at the Cutty Sark Pub in Marazion. The idea of the Course is to meet for mid-morning coffee or tea in the pleasant setting of the Cutty Sark Large Room at 10.45am, watch a lively and modern DVD together that will challenge many peoples’ assumptions or commonly-held views of Christianity, and over the next hour, until 12 noon, to engage with them.

Over the ten weeks, in Marazion, we will explore the questions that cut to the heart of Christianity: who was Jesus? Why did He come? What is involved in following Him? It is an opportunity to ask questions, however simple or difficult they are, and we will do it by looking at the shortest account of Jesus Life, the Gospel of Mark.

It is good to have the opportunity to come together, to discuss with others the nature of our faith, to better grasp what it is in our Christian faith we are following and believing in.

In Ludgvan and Perranuthnoe over the Autumn, and also finishing in February, we have been looking at the Mission of the Early Church and considering our own Mission as a Church Today, through studying ‘The Acts of the Apostles’, and, soon, look out for our Lent Courses there, beginning in March. But it will be good to have a Course, specifically based in Marazion (and we are hoping our friends from Marazion Chapel will join us), but open to everyone in the Benefice, and especially to those wanting an opportunity to explore and go a bit deeper into our faith, and an opportunity to question and engage with the doubts and unanswered questions we have about Christianity and the nature of Jesus in a clear and systematic way.

If you are free on Friday mornings, please come along (and if you can’t make every session come to the ones you can). Go on, do a new thing in 2011.

Happy February Exploring,
Revd Nigel Marns

Jan 2011 Newsletter

2010-12-28T21:07:00.001Z

January 2011 - Newsletter
The story of the wise men coming to Jesus and his parents is often part of the children's school nativity plays. In truth it represents something that happened well after his birth. It is recorded by Matthew in his very conservative Jewish Gospel. For he understands the messianic significance of these strange visitors from other nations. The prophetic tradition pointed to the time when the Gentile world would come to be part of the new world order that messiah would bring. The nations will become part of his rule of peace. These travelers from unknown lands in the East, no doubt following the spice route were magi, students of the stars, and through such study hoping to chart the fortunes of men, nations and the world order. They had spotted a fresh heavenly body, perhaps a comet, though we shall be unable to verify the details now. One thing is clear that whatever they saw spoke to them of a royal birth. Out there a new king was born. Their journey was made under the enthusiasm of finding a king. In doing so they stirred up a hornets' nest in Herod's court. For Herod was a paranoid dictator who faced continual threats on his life and was capable of horrific reprisals on any who sought to depose him. A possible rival to his legitimacy seemed a danger he could not ignore. There was a birth, but that of a child in ordinary circumstances, born to a local craftsman and his teenage wife. They brought strange gifts, we are told, to do with the life and death of a kingly personage. Afraid of Herod and maybe his interrogation techniques they made good their journey home. In later years they may have reflected on their quest and perhaps, as in TS Elliott's poem, questioned the real value of their journey and the significance of the ordinary family they found.

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worse time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

the very dead of winter.

The poem continues-

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

For Christian believers this story becomes the foundation for a great season in the church year as they reflect on the significant influence of the gospel on the world. We call this time of the year Epiphany, indicating that the child is no ordinary man but is shown to the world as its rescuer. His light shines out to a world of need, to people who walk in darkness and to dwellers in the sad land where the very shadow of death falls on all. He is the light to lighten the Gentiles. His light is the true light that lightens every man in the world .
It may well be that Holman Hunt's great painting, entitled ' the Light of the World', springs to mind. It shows Jesus holding a lantern in what is a very English orchard . The influence of the Christ child knows no boundaries so that this very English Victorian artist can, in another millennium, claim that he who is light of the world transforms his age and his contemporaries. This Jesus is our contemporary, too, and we begin the new year by recognizing that he is here for us and 2011 can be a journey with him for us ,our church and our society.

May God bless your New Year,
Noel Michell

December Newsletter

2010-11-30T14:03:00.000Z

‘A New Star’
And Winter fell. All at once it was Winter. All of a sudden the nights seemed very dark. Suddenly we were caught in huge raging storms and floods and bitter cold came upon us. Our lives so often reflect the change in the seasons, don’t they? We can go along quite merrily and happily, and then darkness falls. When Winter comes, our mood turns to a more sombre timbre too. The troubles of our world seem as ‘dark portents’ and press more heavily upon us; life becomes more of a struggle to battle through each day.
However, the coming of the bleak mid-winter is not all ‘doom and gloom’! One of the joys of the encroaching darkness is gazing up at the night sky. Here in Cornwall, we can pick out many constellations and patterns, and, on a clear night, the sky seems completely full of so many bright and gleaming stars.
How amazing it must have been for those three astrologers, two thousand years ago, gazing through their telescopes, and studying and charting the planets and their movements, to suddenly come upon ‘a New Star’ in the night sky, a new light, unrecorded and unrecognised before, much like when we come upon a previously undiscovered mammal in a rainforest or an aerial photograph reveals a previously hidden archaeological settlement in a field. No wonder these first Wise Men hurriedly loaded up their goods and chattels and their camels and horses in such haste, and went on a journey to discover what this ‘New Star’ might mean.
The kings can lead us to discover what Advent is all about: Darkness may fall; Winter may come; but, yet, ‘a New Star’ appears in the sky to lead us and entice us on a journey of discovery. In Advent we can become modern day wise men and women, not shut away in the ‘doom and gloom’ of Winter days and nights, but Advent journeyers, waiting for ‘the Light’ to come to us, to follow ‘the New Star’ that comes to light up the darkness of the night sky and our world in a ‘New Way’ and offering us a bright future in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is coming into the world.
Advent has many themes: coloured reflective purple, candles in the darkness, watching and waiting, preparing. But what are we preparing ourselves for? December can be full of extreme busyness, but, if we are true travellers and wise men and women, we will also take time to watch and wait for Jesus to reveal himself to us in ‘a New Way’ this Advent-tide, just like he did in the appearance of ‘the New Star’ in the sky two thousand years ago. Whether it be in your own private prayer-times and meditations this Advent or whether you join us for ‘Advent Sacred Space’ at All Saints, Marazion from 4-4.30pm on Saturdays and Wednesdays for a time of quiet meditation and preparation, we pray that, in the depth of this dark Winter, we will also give time to preparing our hearts to receive ‘the New Thing’ that God wants to reveal to us. As the prophet Isaiah predicted: ‘I am doing ‘a new thing’. Do you not perceive it’?
Happy Advent travelling and best wishes in all your preparations,
Revd. Nigel Marns
Rector United Benefice of Mounts Bay

November Newsletter

2010-11-07T23:13:00.001Z

Dear Friends,
One of the many benefits of living in a place like this, is the awareness you have of the changing seasons. We once had to live for several years in the centre of a big city, where the only real signs of late Autumn were a build-up of soggy leaves in the gutters, the shop lights coming on early and an occasional glimpse of a magnificent sunset behind a tower block. Here though, the signs of the year’s turning are everywhere. You can smell it in the air. You can see it in the glorious, low, slanting light; the lengthening shadows; and in the way the countryside reveals itself, showing its underlying structure and bare bones. Even the lights around the bay have a sharpness and a brightness on late October and November nights that they didn’t have a couple of months ago. Real country people seem to have an innate sense of all this. My Dad used to say that he could ‘feel backend coming on’, and there was, in that, a reassuring sense that the natural rhythm of the year was working itself out, as it always had. I think the turning of the Church’s year too, has more of a natural feeling in communities like ours. This year, we are celebrating the Feast of All Souls with a service in Ludgvan Church on the day the clocks go back, so dusk will already be gathering as the service gets underway. It seems a fitting start to our season of remembrance, beginning, as it does, with remembrance of our individual losses, and climaxing with the numerically far greater loss we mark on the 11th and on Remembrance Sunday itself. It’s a time of year I find overwhelmingly moving, and it takes us towards Advent in an appropriately reflective mood.

As Advent approaches, I love the sense you get of things drawing to a close and yet being filled with expectancy. These few weeks that are marked out by the Church as a time of inward renewal and preparation for Christmas, always seem like a gift – a precious opportunity to spiritually re-tune ourselves before getting swept up into the busyness of the festive season. It’s more than just recharging our batteries. There is a quietness and a stillness about this time of year that helps us to tap into the quietness and stillness that is at the very heart of prayer, and prayer of course, is at the heart of our relationship with God. So accept the gift of Advent. Make the most of the opportunity it offers to press the pause button, however briefly, and spend some quiet time with God. The poet RS Thomas describes how essential such time is:
‘…the silence in the mind is when we live best, within listening distance of the silence we call God…’

I hope that’s what this coming Advent will mean for you – a time when you learn to live more ‘within listening distance of the silence we call God’.

Yours with love, Lilian

October Newsletter

2010-10-01T14:38:00.002+01:00

All good gifts

The Schools have returned. The roads are much less busy. The days are shortening. The light is fading fast. The nights are noticeably cooler. The leaf fall is all around us. A last burst of warm sun, and the Indian Summer finally fades. Old routines are being revisited, new routines picked up and begun. New interests are taken up. A change of gear and a change of Season is upon us.
We mark this new season, this movement into Autumn, with a Celebration of ‘Life, and Health and Food’, of Creation, and of ‘all good gifts around us’. It is time for the Harvest Thanksgiving Season and, at Harvest, we come to God to thank Him for all his great provision for us, all the food we farm and ‘safely gather in’.
Our focus this Harvest-time is ‘Jesus, the Bread of Life’ (John 6:25-35). After Jesus has provided for his listeners on the hillside at the feeding of the five thousand (harking back to God’s provision of the Israelites with manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16) and pointing forward to the heavenly banquet in the Kingdom to come) Jesus then goes onto say that ‘we cannot live by bread alone’.
As we come to our Harvest Thanksgivings this year we might expand our thoughts to include not just carrots and cauliflowers but all of God’s provision that sustains us. We think of our homes and shelter, our clothes and fuel, our hobbies and employment. But it is not just food and practical things that can sustain us. Things perish. Food can go rotten and stale - as I’ve often found to my cost if I have left Harvest produce unsorted for too long in Church! - However, I always think we had one satisfied customer in the Church mouse who I think relishes this Season of Harvest feasting most of all!
Jesus says there is ‘more to life than food’. Other things sustain us: things like the nurture and love of our friends and family. ‘The bread of life’ also means living in God, living in Jesus, the true ‘bread of life’ can also sustain us and prepare us to live in the light of eternity. Jesus advises us ‘not to work for things that go bad, but for things that last for eternal life’. He says: ‘Those who come to me shall never go hungry. Those who believe in me will never be thirsty’ (John 6:35).
This Harvest Festival (as the Autumnal light gradually reduces our horizons and as we prepare to hunker down for the Winter ahead) may we also expand our horizons and our thinking to include the many things we can praise God for and his great provision for us in so many ways: certainly to thank Him for our food, but also for so many gifts around us: As Chisholm writes in his famous hymn:
‘Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed thy hand has provided.
Great is thy faithfulness Lord unto me.’

Happy Harvest Feasting and festivity,
Revd Nigel Marns
Team Rector

September Newsletter

2010-09-03T22:39:00.000+01:00

Dear Friends,

In the benefice we are taking part in the programme run by the Diocese entitled 'Back to Church Sunday.' We have decided to change the title to 'Welcome to Church Sunday' as it sounded more positive and inviting to people. Indeed we all need to recognise the failure of the church everywhere to take seriously the great commission that Our Lord left 'to make disciples' everywhere.The church has become a club where the faithful club members get their weekly inspiration without considering that the very inspiration that they find in church is what so many people in society are trying to find. There is a hunger for spiritual things in many people's lives. They feel empty and rudderless in their daily lives. They are looking for some deeper meaning to everything. The church is one place that they may want to look for answers to these real desires in their lives. We need to make the effort to make the place attractive to them. First we need to be friendly- welcoming them into church with a smile and that genuine hello that means we actually are excited to see them in church. Secondly when we have a cuppa after the service-do we make sure they are invited and, more importantly, drawn into conversation. I have seen strangers in church stranded in the coffee time because the whole body of regulars are intent on talking with their friends and ignoring them. We need to draw them into our friendship and that must mean a little effort from all of us.

Of course, thirdly the occasional services offer us a very promising opportunity to draw alongside younger family groups that we need for the future of our church. The problem is many of us don't like our cosy Sunday corner disturbed by their presence in our service. We often wish they might opt for some other time on the Sunday away from our normal service! What a pity that we feel like this for they are the very people our Lord wants in our midst and the command to baptise is part of the great commission to make disciples. We cannot afford to ignore those who want baptism for their children. They need to be integrated into the life of our churches and we need to work hard at involving their baptised children into a program for young people that will lead to confirmation in due course.

We need, fourthly, to integrate those being married in our churches into the life of our Christian communities. All this takes time and patience from all of us. Two generations have been allowed to drift from meaningful links with the church and bridging this gap will take much effort from all of us. We must expect that they will feel out of place in our world. We cannot simply,therefore, sit back and expect these new relationships to build themselves.

So we are preparing for Welcome back to church Sunday. Each of us has a part to play in this. We all need to think of someone we can invite to come with us to church. There must be people that we know that we could invite to come along with us. If we all found someone to bring we could double the number in church on that day. Perhaps more than double the number if we invite a young family with children!

Over this matter of making disciples 'doing nothing' is not an option unless we want to close the doors of our churches for good. As we begin our Autumn program of church events may we remember the great commission of Jesus and that includes our part in making disciples. Let us all see everything up to Christmas an opportunity for befriending and bringing new folk to God and to church.

Your friend and priest,

Noel Michell

August Newsletter

2010-07-22T21:08:00.001+01:00

SACRED SPACE
‘Sacred Spaces’ can be many and varied. I wonder what would you name as your ‘sacred space’?
Recently, I asked a group of schoolchildren what was their ‘sacred space’. Many said their bedroom was a place of solace, some named a den they had made, or a shed they went to, some said when they visited their horses, some had special places on the beach which were places of sanctuary. The children also recognised the Church building as being an important ‘sacred space’ where generations of people had prayed, where special celebrations had taken place, a ‘hallowed’ and ‘blessed’ place. Many Churches in Cornwall were built near fresh water sources, useful for baptisms, but also founded close to water as a source of life. There are so many ‘holy wells’ around us.
I wonder if you would name your ‘sacred space’ as the Church, or a particular part of the Church, or whether some other place of sanctuary springs to mind. Here in Cornwall, we live in a truly blessed place with wonderful rugged and craggy coastline, hidden and secret coves, ever-changing colours and moods of the sea, a rich variety of sea creatures, animals and birdlife, there are many ‘sacred spaces’ here.
The Church has been too anthropocentric or human-centred in the past, by concentrating solely on one man, Jesus. Although Jesus is the ‘pioneer and perfecter of our faith’, ‘The Alpha and the Omega’, the only source of our salvation, God did not only create one man, even if he was the Divine Son of God. If our faith is too human-focused it can lead to travesty: Recently, I watched a harrowing theatrical adaptation of John Steinbeck’s book ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ at the Hall for Cornwall. Steinbeck portrayed the pioneering Southern Baptist Community in America, fundamentally believing in Jesus Christ as their ‘Personal Saviour’, but paying scant regard for the agricultural land around them, and desecrating, despoiling, and so abusing and overworking the land, that it could no longer sustain life and was turned into a dustbowl.
As well as Jesus, we are each made in God’s image and God also created this beautiful world for us to enjoy. The great eighteenth-century poet and visionary, William Blake, declared that ‘everything that lives is holy’. That is why I enjoy so much taking Services outside into other ‘sacred spaces’ (and not confining our faith to a building, however much of a ‘sacred space’ it is). I have really enjoyed leading the Easter Sunday Morning Perranuthnoe Sunrise Service, the Rogation Sunday Field Blessing, the Songs of Praise Service in the Rectory Garden, and we are going to do two more outdoor Services in August too:

a Family Service by the Red River on Marazion Beach on Sunday 8 August and

on Wednesday 11 August we are going to revive the tradition of the St Hilary Pilgrimage, taking in all four Churches in our Benefice, starting from Ludgvan at 2.30pm, Marazion at 4.30pm, Perranuthnoe at 6.00pm to join in the St Hilary Pilgrimage Service at 7.00pm. You are welcome to join us at any point along the route. The early Celtic saints who brought Christianity to Cornwall and the later Medieval saints on Pilgrimage to Compostela walked many of the paths and tracks of St Michael’s Way which we shall travel on, and we shall be travelling in their footsteps, in the land they have already blessed before us. If you don’t want to make a physical Pilgrimage or to go outside, you are very welcome to join in the spiritual pilgrimage, which is our new ‘Sacred Space’ Daily Prayer Tuesdays-Saturdays throughout August at Marazion Church.
There are many ‘sacred spaces’ and many sacred places all around us to be discovered in our Churches, and outside too. This Summer may we explore and discover them or renew our acquaintance with some holy and blessed places, some ‘sacred spaces’ once again.

Revd Nigel Marns
Rector: Ludgvan, Marazion, Perranuthnoe & St Hilary

JULY NEWSLETTER

2010-06-27T08:30:00.001+01:00

Hiya Everyone,

By the time you read this letter, “When Nigel comes” will have been “Now Nigel is Here” for a whole year. And What a Year it has been

Let me recap some of the highlights of this past year, or at least some of the highlights as I see them!

New Liturgy – we now have new liturgy books for all the seasons of the church year and most people I have spoken to agree that this has enhanced our worship and made us much more aware of the changing seasons in our church year
.
Bonfire Night – Did you get there? It was the most magnificent occasion with something for everyone. We had a bonfire that looked as if it was one continuous firework courtesy of an off duty firefighter, fireworks galore, lovely hot food and singing along with the guitars of the Good News Gang and others. A real Benefice effort and family occasion.

A very moving All Souls Service and a Taize Worship evening at Marazion.

Christmas Eve Crib service at Ludgvan attracting over 70 people including children.

A Marriage Thanksgiving service in the afternoon of St Valentine’s Day at Perranuthnoe

New Forms of worship on a Sunday afternoon at Ludgvan and Marazion and a Benefice Maunday Thursday Service at Marazion with the washing of feet (and hands) and Taize worship.

The Spectacular Easter morning (at 5.30am) service on the beach at Perranuthnoe where teenagers (and others) played guitars, children sang and older members just marvelled as we moved from complete darkness into the light of the sunrise and the further comfort of a fantastic cooked breakfast. What a way to start the Easter Season.

Easter Day also marked the opening of a new Junior Church at Ludgvan.

And this is just a small sample of the things that have been happening round the Benefice in the past year – as I said before – What a year!

Later this month Nigel and Penny will start their daily Taize service at Marazion and that will run Tuesday till Saturday every week during July and August at 4pm in Marazion Church – not to be missed.
Of course, all of this may have passed you by and you may not like any of the new services and innovations that Nigel and his whole family have brought to the Benefice and you are quite entitled to think like that. However, things are changing whether we like it or not. We are losing Lilian to Lincoln and her family and Annie from Perranuthnoe will start her training to be a Priest.

You may have noticed that new faces have started appearing in most of our congregations. Isn’t it wonderful that God is sending all these new people to join us in this journey as we strive to “Discover God’s Kingdom and Grow the Church” (as Bishop Tim would say). I believe that they are sent by God and its our responsibility, under God, to make them welcome among us.

If we all felt the same way about these changes then it would be the first time in history, as even Moses and Jesus himself didn’t please everyone.

I mention Moses because when following the Lectionary Year we have recently been reading through the book of Exodus, you know the one, Genesis, Exodus, and I couldn’t help but marvel at the patience and humility of Moses and the stubborn and complaining Israelites. (Try reading it again – it’s fascinating). They are still complaining all the way through Numbers too.

They had just seen God hold back the Red Sea for them, He’s drowned all the Egyptian army in the same Red Sea and within three days – yes just three days they were moaning about not having all the nice things to eat that they had enjoyed when they were slaves in Egypt. I don’t doubt that some of them would have complained that their feet had got damp coming through the Red Sea but I have no biblical evidence for this!

Not that I am comparing Nigel to Moses in any way because as we all know, Moses had a long beard, a big nose and spoke with an American accent. (Well he did in all the movies I have seen). Nigel may not be Moses but God is still the same God – the same yesterday today and for ever.

It is my firm belief that our God never stops moving his people on and that we are all on a journey and that journey involves getting better acquainted with His ways and how He wants us to live our life.

In this Benefice we have a good chance now to “hitch our wagons” onto Nigel and Penny’s journey and join with them as they seek God in the Celtic tradition of “going with the flow”.

I certainly don’t want to go back (like the Israelites), indeed it is impossible to go back as we are told that “life goes not backwards nor tarries with yesterday” and I will be happily moving forward into the flow of our God and I urge all of you to join us in this exciting journey into greater knowledge and deeper worship of our God.

So - I am certainly looking forward to our next year together, my prayer is that you are too.

All love, Beth

(Revd. Beth Whyte)

June Newsletter

2010-06-02T13:25:00.001+01:00

Here Comes The Summer – And It’s No ‘Ordinary Time’!
I don’t know about you but I am just beginning to get a taste for the Summer: for hot, shirtsleeve days and long summer nights when the light stretches ever onward and it doesn’t really get dark until 9pm or 10pm. The hedgerows have burst into a profusion of colour and the light is fresh and bright. For many, the Summer is an expansive time of the year: the constraints of the winter can be forgotten and the cobwebs thrown off. Many people relish the opportunity of spending as much time as possible out of doors, whether it be gardening or bowling, walking or rowing, surfing or swimming. The Summer can be a freeing and renewing time of the year.
Sadly, in these Summer days , the Calendar of the Church Year does not reflect the Summer experience of exploration and discovery and designates these ‘extraordinary’ months of June - and many months hereafter (right up until November) - as ‘Ordinary Time’ ! Sundays are numbered after the rather arcane theological concept of the Trinity almost ad infinitum - I think there are ’21 Sundays After Trinity’ this year!
I am always disappointed that the Church should choose to designate the Summer months in this way. There has been all the preparation for the birth of Jesus in December in the Advent Season, the joy of Jesus’ Coming at Christmas, the revelation of the nature of the Christ at Epiphany, the 40-day preparation of Lent, and the study of Jesus’ mission and life-story in February and March, leading to the climatic events of Jesus’ Passion, Death and Resurrection in Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter, his Ascension in May and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. After all this, the Church Year seems to go rather flat. By not entering into the ‘Spirit’ of the Season or the Summer, I think that the Church misses a trick at this time of year.
There is the whole next part of the story of God’s salvation to be told: the story of the birth and early beginnings of the Church to discover, contained in the final books of the New Testament: the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters to the emerging Christian Churches and first Christian communities. And we learn that they are as fractious, fragile and human as any Church is today. This June in Church we shall be reading from the Letter of St Paul to the Church in Galatia, and we shall hear St Paul trying to explain to Jews his credentials in being an apostle, his contentious mission to the non-Jewish peoples, the Gentiles, the relationship of the newly emerging Christian faith to the old Jewish Torah and law and how St Paul emphasises that loving Christian conduct flows naturally from faith in Christ.
The Holy Spirit had much to teach the early Church and has much to teach us today. The Holy Spirit gives us the power we need to live the Gospel and is our well-spring of peace and confidence, planting the seed of faith and devotion to God in our hearts.
I know there is a need for fallow times in the Christian year as in the farming year: times when the soils in the fields need to recover and fish stocks return to the seas but I do not think the Summertime of fruitfulness and harvest is a time for this. As Christians, there are no ‘Ordinary Times’ if we are followers of Jesus and live lives empowered by the Holy Spirit. I believe as Christians we are to reap the ‘Harvest’ and ‘fruits of the Spirit’ at this time of year. I prefer to call these Summer days ‘Sundays of the Holy Spirit’, because you never know where the wind of the Holy Spirit will blow next and whom the fire of the Holy Spirit will rest or alight upon next. Just as we make new discoveries and have new experiences in the freedom of the Summer days and nights, may we ‘expect the unexpected’ in our faith too and may the Summer also be a ‘Season of the Holy Spirit’, a time of deepening, having new adventures and making new discoveries in our faith and walk with God just as we do in the rest of our lives at this bounteous time of Year.
Revd Nigel Marns
Rector: Ludgvan, Marazion, Perranuthnoe & St Hilary
A Date For your Diary: Revd Nigel and Mrs Penny Marns warmly invite the Parishioners of the United Benefice to a Songs of Praise Service followed by some light refreshments in The Rectory Garden, Ludgvan (in Ludgvan Church, if wet) on Sunday June 27 at 4pm. All very welcome

May 2010 Newsletter

2010-04-27T18:34:00.000+01:00

Dear Friends,
This month we celebrate three of the Church’s major festivals – Ascension Day, Pentecost and, right at the end of May, Trinity Sunday. The first two really bring the Easter story to its conclusion. On Ascension Day, all those marvellous encounters the disciples have had with their risen Lord, come to an end. He departs from them in bodily form, after promising that they will soon be ‘clothed in power from on high’, something which happens with spectacular force on the day of Pentecost.
From then on, the disciples are changed people. Inspired by Jesus’ appearances to them after Easter, and empowered by the gift of the Holy Spirit, they go out and change the world.
I’m always struck by the low-key way we Anglicans treat Ascension Day. It tends to be overshadowed by Easter a few weeks earlier, and Pentecost, which comes just over a week later. Maybe we’re even a little embarrassed by Luke’s description of how Jesus departs from this earth. Believing he was physically taken up into heaven in a cloud seems, to our modern way of thinking, rather naïve and simplistic. I rather enjoy the way the scene is often depicted in Eastern Orthodox art, though it makes me want to giggle too – there’s usually the group of eleven disciples gazing upwards and, right at the top of the picture, a bit of cloud with Jesus’ ankles and feet dangling down from it.
But the more you meditate on this story, the more meaning it has, and particularly for us in this day and age, when the Church sometimes seems to be suffering from a lack of confidence. When our faith is under attack from many sides, as it is at present, there is an understandable tendency for Christians to want to play safe – to gather together in our own places rather than engage with a world that can seem indifferent or even hostile.
One of the striking things about the Ascension story, though, is the state the disciples were in when they went down off the hill. Jesus has departed from them. How natural it would have been to feel bereft, even fearful about having to face life without him. Not a bit of it. They go down the hillside bursting with confidence and joy. Luke tells us they are then continuously in the temple praising God, and this despite the fact that Jerusalem had become a very dangerous place for the followers of Jesus. There’s such an exuberance and boldness about them, that they’re scarcely recognisable as the same people who were in a state of fear and trembling only a short time previously.
It’s this transformation – begun at Easter and completed at Pentecost – that is the most powerful testament to the reality of Christ’s resurrection, and the power of the Holy Spirit. And it’s part of the miracle of the whole thing, that ever since those events, Jesus’ followers have, in some mysterious way, been able to plug into the same power source as those first disciples. We too are able to know the risen Christ as a living presence in our lives; we too have received the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is conferred on us all when we are baptised.
We do have to admit, though, that some of us seem to live as though we have not been transformed and empowered by these experiences at all. Someone has said that what we need to do in order for the Church to survive and grow, is rediscover our confidence in the power of Holy Spirit. As it is, we tend to muddle along as though we’re unaware of this great energy source available to us. It reminds me of when we acquired our present car. I’d never driven a car with a sixth gear before, so I often forgot that it was there. If John happened to be in the passenger seat, our journeys would be punctuated by him hissing through clenched teeth (his usual form of communication anyway, when I’m driving): ‘Move into top gear’.
Perhaps we should take that as our Ascension-tide and Whitsun-tide motto. And how do we ‘move into top gear?’ The first disciples point the way. The first thing they do after Jesus’ ascension is come together to pray, so preparing themselves for the gift of the Holy Spirit which is nothing less than the power of God actively at work in us, giving us new life, energising us and changing us.
It has been said that the Christian faith has no proofs, only witnesses. But when you think about it, the two amount to the same thing. The truth of our faith is proved by the quality of our witness. Often at our Sunday morning service we say these words: ‘The Lord is here. His spirit is with us’. If we really know that to be true, then we too have what it takes to go out and change the world, or at any rate, our little bit of it.
Yours with love, Lilian

NEWSLETTER APRIL 2010

2010-03-29T14:41:00.000+01:00

‘Sometimes it causes me to wonder, wonder,
Were you there when they crucified, my Lord?’

Just as the old spiritual says, the climatic events of Jesus’ last days on Earth give us much cause to wonder as we relive and bear witness once again to Jesus’ Life, Death and Resurrection this Easter.

During these last seven weeks of Lent we have been thinking about ‘the People of the Passion’, people who were witnesses to Jesus’ Passion during his lifetime: people like the Centurion, the thief on the Cross, Pilate’s wife. But Jesus’ story is not trapped at one moment in time, trapped in the history books 2000 years ago. We can still encounter it, experience it and it can have life-changing effect on our lives today.

I wonder where you might be in the crowd, as you witness Jesus’ Passion: are you standing at the back, watching from afar off, liable to flee at the first sign of trouble, as the crowds and disciples largely did at Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gesthemene. Or do you find yourself in the thick of the action?: Welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem with great hope on Palm Sunday; being made incredulous by Jesus’ servant ministry, as he washes his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper; ‘beholding’ the glory of ‘the Man’, steadfast under question and steadfast under fire by the rulers; or, perhaps, feeling as if you have, in some way, betrayed your calling to completely live Jesus’ Way in your life, like Peter and Judas. Do you find yourself at the foot of the Cross contemplating God’s great love and forgiveness for the sins of the world, or startled by great joy as the Risen Jesus appears to you in a Garden or on a Beach.

This year we have a very full programme of events and services throughout the Benefice over Holy Week to help us not to linger at the back of the crowd, but to draw us closely in to Jesus’ Story, so that we may fully enter into the Easter Mystery, and to enable us to wonder afresh at God’s great love and salvation plan for each of us and the whole world.

We will travel with Jesus this Holy Week and as we will celebrate in Good Friday and Easter Day, the culmination, purpose and pinnacle of our Christian lives and faith. We will contemplate and wonder together, whether it be in joyous Palm Sunday Services or more contemplative Maundy Thursday and Good Friday Vigils, or as we welcome Christ’s Resurrection Light coming to us on Easter Day at Sunrise or in a beautiful Easter Morning Service. I pray that as Jesus’ followers today, as ‘People of the Passion’ today, that our experience and encounter with the Living Jesus, will restore our hope and trust in the purposes of God, who can overcome all things and makes all things new for all-time and for each of us in the Resurrection Dawn on Easter Day.

I wish you all a very Happy Easter,
Revd Nigel Marns
Rector: Ludgvan, Marazion, Perranuthnoe & St Hilary

March Newsletter

2010-02-26T19:23:00.001Z

Dear Friends,

This Year we took friends along the road from Porth Navas to Mawnan. It is a narrow lane that skirts the waters edge through some delightful Helford scenery. The width of the road is not for the faint hearted as we discovered trying to pass a lady in her people's carrier who simply froze beside me in a rather tight passing place on the road! Sometimes roads can be difficult if we want to see the best views!
We went from there down to the church at Mawnan with its wonderful views out to sea and I saw again the old Cornish board across the lychgate which reads -Dus ynjy dhe Du.

This is an invitation to the visiting pilgrim to draw near to God. An invitation to find sanctuary and to pray. At journey's end to step aside and enjoy the presence of God. All good journeys through life include prayer of some kind. Lent is such a time in our calendar - part of a journey through the Christian year. Some people think of it as a time for denial and giving up something that we consider a little special treat in life. I see it more as a special marker on the journey - a moment to stop and reflect on the meaning of those events that lie at the very heart of our faith. Our journey leads us year by year to this same place. We stop like all good pilgrims. We catch our breath from the journey and take stock. We find fresh sanctuary as old truths take on new and fresh meaning. We meet with Our Lord on his journey and passion. It is a place to accept afresh his blessing. We can do this as we discover once again for ourselves the old truths and allow the Spirit of God to re-mint those truths so that they come afresh into our lives. Please accept this invitation of God, this Lent, so that each one of us might find his presence with us.

Your friend and priest,

Noel Michell.

February 2010 Newsletter

2010-01-30T11:35:00.000Z

St Piran & St Michael’s Church, Perranuthnoe

PEOPLE OF THE PASSION

Stories are important to us. Whether they be stories about our national or local history, stories about 'what make us the people that we are'; or fairy stories that we tell our children to warn them of the dangers in our world, or whether it be keeping abreast of the latest unfolding and developing dramas and stories on the television news. We all like a good story.

One of the privileges of my job is that I have the opportunity to hear peoples' stories. Over the past six months, as your new Rector, I've started to make my way around the Benefice, and have been privileged to begin to be invited to share in lives and tales. I've heard about what is important, what brings joy and, sometimes, also what problems or difficulties people have had to overcome in their lives, whether financial or in relationships or struggles with poor health. I've also heard about people's personal walk with God, how the golden thread of faith has been interwoven into the events of lives and journeys. And I've learnt afresh that everyone has a story to tell.

The problem with the stories in our faith is that they become over-familiar to us. We think we've heard them all before, that they have nothing more to tell us or teach us or say to us. We think we know what they are all about, and we stop listening to them. In St Ignatius' Way of Prayer he taught his Jesuits to imagine themselves from the perspective of one of the characters in the narrative, and so more fully enter into the unfolding Biblical account, making the stories more present and real, for them to become as it were participants in the Gospel stories, as if they were happening today, in the here and now. In 2000 the BBC produced eight vignettes or monologues of about fifteen minutes each, an imaginative re-interpretation of people who had met Jesus, but taken from a slightly different perspective, a slightly different angle on the story, producing new insights onto familiar and well-known characters in the Biblical account of the Passion: people like the Centurion, the Thief on the Cross or Pontius Pilate's wife. It is similar to Alan Bennett's 'Talking Heads'. As we watch these little accounts together this Lent, and we realise that everyone has a story to tell, it will help us to engage afresh with the people who were around Jesus, 'The People of the Passion', who had contact with Jesus in his life and so, on reflection, help us to build up a better picture of Jesus himself as he heads towards the dramatic and seminal events of Holy Week and Easter-tide.

As Christians, we too are 'People of the Passion' (although we don't live at the same historical time as Jesus himself) we are people who hold to the belief that Jesus' Life, Death and Resurrection is the most important story in human history, and that Jesus' story brings the promise of forgiveness, restoration, renewal and new life to everyone and to our own life stories too. At Lent, we place Jesus' story at the centre of our lives and our stories, and it may be that we decide to do something to acknowledge this in as practical way in our own life, by 'giving up something' to remember Jesus' own fasting and praying in the wilderness or 'taking up' a new thing, by joining a Lent Group or Lent Lunch or re-galvanising our prayer-time, so that during this forty day season we may draw closer to Jesus and his story and that his story interweaves more strongly and visibly in our lives throughout this precious time of Lent.

I pray that during this Lent we will listen again to the Biblical stories, we may enter it all anew and afresh and that it will inform our own life stories and our own journeying with God today.
May we have a blessed and holy Lent together,

Best Wishes,

Revd Nigel Marns
Rector: Ludgvan, Marazion, Perranuthnoe & St Hilary

December Newsletter

2009-11-27T15:01:00.000Z

ADVENT: EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED!
In Advent we enter a Season of Expectation. Everyone is expecting something. Anticipation fills the air. Children (and some adults too!) wonder at what gifts they shall receive, and those who buy things for others hope that their carefully-chosen presents will be liked and enjoyed. Adults wonder whether all the Christmas plans will work out, whether inclement weather will restrict or prevent travelling, and once everyone has safely arrived and been installed, whether those gathered around will get along alright! Many will wonder and worry about how all the cooking and food preparation will go, and whether the turkey will be tasty or over (or, perhaps, undercooked) this year! Personally, I am certainly looking forward to celebrating and sharing in my first Christmas with you in the Benefice. Expectation, anticipation, excitement and some concern fill these days of Advent.
In all our busyness and practical preparations of the Advent season, it is important that we allow the spirit of anticipation and expectation to fill our worship and prayer life: at Advent we prepare ourselves for Jesus’ coming too, to ensure that we are ready to greet him when he arrives at Christmastime. Advent is a time to watch, wonder and wait (and that’s exactly why we began Advent with a ‘Service of Watching and Waiting’ on Advent Sunday this year). However good our preparations are, nothing, in my experience, ever goes quite according to plan, and we are often surprised by how things turn out in the end. In our Christian lives too we should expect the unexpected: no-one quite knows when or how Jesus will come to us this Christmastime. Often the wonder of the events of Christmas, of God coming to Earth as a tiny, vulnerable and fragile baby, can catch me at the least expected times and the seemingly least expected ways and places. For some, it may be through traditional routes that God comes to us and touches us once again: the candlelit service at Midnight or the joyful face of a child at Christingle; for others, it will be in the glory of the flashing lights (both inside our Churches (and particularly the Christmas Tree Festival at Marazion this year), or seeing the lights over the Bay, of which I’ve heard so much about; for some, it will be in the greeting and welcoming of friends and family, the long nights of conversation by the fireside; for others, receiving, a particularly special gift. But sometimes Jesus comes to us in new and unexpected ways: in the kindness of a stranger or when we hear a conflict has been reconciled and a new peace has broken out.
On her latest album, Enya sings:
‘Somewhere in a winter’s night,
the angels begin their flight.’
In Advent, it is good to draw close and attuned to God and to listen with eagerness and anticipation for Christ’s coming to us. As well as preparing our homes and families, let us also prepare our hearts this Advent to once again (and perhaps in an unexpected way) to hear the angel’s song and joyful tidings once again:
‘Glory to God in the Highest! Peace to his people in Earth! I bring you good news of great joy!
For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, Christ the Lord!’

In all our Advent preparations this year, let us leave enough space to hear the angels’ wings unfurl.

I wish you all a very anticipatory Advent and a Very Happy Christmas to come,

Revd Nigel Marns
Rector: Ludgvan, Marazion, Perranuthnoe & St Hilary

November Newsletter

2009-10-31T20:36:00.001Z

Remember, remember...
As the evenings gain a distinct Autumnal coolness, as the nights draw in and the clocks go back, as we draw our curtains early in the evenings, at this time of year it feels natural to ‘batten down the hatches’, to draw and gather in those close to us, to start to prepare for the impending Winter by beginning to hibernate and get cosy by our firesides.
For the Celtic Christian ancestors this time of year was not just a time to turn inwards and to stay shut away, but to a time to Celebrate. For some Celts 31 October was Samhein ‘summers end’ and was greeted by tribal gatherings, games, feasts and entertainments. For others it marked the beginning of the Celtic New Year. For us, as we approach the Season and approaching death of the Winter months, it seems natural for the Church to mark this time with our annual Season of Remembrance. We shall be marking and celebrating all three Festivals of Remembrance during the month of November.
Remembrance Sunday (which this year falls on Sunday 8 November) will be observed fully in all four Churches of the Benefice. On Remembrance Sunday, we shall be remembering not just those who gave their lives in the First and Second World Wars, but also those who gave their lives in all the recent conflicts since, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those still serving there.
Remembrance is not only about Remembrance Sunday: the month of November is also in the Church, All Saints Tide, when we remember and celebrate ‘the lights who have gone before us’, the saints we know, and have known, and all those who have encouraged us in the Way of Faith in our lives. We shall be celebrating Marazion’s Feast Day of All Saints at All Saints, Marazion on 1 November at 11.00am in the morning and coming together for a special Benefice All Saints Evensong at St Hilary Church together with the Deanery Choir on All Saints Sunday evening, 1 November.
We shall also be remembering our loved ones who have died on All Souls Day at a Benefice All Souls Service the following evening, Monday 2 November, at Marazion, to which all are welcome. Lists are available in all the churches to recall and remember those who have died and all the names and loved ones we seek to recall before God will be read out during this Service.
Coloured by the red of the poppies on lapels, November and the coming Winter can be a reflective, salutary, sombre, if not a sad, time of the year but both All Saints Day and All Souls Day should be regarded as a Celebratory Time: Christians believe that the Life we enjoy and struggle with on Earth, especially through the approaching dark days of Winter, is not all there is, but that through the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, a Way is prepared for each of us, and our loved ones who have gone before us, through Death to Life Everlasting, a glorious and hopeful future with our Heavenly Father in his Kingdom of Heaven: All Saints Tide then becomes a very positive reason to celebrate God’s Love and provision and wonderful future that awaits us all after our life on Earth is over.
And far from withdrawing into our private worlds from the rigours of the impending Winter, we are planning this year to recall another fateful event in our history, ‘to remember, remember the 5th of November’, coming out of our homes and gathering around a campfire. Although we recall ‘the triumph of democracy’ on Bonfire Night, against the conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament, the ongoing MPs expenses scandal, the loss of any sense of morality around many of the outrageous claims submitted, many MPs constant refrain that ‘we were only acting within the rules’ and the dearth of political ideas to deal with the current economic crisis may well give Bonfire Night an added edge this year: many will perhaps secretly be thinking that it might be a good idea had Guy Fawkes succeeded all those years ago (!) or whether we need a new present-day Guy Fawkes to stir up and shake up the cosy and seemingly corrupt establishment of our current parliamentary system!
There is something defiant and evocative about the lighting of a bonfire, the sparkle and fizzle of the fireworks lighting up the dark sky on 5 November, the smell of the spent cordite and hot food, and gathering of the empty firework shells. We hope to have a happy night on Bonfire Night 5 in the Rectory Garden at Ludgvan, an event especially planned by and for the families of the Benefice (but not exclusively so) and everyone is welcome to come along: tickets are now on sale for this ‘Remembrance Event’ and Celebration!
Many acts of Remembrance will be taking place in the next month. Let this Season not only a reflective and sombre time, but also a time of joy, as we restate our belief in the New Life Jesus has prepared for us and our loved ones, and as we gather together in the darkness to sip our soup and munch our hotdogs by the Bonfire and to defy the coming Winter with a Celebration of Light and Song.
Revd Nigel Marns
Rector of St Piran's & St Michael's, Perranuthnoe

October 2009 Newsletter

2009-09-29T15:34:00.001+01:00

MULTIPLE CHOICES!

We live in a world where everyday we are confronted by thousands of choices: which television programme to watch when there are so many channels to choose from; where we go on holiday (here in Britain or a destination somewhere else in the world); you can even choose whether or not your breakfast cereal has red berries or chocolate bits in it! Sometimes I’m so bewildered by the myriad of choices before me in a large supermarket I prefer to go to smaller shops to help limit the possibility of the choices before me!
As in the world, so it is in the Church: When I lead a Bible study last week I was amazed at the number of different sorts of Bible that people had chosen to have, ranging from the traditional ‘King James’ version, through ‘The Revised Standard’ version, ‘The Jerusalem Bible’, ‘The New International Bible’, ‘The Good News Bible’, and a modern rewriting of the Bible in contemporary language, ‘The Message’. All this seemed a long way from our Medieval forebears: In Medieval times only the priest understood the Service and read from the Bible in Latin, Sunday by Sunday. Wall paintings were drawn on Church and Cathedral walls to depict the key Bible stories for the majority of the people to get to know the main Biblical stories. When the Bible was finally printed at first there was only one version to be had produced by Martin Luther and the Wittenberg Press.
Each faith on our world has its holy book: ‘The Koran’ for Moslems, 'the Bhadvagita’ for Hindus and the Sikhs venerate their holy book as the last ‘Guru’ or prophet and final revelation from God. So why should we choose to read the Bible, and, if we do, what version of the Bible should we choose and what bits should we choose to read?
I expect many of us learnt the old Sunday School song ‘The best book to read is the Bible’, and I don’t think it matters which version you choose to read as long as you are reading it. I did try and read the Bible in a Year one year, and it was truly hard going: I didn’t find it particularly uplifting ploughing through the gory descriptions of animal sacrifices in the Old Testament ‘Book of Leviticus’ whilst the rain came lashing down in February!
The Bible is really a collection of separate books, in some part history of the Jewish people (Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Kings, Samuel); in some part Wisdom and poetry (Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes), in some part Letters written to emerging and early Churches (Romans, Galatians, Ephesians) and, of course, the most important story of all: the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) recounting the story of salvation brought to the world in the person of Jesus Christ, the central figure and rock of our faith:
‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father’ (John 1:14)
Often we need some aid to penetrate and get to grips with this complex book, The Bible. Many of us use daily Bible reading notes, which take us through a certain passage or section in the Bible, with a good explanation of the Bible verses under question and helpful hints of how to apply the Bible teaching in our lives today.
Another way of exploring the Bible, and helping the Bible to speak to us, is through joining a Homegroup. In our Benefice, at present, we have three homegroups meeting (and you are welcome to join them at any time), looking together at an Old Testament prophetic book, ‘The Book of Isaiah’, which as well as calling God’s people back to God’s ways, also has some superb pieces of poetry within it: ‘Comfort, comfort my people (Isaiah 40:1), ‘they shall beat their swords into ploughshares’ (Isaiah 2:4) and wonderful predictions of the coming Messiah:
‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and he shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).
This month on Bible Sunday, Sunday 22 October, we celebrate the wonders to be found within the pages of the Bible. In our multi-choice world I would encourage you to take another look at the Bible as a source of solace, hope, guidance and salvation. When Jesus suggests to his disciples that they should leave him Peter replies:
‘But where else can we go. You have the words of eternal life’ (John 6:68).
May we find St Peter’s words also true for ourselves, in our daily reading of the Bible, in our Homegroups as we discover the Bible together, in the extracts we read from the Bible Sunday by Sunday in Church.
With very best wishes, God Bless and fruitful reading,
Revd Nigel Marns
Rector of St Piran's & St Michael's, Perranuthnoe

SEPTEMBER NEWSLETTER

2009-08-27T21:15:00.001+01:00

PRAISE AND THANKSGIVING, FATHER, WE OFFER

When we first moved to Ludgvan in July, the maize in the field in front of the Rectory Garden was just about knee-high. Since then, after all the sun and the rain, it has shot up in height and is over seven feet tall! Now the maize completely dwarfs us and it will soon be time to gather in and harvest this good, strong crop. For those with allotments, much of the hard work over this past year will also be coming to fruition soon. In some sense, the Celebration of Harvest Thanksgiving each Autumn in Church is a bit artificial. Those with winter crops have yet to harvest their benefits, those with cows are ‘gathering in’ their ‘harvest’ of milk everyday and the farmers around us, it seems, are always ‘planting’ and ‘gathering’ and their work is never done.
Not just out in the fields around us, but also in the Church too, Harvest is a time of ‘gathering in’: Harvest-time is about the ‘gathering in’ of people too. It is one of our big Festivals of the year. As we bring our gifts of food to the altar, the Harvest Thanksgiving Service will be celebrated at Perranuthnoe on Sunday 27 September at 11.15 am.
As well as celebrating the gifts of the Harvest and the gifts of God’s bountiful Creation, it is a time in the year when we also ‘gather in’ and ‘gather around’ and give thanks to God for the gift of each other too. As the Summer days turn to Autumn, preparations are well under way for an entertaining and great Harvest Supper feast for us, and St Hilary, at St Piran's Hall where we can all join in and share together on Friday 2 October.
This time of ‘praise and thanksgiving’, this time when we bring to God the gifts of his creation, is a very natural thing for us to do. Not only are we marking the changing of the seasons, as the days grow shorter, but, since ancient times, the first fruits of the Harvest were brought to the Temple as a ‘thanks offering’ to God for all his provision to us (Deuteronomy 26). It is very natural for us to want to thank God, The Great Provider and Sustainer of all our lives. It is good in the Christian Calendar each year that we have one time in the year when we pause and take stock and we give thanks for all God’s many blessings to us, for ‘all God’s gifts around us’ and to thank him for ‘our life, our health, our food’.
One of my favourite Harvest Hymns is sung to the tune ‘Morning has broken’:
‘Praise and thanksgiving, Father, we offer,
For all things living you have made good;
Harvest of sown fields, fruits of the orchard,
Hay from the mown fields, blossom and wood’.

May we all enjoy this time of ‘gathering in’ and Harvest, this time of praise and thanksgiving to God, for all his bountifulness and goodness to us.

Every blessing,

Revd Nigel Marns
Rector: St Piran's & St Michael's, Perranuthnoe

WELCOME AND HOSPITALITY

2009-08-20T17:12:00.000+01:00

It’s excellent that a Meal is the Central Act of Christian Worship, Sunday by Sunday. A meal is a time for coming together, for sharing food, stories and conversation. Of course, the Holy Communion Service or Eucharist we celebrate each Sunday in our Churches is a very much stripped down version of the Passover Meal that Jesus celebrated with his disciples: Jesus’ Passover not only involved tiny bits of bread and a sip of wine, but was a great feast involving roast lamb and bitter herbs too, a celebration of great joy as the Jewish people celebrated their release from captivity.

At this time of year, many people will be welcoming into their homes friends, family and visitors, and our local hotels, campsites and bed and breakfasts will be preparing to welcome the large number of visitors anticipated to be coming to visit Cornwall this Summer.

Feasting, welcome and hospitality are very much at the heart of our Christian faith. Jesus spends much of St Luke’s Gospel in particular, sharing meals and enjoying hospitality, sometimes from surprising sources like the tax collector Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-9) or leading Pharisees (Luke 14: 1)or people such as Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36).

And it’s not just friends and family that Jesus encourages us to welcome, but strangers too. Perhaps we might baulk at the idea of going out to ‘the highways and byways’ (Luke 14:21) and searching out and collecting people to join in with the celebration of Life and Joy, the abundance of blessings God has poured upon us, and the bounty of God’s feast, as Jesus suggested in his ‘Parable of the Great Banquet’ (Luke 14: 15-24, Matthew 22:1-10) but that I think something of that Spirit is expressed in the welcome and hospitality provided at the Thursday afternoon Teas at Perranuthnoe and when Ludgvan Church has entertained and welcomed overseas agricultural workers working in our local area.

All this talk of ‘welcome and hospitality’ is not just about enjoying fine food, wine and company but about having an open-hearted approach to those who cross our path, and a willingness to invite them and their stories into our lives so that their story becomes part of our stories and we can share, celebrate and enjoy our common humanity together.

As a family we have been recipients of so much welcome and hospitality over these past few weeks. We have been so very warmly welcomed by you all as I come to be your new Rector (and that welcome continues) with a large number of invitations and acts of kindness and friendship offered to us. Thank you for all you have done and continue to do as we settle into our new life with you, as we enjoy such a warm embrace and much welcome and hospitality, so many graces and blessings. Thank you particularly for all those involved in my Welcome & Induction Service on 7 July and all those who made it such a special and memorable occasion.

Jesus encourages us to join in the Feast of Life. I pray that we will accept his invitation, particularly if we are welcoming people into our homes and lives this Summer.

With very best wishes,
Revd Nigel Marns
Rector: Ludgvan, Marazion, St Hilary & Perranuthnoe