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Calendar for February 2014

The Little Angels mothers and toddlers group meets on Fridays at 9.45 am at St George’s Church Nailsworth when all are welcome.  Followed by refreshments in the Parish Rooms.

The next stage in the process to appoint the New Vicar will be the Vacancy Meeting on Tuesday 25 February when all three PCCs will meet in Horsley with the Archdeacon of Gloucester to agree the ‘Benefice Profile’ document to be used for advertising.

Next PCC Meeting

Monday 10 March at 7.30 pm in the Village Hall 

Communications

     Diocesan News                 www.gloucester.anglican.org/news/publications

                                          www.gloucester.anglican.org/news/blog

     Nailsworth Benefice         www.stgeorgesnailsworth.org.uk

     Kingscote Community      www.kingscoteonline.co.uk

 

The Interim Minister’s Letter

Life is not easy or straightforward.  Indeed, the older we get the more life seems to throw googlies at us !  I am fascinated by life itself and the way that we engage with it and seek to understand it.

I am hoping there might be some who would like to journey together exploring this very subject during Lent and I an offering some Tuesday evenings in March and April in which to meet.  As a catalyst we will use a book called ‘God Lost and Found’ by John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford (SPCK ISBN 978.0.281.06352.9) £9.99.

Two well-known people say of this book:

“This is an unusually honest book.  Its analysis is plain-spoken and compassionate, and what Bishop John has to say about finding ways to live constructively with times of emptiness is superbly well focussed.  You’ll emerge from reading this with –

probably – relief that a widespread set of challenges has been so sensitively identified – and certainly – with gratitude for sensible, durable advice on how to go on making friends with the mystery we can never digest or contain.”  Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury.

“What a courageous book !  In his inimitable, engaging style, John Pritchard exposes the doubts, anxieties and spiritual dryness which can afflict even faithful believers.  He shows us the darkest reality of being unable to find God.  But he does not leave us there.  His many stories and insights lift us gently to look again, experience afresh and be open to ‘new beginnings’.  The result is a deeply compassionate book – full of hope and full of God.”  Elaine Storkey, President of Tearfund.

I do hope that anyone from Kingscote or Horsley will feel free to join us, to be fellow explorers and to journey together to understand more fully the mystery of life, as far as we are able, and how we can live it even after we have been bruised by it and at times lost our hopes for it.

The meetings will be at Kingscote Village Hall at 7.45 for 8.00 pm finishing no later

than 9.30 pm, on Tuesdays 4,11,18, 25 March,  and 1,8 April 2014. To give some idea of the numbers could you let Harry Tubbs (01453 860 194) or Georgina Harford (01453 860 227) in Kingscote, or Stan Burrage (01453 832 952) in Horsley know if you are coming, even if only to some of the meetings.  It will give us some idea when ordering the books and putting out the coffee cups !

With every blessing, Canon Michael Irving. 

Flower Rota           

Sunday 2nd February

Sundays 9th and 16th February

Sundays 23rd February and 2nd MarchJane Bateman

Wendy Ingram

Sheila Grey 

Wedding:  Saturday 15 February, 2.30 pm, Rory Spanton and Rebecca Griggs 

Lorna Reynolds

Cleaning Team

The next church cleaning session is at 2.30 pm on Monday 10 February.  We are always delighted to welcome anyone who would like to join the team.

Teresa Day

  

Grumbolds Ash Group

On Tuesday 18 February we visit The Museum in the Park in Stroud, to see particularly the visiting exhibition Tracing the Blue Print describing the historic indigo fabric printing of Central and Eastern Europe.  We met at 10.00 am at the Village Hall to share transport, and will go for lunch after the visit.

Jutta Tubbs

Village Hall Programme

Film Night – Tuesday 11 February, 7.30 pm, Oscar winning film West Side Story with Natalie Wood and George Chakiris.  Admission free, pay bar.

Coffee Morning – Wednesday 19 February, 10.30 to 11.30 am.  Coffee and cake £1.50.

Wine and Cheese party – Friday 28 February, 8.00 pm, with light headed wine quiz.  £5.00 for a glass of wine and cheese, pay bar to follow.

Carol Paton Tel. 860 649

Book Club at 8.00 pm

Wednesday 19 February, to discuss ‘Arcanum’ by Janet Gleeson or ‘The Cashmere Shawl’ by Rosie Thomas at Angela’s.

Wednesday 19 March, to discuss ‘The Fishing Fleet’ by Anne de Courney at the Village Hall.

Angela Wooldridge

Kingscote Parish Council

 The next PC meeting will be on Tuesday 15 April at 8.00 pm in the Hunters Hall.

Planning approvals:

Rosemary Cottage, Kingscote, erection of single storey rear extension.

Planning applications:

Bagpath Court Cottage, erection of two storey side and rear extensions to existing dwelling, insertion of two dormer windows and roof-light to the rear (amendment to 13/02598/FUL). 

Major work is now scheduled on the pavement outside the Matara Centre. 

Anna Davison, Tel. 860 244

Free-range eggs for sale

Mrs Pat Cooksley of 2 The Windmill normally has some free-range eggs for sale at £1 for six.

Weekly Recycling – Green food boxes and wheelie bins

All current collection points – from 7.30 am, Fridays.

Fortnightly Recycling – Black boxes, White Bags and Blue bags

All current collection points – from 7.30 am, Fridays 7 and 21 Febuary.

Fortnightly Waste – Grey wheelie bins to landfill

All current collection points – from 7.30 am, Fridays 7 and 21 February.

Bus Timetable Enquiries – Ring traveline on  0871 200 2233.

Mobile Police Van

No announcement has been made concerning the visit schedule for 2014.

Mobile Library

The next visit will be on Friday 21 February and the van will park as usual in front of The Walled Garden from 9.30 to 11.30 am.

Church Gutter Clearing

We thank all the helpers who took part in the gutter clearing activity on Saturday 11 January.  Considering what has been going on, we were very fortunate with the weather.

The PCC

Weddings in Kingscote Church in 2014

 We hope that it will be helpful to have this advance warning of the dates and times of the 2014 weddings in the church:

Saturday 15February                            2.30 pm

Saturday 26 April                                2.00 pm

Sunday 4 May                                    2.00 pm

Saturday 17 May                                 1.20 pm

Friday 20 June                                    1.30 pm

Saturday 16 August                             2.00 pm

Saturday 27 September                         1.30 pm

Saturday 4 October                              2.00 pm

Wednesday 8 October                          2.00 pm

Thursday 30 October                           1.00 pm

As you can see this totals 10 weddings which is the PCC’s agreed limit for the year. 

Georgina Harford and Jane Nichols

(Wedding Administration team)

 

Magazine

Any material which may be of interest for the next issue of the Forerunner should be sent by 18 February to H. Tubbs,  3 The Walled Garden,  Tel. 860 194.

The Editor 

Stop imposing single, simplistic truths on a plural world 

(Extracts from an interesting article by Ziauddin Sardar co-editor of ‘Critical Muslim’,

published in the Times on Saturday 11 January 2014)

A thought provoking e-mail popped into my inbox last week. It was an article entitled ‘All religions are true, Adam and Eve a fable, hell is a mere metaphor – says Pope Francis.’  Long held Catholic doctrines had been redefined, it suggested.  The essay suggested that there is a problem with the religious conception of truth.

I agree.  All monotheistic faiths claim to possess absolute truth.  In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there is only one single path that leads to salvation.  The Jews are not just the keepers of God’s laws but also His chosen people.  In Christianity, you can only be ‘saved’ by accepting Jesus Christ as the Saviour; it is the sole route to heaven.  Muslims have to believe that the Koran is the Word of God, Muhammad the Last Prophet, and God’s laws must be implemented in full to avoid the fire of hell.

These notions of truth set up a false dichotomy.  If all truth is the same for everyone at all times, then if I am right, you must be wrong.  And, if I really care for truth, I must convert you to my view.  If necessary, as history shows, by force.  They instil a sense of superiority in the believers.  As possessors of the absolute truth, or the chosen people of God, the believers are morally superior to the rest of humanity. Their way of life is the best in this best of all possible worlds.  This arrogance is responsible for much of the inter-religious strife we see around the world, and the sectarian violence in the Muslim world.

This Platonic idea of truth makes religion unfit for the globalised world.  This is why religions are inept at dealing with equality, pluralism and the moral chaos of our times.

Monotheistic faiths, I think, have to abandon much of what they have held to be true, including their historic goal of imposing a single truth on a plural globe.  If God is Infinite, then She cannot be enveloped in a single, ancient, simplistic construction of truth.

Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi, came up with a neat prescription for religions to cope with the complexity and plurality of modern life.  In the first edition of The Dignity of Difference, he wrote that the way forward for religion is to drop the old recipe that  ‘faith is supremely important, and therefore all men must have one true faith’ and replace it with the new formula that ‘faith is supremely important and therefore every man must be allowed to live by the faith which seems true to him.’  He was shouted down by the Jewish Orthodoxy and had to delete this passage from subsequent editions of the book.

I would go one step further.  We have to see religious truths as human constructions made at certain times and places to serve certain ends.  Revelation may be inspired by God, but it is humans who receive it, interpret it, and turn it into a dogma.  We see Moses, Jesus and Muhammad not as historical figures struggling with truth, but as personification of truth without a past.  As historical figures they can be recycled in sermons and invoked as role models.

If we see religious dogma as human constructions, then they can be redefined and updated by other humans without qualms.  All religions teach that God is not a static but an active agent.  A corollary of this teaching is that faith communities can only be true to God by embracing change.  No religion is ever complete or fully realised.  All are work in progress.  All have to embrace notions of equality, pluralism and adjust to our expanding knowledge of the cosmos. 

MISS  THOMPSON  GOES  SHOPPING

In her lone cottage on the downs,

With winds and blizzards and great crowns

Of shining cloud, with wheeling plover

And short grass sweet with small white clover,

Miss Thompson lived, correct and meek,

A lonely spinster, and every week

On market day she used to go

Into the little town below,

Tucked in the great down’s hollow bowl,

Like pebbles gathered in a shoal.

 

So, having washed her plates and cup

And banked the kitchen fire up,

Miss Thompson slipped upstairs and dressed,

Put on her black (her second best),

The bonnet trimmed with rusty plush,

Peeped in the glass with simpering blush,

From camphor-smelling cupboard took

Her thicker jacket off the hook

Because the day might turn to cold.

Then, ready, slipped downstairs and rolled

The hearthrug back; then searched about,

Found her basket, ventured out,

Snecked the door and paused to lock it

And plunged the key in some deep pocket.

Then as she tripped demurely down

The steep descent, the little town

Spread wider still its sprawling street

Enclosed her and her footfalls beat

On hard stone pavement; and she felt

Those throbbing ecstasies that melt

Through heart and mind, as happy, free,

Her small, trim personality

Merged into the seething strife

Of auction-marts and city life. 

Martin Armstrong 

Parish Directory

Vicar:                    Interregnum – awaiting new appointment.

Curate:                  Reverend Sue Sobczak, Horsley, Tel.  01453 833 526 

Reader                  Sue White, Nailsworth, Tel: 01453 835 693 

Churchwardens:   Harry Tubbs, 3 The Walled Garden, Kingscote, GL8 8Y. Tel: 860 194

                            Godfrey Ainsworth, Kingscote House, Kingscote, GL8 8XY Tel: 861 683

Hon.Sec.PCC:        Georgina Harford, Ashcroft House, Kingscote, GL8 8YF Tel: 01453 860 227

Hon.Treas.PCC:    Jane Nichols, Asheldown, 3 Ashel Barn Cottages, Kingscote, GL8 8YB Tel. 01453 860 534

Members of PCC:   The Churchwardens, The Hon. Secretary, The Hon. Treasurer, Elin Tattersall, Zoe Nichols, Philip Kendell, Chris Alford.

Flower and Clean Team: Teresa Day, Vivienne Ainsworth, Angela Wooldridge, Pauline McTear.

Nailsworth MU:     Trissa Jones,   Tel:  832 551

Editor of Forerunner:  Harry Tubbs, 3 The Walled Garden, Kingscote, GL8 8YP Tel: 860 194

Gift Aid and Envelopes:   Jane Nichols, 3 Ashel Barn Cottages, Kingscote Tel. 860 534.

Church Flowers Rota: Lorna Reynolds, Tel. 860 231

Organist:               Rosemary Sims, 15 Badger’s Way, Forest Green,

                            Nailsworth,  GL6 0HE  Tel: 832 446

Sidespersons:         Harry Tubbs, Rod Tibbert, Elin Tattersall, Godfrey Ainsworth.

Electoral Roll:        Elin Tattersall, 3 Boxwood Close, Tel.01453 860 182

Mowing Team:       Tim Sage, Harry Tubbs, Sebastian Cooper, Rick Bond, Roger Lucy, Godfrey Ainsworth, Ken Davies.

Village Hall:        Bookings: Pauline McTear, Kingscote,  Tel. 861 311

                            Secretary:  Carol Paton, Bagpath, Tel. 860 649

Parish Council Chairman: Graham Nichols, Asheldown, 3 Ashel Barn Cottages, Kingscote  Tel: 01453 860 534

Parish Council Clerk:  Anna Davison, Bagpath Court, GL8 8YG, Tel. 860 244

Village Agent:        Aileen Bendall, Tel. 07810 630 156 or 01452 426 868

Printer of Forerunner:  Godfrey Ainsworth, Kingscote House, Tel. 861 683                                                     

The Forerunner is published by the P.C.C. who are usually most willing to

accept copy from village groups and individuals. However, please note that the opinions and views expressed by the contributors within the Forerunner are not necessarily those of the Church, P.C.C. or Editor.

 

She proposes doing a ‘taster’ class initially to work out interest and then possibly a 6 week run of weekly classes at an introductory price of £8 per class, probably on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening.  Vanessa has over 10 years of teaching experience. She teaches in the tradition of T.K.V. Desikachar, Viniyoga, now known as AYS.

If you would be interested in doing yoga, please contact Vanessa Andersson direct.