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Letter for November  2008

Dear Friends,
As I write the leaves are being whisked off the trees in golden gusts, decorating the dew soaked grass with gold; drifting in glorious crispy mounds of sunset colours.  There is something very poignant as well as beautiful about autumn leaf fall, it’s a season to look forward to the winter and a new spring and back on summer; it’s a good time to do some remembering.

This year we will hold an ‘All Souls’ service as we did last year – at 6.00 pm on Sunday November 2nd -  and there will also be a service in Eastwick on November 23rd at 4.30 pm.  We will read out names of those who have recently died, whose services we have conducted in the last few years, but it will also be a time when we remember those who left this life long ago, their memory still vivid in our hearts. There will be lists at the back of all the churches if you wish to add a name to be remembered.

These services will be a time of quiet confidence in the words of Jesus – that ‘in my Fathers mansion there are many dwelling places …I go to prepare a place for you and I will come and take you to myself..’ [Jn 14: 2,3], but within that confidence we allow ourselves a time for sadness as we grow accustomed to being without the physical presence of those that have touched our lives with their love. We acknowledge our mourning by taking a rose or a candle up to the altar in their memory. There will be familiar hymns, readings and a poem or two and we will give thanks to God for his promise of eternal life.  November 2nd is also All Saints Sunday when we celebrate with joy the ‘communion of saints’ – the progression which continues over the barrier of death into a new dimension of life.

A week later on 9th November we have an opportunity to make a public act of Remembrance for all those lost in war as we gather at the War Memorials in both High Wych and Eastwick. The end of the 2nd World War is more than 60 years ago yet we still loose young men and women killed or maimed in armed conflict and it is right that we should honour the sacrifices made by them and their families and celebrate their courage.

So November begins with looking back and remembering but it ends by turning to look forward to the future.  Sunday 30th is Advent Sunday when we look forward with joy the amazing fact that Jesus was born as one of us – human, God incarnate and we also give ourselves the opportunity to remember and prepare for the fact that he will come again, not as a tiny helpless child but as God and king – ‘when at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven, on earth and under the earth and every tongue shall confess Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Join us if you can at one of the commemoration services.

God’s Blessings on you and yours

Rev Wendy