Response

I'm addicted. Some watch their soaps, some can’t stop shopping (I personally can’t start), some worship at Old Trafford, but I'm hooked on Hugh Laurie in the American medical drama House. When I unwrap my presents on Christmas Day I'm really hoping that my devoted family, colluding with me in my addiction, will have put the final Season 8 under the tree, and that will then become my holiday devotional; bliss. In the meantime I watch old episodes, including one recently in which a man simply couldn't respond to anything – to the words of his son, the touch of his wife, no response, no reaction, nothing, until the very last minute of the episode. At the end his recovery began, but up until that point he was simply an observer.

Magi travel around the word and prostrate themselves, Mary magnifies the Lord in song, the Shepherds tell everyone, the Angels glorify, Herod murders children, Simeon prophesies salvation for humanity and pain for Mary, Anna gives thanks, and the Little Donkey dances. OK the donkey is not in all editions of the New Testament, maybe in A Shrek Christmas (NIV), but if he was there he’d have done something. That’s the point really – there aren't any observers. Actually at one point Luke tells us that Mary ponders the events of the last 24 hours in her heart, but pondering is not passivity, and as she has just given birth and been invaded by shepherds she’s allowed a break.

The Christian claim that the light of all humanity was born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago is not an invitation to simple observation or passivity. The birth of Christ demands engagement and a response; sometimes it’s a rejection. Perhaps you might argue that our national obsession with Christmas Day is an indication that we’re responding really rather well, it’s certainly fun, and I love it – except the party hats from crackers which never fit on my head. But the question that bugs me a little is ‘what are we actually responding to at the moment?’

The season of Advent emerged in the sixth century as a time of fasting and preparation so that when the Mass of Christ arrived our innermost beings would be on the right page, so that our response would be awe, not world-weariness; on earth as it is in heaven. Join us in Morning Prayer at the Abbey at 9am each weekday of Advent if this is going to help deepen your response this Christmas. Or pick up the sheet at the back of the Abbey if you’d like to pray at work or as you park the car at Cribbs Causeway (whose strap-line incidentally is currently The Joy of Shopping.)

Handel responded with his Messiah, J.S. Bach wrote his Christmas Oratorio. Something needs to be born in us.

Introducing the next Archbishop

A brief biography of the next Archbishop of Canterbury abridged from the Archbishop’s website: 

Born in 1956 in London, the Right Reverend Justin Welby was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied history and law. For 11 years - five in Paris and six in London – he worked in the oil industry mainly on West African and North Sea projects. During this period he became a lay leader at Holy Trinity Brompton in London, home of the Alpha Course, having previously been a council member at St Michael’s Church in Paris. A major influence both on Justin and his wife Caroline was their experience of personal tragedy. In 1983 their seven-month old daughter died in a car crash in France. Six years later in 1989, after sensing a call from God, Bishop Justin stood down from industry to train for ordination.

After being ordained Deacon in 1992, he spent 15 years serving Coventry Diocese. After a curacy in Nuneaton, in 1995 he became Rector of St James, Southam and St Michael and All Angels, Ufton, the neighbouring parish. He helped revive churches, growing their congregations and launching bereavement and baptism teams, among other things. Between 2000 and 2002 he also chaired an NHS hospital trust in South Warwickshire.

In 2002, he was made a Canon of Coventry Cathedral, where he ran the reconciliation work based there. With Canons Andrew White and Stephen Davis, he worked extensively in the field in Africa and the Middle East. In the Niger Delta, he worked on reconciliation with armed groups. He met with religious and political leaders in Israel and Palestine, and on one trip to Baghdad reopened the Anglican Church with Canon Andrew White, shortly after the allied invasion.  In 2006 he also took responsibility for Holy Trinity Coventry, the main city centre church, as Priest-in-charge.

He left Coventry in 2007 to become Dean of Liverpool Cathedral, the largest cathedral in England. Its local area, Toxteth, is among the most deprived in north-west Europe. During his leadership he brought the Cathedral into much greater contact with its local community, working with asylum seekers and in partnership with neighbouring churches. The Cathedral also hosted events from a TUC rally to royal services. Over his four years, during which he also continued to work on reconciliation and mediation projects overseas, the Cathedral’s congregation increased significantly. In 2011 he was announced as the new Bishop of Durham, taking over from the author Tom Wright. He will be enthroned at Canterbury Cathedral on 21 March 2013.

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His interests include French culture, sailing and politics. He is married to Caroline, who studied Classics at Cambridge, where they met. They have two sons and three daughters.

Advent Calendar

It was an ordinary Monday afternoon but I’d been looking forward to it for days: 2pm, Monday, a meeting with the Abbey organist and choirmaster, John Hughes. I like John an awful lot, and I enjoy a cup of tea with a fellow musician pretty much whenever. But that Monday we were discussing the music for my two favourite ecclesiastical seasons – Advent & Christmas; and I was pretty much like…well, a little boy on Christmas morning. Without wasting precious time on beverages and small talk we started exchanging musical ideas and very soon we were listening to choirs and sourcing publishers and wondering if our planning for the carol services was going to be bad for our altos’ blood pressure or cause our basses to tear out their (remaining) hair. Yes to both, probably.

Our fevered planning that afternoon means that the choir will be extra busy at the Abbey during Advent and Christmas, gargling will be heard across North Wiltshire as voices are looked after and new pieces by Paul Manz & Jonathan Dove with classics by Rachmaninoff and J.S. Bach are prepared. The music, with our congregational carols and our ancient lessons, forms an architecture to our worship as impressive as the abbey itself. But there is so much more to this coming season than beauty. In our holier moments Advent ignites within us longing and expectation – Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free – the Christ that came is still to come. And Christmas, as preachers tend to point out each year, is about presence, and our joy that the God present at Bethlehem is still present in Bethlehem and Syria and SN16 – O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel. Longing, expectation, presence and joy – perhaps it’s these themes, with their associated music, that make me watch the calendar to Advent.

So two weeks until Advent Sunday and from Tuesday 20^th November we’d like you to pop in to the abbey and grab a pack of Advent and Christmas brochures to deliver across the town as we let 3,000 households know what they’re (not) missing. We love welcoming new faces to the Abbey and helping people become part of our community – so please get involved by delivering a few brochures and bringing glad tidings to your neighbours.

Incidentally, last Sunday I forgot to mention to our assembled congregations that the preacher at our services at 10.30am and 4pm this Sunday is the Rt Revd Lee Rayfield, Bishop of Swindon. (Please don’t mention this to him.) Bishop Lee is a regular visitor and a great friend of Malmesbury and he has personally been offering pastoral support and guidance to Lee & Mary Barnes in the last month, for which we are immensely grateful.

Not Remembering

I never knew my father-in-law, Private Oscar Dale. He grew up by Bondi Beach, played cricket with a young lad called Bradman, and in 1940 he signed up to join the Australian Army and fight in WWII. Oscar travelled by ship to Cairo, sending postcards of the pyramids back home to Sydney before fighting with the allies in Egypt. Later he entered the fight in the Greek peninsula and after capture spent a considerable time as a prisoner of war in Austria and Germany. While in prison he learnt a little German, but he also learnt how to resist, and for that he was led out one day to a firing squad. At the last moment he asked to defend his actions, he spoke in his newly learnt German, and remarkably his life was spared. At the end of the war Oscar returned home to his young Australian wife via England. Unfortunately, while he was being hidden by Greek farmers earlier in the war he had drunk diseased goat’s milk and this undermined his health throughout his life. He passed away before his youngest daughter Marilyn met and married a young English opera singer. So Oscar has never heard my gratitude for my wife, or met his pommie granddaughters. Although one day we will all worship together.

On Remembrance Day, as a community and a nation we remember conflict and sacrifice and we pray for justice and peace. Two minutes silence is never long enough to remember those who laid down their lives and I am always conscious that, as a man whose life has been barely touched by war, I stand alongside others whose fathers and brothers and mothers and daughters have paid the very highest price. We will remember them.

And I remember with affection my father-in-law who I never met, a memory lost because of a glass of milk in a war zone. And in the sadness of ‘not remembering’, I try to comprehend the weight of ‘not remembering’ a father who hasn't returned from Iraq, or a mother who hasn't returned from Afghanistan.

When you go home

tell them of us and say,

for your tomorrow

we gave our today

Latest News

Update from James & Alice Pettit

James & Alice (who worked at Malmesbury Abbey until 2009 as Associate Pastor and Pastor for Youth & Creative Arts) are on the move from their current base in Faversham, Kent. From the start of January 2013, James and Alice will be moving to Sittingbourne (which is 20 minutes nearer to Malmesbury!), where James will be Team Vicar of St Mary and St Michael. http://www.saintsinsittingbourne.co.uk/ Alice will complete her time as Curate by working with James, as part of the same team. James’ licensing will be at the end of January (probably Monday 28th). 'Thank you for your prayers and support, we wish you a happy and blessed Advent and look forward to seeing you again soon!'

DINNER FOR KIGEZI

Our harvest appeal for the water and sanitation project in southern Uganda raised an astonishing £2983.70. Malmesbury Abbey is now a connected church, through Tearfund, with this essential work in our partner diocese. You can see the latest news from Kigezi here http://connected.tearfund.org/en/project_link/choose_a_project/africa/uganda_-_water/ and a short video about Christmas in Uganda here http://www.tearfund.org/en/resources/for_churches/pack_library/with_love_from_uganda_resource/. Thank you for being involved in such a great project.

OSILIGI WARRIORS

The performance by the Osiligi Maasai Warriors on Saturday November 3^rd is pretty much sold out. There may be a few spaces to stand at the last minute.