March 2009
Services
| Sunday Services | Friday Services |
|---|---|
| 8.00 am Holy Communion (Prayer book) | 10.30 am Holy Communion (Prayer book) |
| 11.00 am Sunday at Eleven | 5.30 pm Meditation |
| 5.00 pm Meditative Eucharist |
|
Sunday at Eleven
March 1st: Odyssey: Is there an after-life? Preacher Revd Dr John Polkinghorne John Polkinghorne is well known as a priest and scientist who writes and speaks very effectively on the interface between the two. In this Odyssey sermon he will be tackling the question, of personal importance to many people, of whether we can make sense of an after-life. March 8th: Lent Eucharist: Jesus, friend of sinners Preacher Revd Dr Malcolm Guite The theme of this Lent Eucharist will be the record, attested in the Gospels, of Jesus' friendship with sinners. March 15th: Patronal festival Preacher Canon Fraser Watts Our annual Patronal Festival service is an opportunity to give thanks for God's blessings on St Edward's, and to rededicate ourselves for the future. The service will be attended by the Master of Trinity Hall, who will admit the churchwardens to office. March 22nd: Mothering Sunday Family Service Preacher Revd Dr Malcolm Guite Mothering Sunday is an occasion when there was a tradition of people returning to the church where they had been baptized. At St Edward's we will have a morning service at which young families will be especially welcome, including those with children baptized at St Edward's. March 29th: Passiontide Service Preacher Canon Alan Cole This will be a service of readings and music for Passiontide, similar to that held in many college chapels at the end of the Lent Term. We hope to have a special choir singing a series of anthems, together with readings from a modern account of the passion of Christ, designed to fall freshly on the ears. |
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Meditative Eucharist - Sundays at Five |
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| February 22nd: | Self-discipline (Charley Moloney) |
| March 1st: | Self-deception (Fraser Watts) |
| March 8th: | Fasting (Jane Keiller) |
| March 15th: | Egotism (Fraser Watts) |
| March 22nd: | Faithfulness (Alan Cole) |
| March 29th: | Sacrifice (Fraser Watts) |
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A spiritual preparation for Easter Led by Christina Johnson. Wednesdays at 5.30pm |
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| In these meetings we will be working from the New Testament to deepen our prayer life, enriched by insights received by the Mystics. The final session will look at applying this inner work to simplify our lifestyle. | |
| March 4th: | Prayer |
| March 11th: | Spiritual preparation |
| March 18th: | Dying and rising with Christ |
| March 25th: | Lifestyle |
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Ash Wednesday |
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| Ash Wednesday is on Wednesday 25th February. There will be Contemplative Eucharist at 7.30 pm at which Fraser Watts will preside and preach. There will be much silence, and imposition of ashes. |
Holistic Spirituality Group: Alternate Sundays at 3.30 pm Feb 22nd, March 8th and 22nd. The focus will be on Buddhism & Christianity, led by Malcolm Guite and Alex Studholme.
Patronal Festival Lunch: After the 11.00 am service on Sunday March 15th there will be a Patronal Festival lunch at Trinity Hall to which members of all congregations at St Edward's are warmly invited. Cost 3 pounds. Please sign up at the church if you can come, and also to indicate if you can contribute salad, dessert etc.
Goth Eucharists: Alternate Tuesdays at 8.30 pm. Liturgy, secular music and sermons on challenging issues.The focus will continue on the deadly sins. Feb 24th: Jon Oliver on Guilt. March 10th: Sara Ball on Self-loathing. March 24th: TBA.
Sunday 8.00 am Holy Communion: The Epistles and Gospels, from the Book of Common Prayer, will be: March 1st: Lent 1; March 8th: Lent 2; March 15th: Lent 3; March 22nd: Lent 4; March 29th: Lent 5.
Electoral Roll: We encourage regular members of the congregation, not yet on the electoral roll, to fill in a form applying to join. Please give them to Judith Tonry or Fraser Watts.
Election of Churchwardens: There will be a brief special meeting for the election of Churchwardens immediately following the 11.00 am service on Sunday March 8th. Nominations must be made in writing before the meeting. Judith Tonry and Steven Mastin are willing to stand for re-election. (The Annual Parochial Church Meeting will be held in April on a date to be announced shortly.)
Readers at 11.00 am: 1st M Lee and W Caan; 8th D Hirst and Chaplain; 15th R Lynden-Bell and S Mastin; 22nd A Finn and E Edwards
Chaplain’s Letter
The year turns, the months turn and return, and we return again to the sacred season of Lent with its journey towards Holy Week and Easter, with its theme of turning and returning, turning from sin, turning to Christ, returning to the heart of our faith. There is something satisfying about the completion and repetition of cycles, something magical about the way the great movements of the circling planets and the spinning planets echo the spin and turn of the tiniest electrons in our body, something suggestive in the truth that every turning is a form of motion defined by stillness, turning around a centre, a still point which does not move, as all our own motions and desires, centric and eccentric, turn on a still point, a voice or presence of the divine, centred somewhere in our soul calling and re-calling us to ourselves.
Something satisfying, something magical, something suggestive, but also, something missing! Aren’t we just going round in circles? What is missing from our turning and returning is a sense of forward motion a sense of progress. The radical puritans were so obsessed with this need to move forward on the straight and narrow that they tried to abolish all the turning and returning festivals of the year, the turning and returning cadences of the litany. They were wrong, but not entirely. What we need is not an opposition between the circle and the straight line, but a marriage of the two.
When we combine circling with moving forward what we create is a spiral, one of the most beautiful and important shapes in nature, and for the poet Dante, the perfect emblem of Christian pilgrimage through time. His pilgrims turn and return circling the holy mountain but with each circuit they have climbed a little higher, a little closer to the completion and renewal to which God draws them. With each year of our lives we circle not 'back to Lent again', but forward through another Lent, which leaves us that little bit more purified, more ready, through these little spirals of death and resurrection for the great transformative death and resurrection which is our salvation and the world’s, for now is our salvation nearer than when we first believed.
Clergy: Revd. Dr. Fraser Watts (19, Grantchester Road, CB3 9ED; 359223, fnw1001@cam.ac.uk); Revd Dr Malcolm Guite (694249, mg320@cam.ac.uk); Canon Alan Cole (892286, alan73@waitrose.com). Churchwardens: Mr Steven Mastin (361041, stevenjamesmastin@yahoo.co.uk); Mrs Judith Tonry (892160, judith@tonry.co.uk). Treasurer: Mr Geoffrey Barnes. Chapter Clerk: Mr Stephen Davies (242636, stephdvs@btinernet.com). Church phone: 362004