Author Archives: Sue Bates

Thought for the week, 29th April; Love bade me welcome

This poem, technically known as Love (III) is by George Herbert, a 17th century priest. I first met it as an undergraduate and 40 years later it still speaks to me.

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack’d anything.

‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’

Love said, ‘You shall be he.’

‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,

I cannot look on Thee.’

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

‘Who made the eyes but I?’

‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.’

‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’

‘My dear, then I will serve.’

‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’

So I did sit and eat.

Thought for the week, 22nd April;

This musing is based by an article in the Church Times by Andrew Brown. He begins by quoting the journalist Camilla Cavendish on her planned attendance at an Easter service.

“I will be going to church this Sunday, despite not believing in the resurrection. I’ll be there to accompany an elderly relative, but also for a dose of ritual and rhythm, to sing with strangers and to be able to quietly reflect on things outside myself. It occurs to me that I seek similar benefits from yoga and mindfulness, both of which have their roots in eastern faiths. The much-vaunted decline of religion is perhaps not quite what it seems. We avidly read self-help books telling us we will be happier if we express gratitude but have lost the rituals which enabled us to do that. We mourn the loss of community but are unsure how to reconstruct it. I envy my Jewish and Muslim friends… That doesn’t mean I want to spend hours being preached at… But it does seem unfortunate to have reached a position of either having to embrace every aspect of a faith or else denigrate it”

I’m not sure I understand what it means to embrace “every aspect” of Christianity; my own faith comes from questioning it and accepting that often there are no simple answers. But, like Camilla, in the ritual and rhythm, I find something that speaks to me; as Andrew Brown comments, something that enters into me and resonates with me. As he puts it, the more it enters into me, the harder it can be to explain it, although I am driven to do that. But in that process, I encounter mystery; I do not embrace it, somehow, it embraces me.

We welcome Rev. Kina Robertshaw

We are delighted to welcome the Rev Kina Robertshaw as our new rector, who was formally installed as rector of all the parishes in our benefice on April 18th. Kina was previously Associate Minister at Bromyard where she gained considerable experience of working in rural communities. Kina was born in Angola and left home at 17. She was a successful entrepeneur in the fashion industry until she started to train for full-time ministry. She carried out research on Christian entrepreneurs for a master’s degree and has co-authored a book on the subject. Kina can be recognised by her broad smile, her enthusiasm for meeting and talking to people and her dog, which she takes for walks.

 For those who want to know more about Kina, her website is Kina Robertshaw 

David

The April Draw!!

The April draw of the 100 club was delayed by one week due to Good Friday. On the 14th of April number 70 was drawn for the very first time and won Alan and Liz £47. Numbers 59 and 47 won Evelina and Ellen £23.50 each. Congratulations to all the lucky winners.

At the time of writing this report the 100 Club has come to the rescue of the water supply system at the church and had enabled the purchase of a new water pump. Sadly there now seems to be another problem with the private water supply system but thanks to the generous support of 100 Club members we are able to investigate further and if necessary, book a call out with an engineer. If this had happened a few years ago this would simply have not been possible. This is another example of how the 100 Club is making a very tabgable difference to the community of Billingsley. We thank our members most sincerely.

Thought for the week, 15th April; The real house of God

Over 60 years ago, the late Bishop John Robinson published a book, “The New Reformation”, in which he accurately foresaw how the church of his day was facing a crisis as it appeared increasingly irrelevant to the world. How much more so in our own times… I was recently reminded of a quotation from the book; “The house of God is not the Church but the world. The Church is the servant. and the first characteristic of a servant is that he lives in some­one else’s house, not his own.”

John Robinson died long before our current awareness of climate change and the threat that it poses to the planet. But, as this coming Saturday, 22nd, marks International Earth Day, it is worth pondering on the full implication of his words. We often talk about a church building as “the house of God” and I appreciate the importance of a place made holy by prayer and worship. But the real house of God is the world we encounter when we step outside of the church door and that is what Christians, indeed all people, are called to serve. That world, that house where God dwells is also the home of the natural world; all living creatures. John’s words are a reminder that caring for God’s house means we must care for our planet and its many environments.

Thought for the week, 8th April; Joy

For many reasons, Easter is often a time of year when we might be expected to be joyful, whether this is based on Christian conviction or the coming of Spring. It is not always easy to be joyful. This passage is taken from a recent article in the Church Times by Ayla Lepine, associate rector of St James, Piccadilly; I found it helpful.

Joy is very different from happiness. Tiffany Watt Smith describes joy as a “refusal to sit quietly within the bounds of the ordinary and understood”. Joy can be a form of resistance, too, defiance in the face of suffering. A young poet recently described joy in an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London, which was part of her project “Joy is a Protest”. These are her words:

It slips into the places we least expect it

It squeezes itself into cracks and small places

The sound of joy beats to the rhythm of your pulse

It is in your blood

It has written its name on your DNA

Joy is your birth right.

May we all experience joy, our birth right, this Easter.

Thought for the week, 31st March; scandal of the cross

And so, after the 40 days of Lent, we enter Holy Week. Depending on your spirituality, a week of deep devotion culminating in the joy of the Resurrection, or a celebration of Hot Cross Buns and chocolate Easter Eggs.  Some of us manage to hold both aspects together. Perhaps it is significant that it has been easier to secularise Easter Sunday, with a popular symbol that has only a tenuous connection with the Christian story of resurrection compared to Good Friday; Hot X Buns anyone? The cross remains in popular culture a symbol of Christianity. Not all are comfortable with this. The journalist and a vice-president of Humanists UK, Polly Toynbee questions “Why wear the symbol of a barbaric torture?” But the cross persists, as a symbol of hope and kindness.

Polly Toynbee’s bafflement at the cross is as old as Christianity. St Paul, probably writing just over 30 years after the crucifixion spoke of how the cross was foolishness to the opponents of Christianity; Christ crucified was a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the non-Jews. The Greek word that is often translated as “stumbling block” is “skandalon”, from which we get “scandal”. It is actually derived from the word for a trigger of a trap, that would catch its victim by the leg. However you look at it, it seemed at best bizarre to Paul’s contemporaries that an instrument of execution could become the tool of a God who works and wins by love. But Paul understood; the foolishness of God destroys the wisdom of humankind, the weakness of a God who rules from a cross is stronger than all the powers of humanity and darkness. That is why I wear the symbol of a barbaric torture.

Thought for the week, 25th March; Suffering and the Passion

As a vicar, people sometimes share experiences with me. These can be times of joy but sometimes they are much bleaker moments. I have recently had a number of those. It can be hard to know what to say, perhaps no words can be said; it is just enough to listen and be with the person in the pain. An equal challenge is what I then say to myself afterwards, as I reflect on what I have heard and hold it against my faith in a God who is love, a God who is trustworthy and in whom there is nothing but love. 

This tension is as old as religious experience. The Bible and Christian thought give no easy answers. However, I can draw some pointers from those passages, especially in the Old Testament, where writers wrestle with the same dilemma that I face and throw the problem and their anger back to God, with a recognition that God also somehow feels their pain. This reaches its conclusion in the New Testament with Jesus, God who takes human form and suffers pain and death in our human world. This Sunday is Passion Sunday, when the church especially remembers this. Much scholarly energy has been spent on discussing what it means to say that God shares in suffering and if, how that helps; all I can say is that I stand alongside the mother I heard reflecting on the death of her handicapped daughter and who said “I can only worship a god who shares in suffering”.  

Thought for the week, 18th March; the enduring power of Mothering Sunday

This Sunday is Mothering Sunday. It is a strange mixture of religious and secular; a Sunday that has its origins in the Middle Ages as a celebration of the Church as a mother to all her had been admitted to her by baptism. More specifically, it was a time to visit the church in which the individual had been baptised; this was a person’s mother church. It was celebrated half-way through Lent, an excuse for some festivities and eating during a period when most would be expected to fast. By the seventeenth century the focus had shifted, now it was a day when those in service, either in houses or on farms, were given a day off to visit their mothers. The tradition of simnel cake and savoury buns comes from the Gospel reading for this day, where Jesus feeds the 5000 with a few loaves and fish. Mothering Sunday may have passed into the backwaters where we now find Rogation and Lammas tide, if it were not for developments in the United States, where Anna Jarvis had campaigned for a day to celebrate mothers. This inspired Constance Penswick Smith in this country to re-establish Mothering Sunday as a specifically Christian (initially Anglican) celebration of the role of mothers in Christian families. Thus in our very secular world, we still buy cards and flowers to send on what was once “Refreshment Sunday” in Lent. 

On Sunday, I will be at Glazeley, where my mother was baptised; in my prayers I will give thanks for the love that I had from both Mum and Dad, the people from whom I learnt what love is. In our environmentally conscious times some now also see the day as a time to give thanks for fruitfulness of “mother” earth; Mothering Sunday is wonderfully adaptable. And I will join with others in celebrating all those who are mothers or act as mothers, through good times and bad; the times as children we love them, the times we find that less easy. They remain our mothers, the people who brought us into the world. 

Thought for the week, 11th March; Religion and Politics

Tony Blair, now a practicing Roman Catholic, was always very coy about expressing his religious views whilst still in politics; possibly Kate Forbes, one of the contenders for the leadership of the Scottish National Party may be wishing she had taken his lead. She is a member of the Free Church of Scotland, a church which keeps strictly to what it considers as Biblical teaching on social issues. She made it known that she supported its line and promptly found herself pilloried by those who only a few hours before had supported her, even though she made it clear that these were personal views and she would not use her position to impose them on others. Interestingly, as I write this, she seems back in contention for the job of leader, with significant backing from ordinary party members. 

My theology, from the liberal wing of the Church of England, is not that of the Free Church; I disagree with some of the views of Ms Forbes. However, I do worry that some of the reaction against her is a symptom of a culture that treats faith as at best a private eccentricity, to be kept hidden and incompatible with modern society. It is beyond me how a politician who has religious faith cannot draw on that faith to shape their political views, be they right or left wing. I do hope that we have not reached the point where those who hold political office cannot talk openly about their religious views and how these influence their core beliefs. If that is the case, I fear the country will be the poorer and I worry about the policies that will result.