unsung rural hero?

Do you know an unsung rural hero who quietly gets on with keeping their church alive to serve the community?
If so, then nominate them for the award being run jointly between Country Life magazine and the Church of England.
More information here
Entry forms here
The closing date is the end of this month, so don't hang about!

What to ask for

Jesus told his disciples to ask. “Ask”, he said, “and you will receive.” “You may ask for anything in my name,” he said, “and I will do it.”

The sixth Sunday of the Easter season was traditionally at time for asking for God’s blessing on the crops. In an era more closely connected to farming than we are when shipping food round the world was not an option, asking God to bless the crops was really important. If the crops failed then hunger or starvation followed. So Rogation (from the Latin “to ask”) was a really important time.

But how should we use Rogation today? Farmers throughout the world including in this country need our prayers. Many are under stress. Isolation is common. Average earnings are low – less than a vicar’s! Suicide rates remain stubbornly about twice the average.

We depend on farmers just as much for our food today as we ever did. WE may be distanced from them by a complex lengthy distribution system. Never the less they are God's answer to our prayer "Give us this day our daily bread."

So what to ask for when we pray for farmers? The simplest idea is to ask a farmer what needs he (or she) has!

To enable that to happen CARL has arranged a Rogation service at Yew Tree Farm on Monday 18th May at 7.00pm. The "service" will take the form of a walk round the farm stopping at various points to hear from the farmer what happens and what issues he faces. There will be a reflective reading, a prayer & and a hymn. It will all be followed by a pig roast.

All are welcome, but an idea of numbers would be useful.

Subversive broad beans

The photo is of rare purple flowering broad beans. The variety was once fairly common but is now rare. EU regulations don't help. To try and ensure consistency of quality of seed, all seed types have to be categorised and checked.
Because these beans are rare it means it's not worth anyone's time & money to get them categorised, which means that the seeds can't legally be sold in the EU, which means they get rarer, which means....
But I can keep beans from this year's plants and use them next year. And I can give them away.
Whoever thought growing beans would be subversive?

It's really good

It's not often that anyone gets out their mobile to tell their friends to get to the church activity because it's really good, but that was what happened at Countytastic yesterday. The event was a children's country show organised by the Three Counties Agricultural Society www.threecounties.co.uk . So what were we doing that was so good?

We had hot cross bun decorating, we had egg decorating, we were playing in the soil and planting in the soil, we were making pancakes - starting by grinding grain in an old flour mill.

Why were we doing it? Because it was fun and the children enjoyed it and because it's all rooted in the Christian faith.

PANCAKES
Pancake day, Shrove Tuesday, is the day before Lent starts. That is a time Christians remember Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness. During Lent Christians give up 'special' foods, and so before Lent it's time to party using up the rich foods. Known as 'Fat Tuesday' - Mardi Gras - and 'Goodbye to Meat' - Carnival - it's a time of special food and celebration.


PLAYING IN THE SOIL
That is the picture of what God is doing in the story of human creation. The original word for soil is 'adamah' and the word for human is 'Adam'. Playing in the compost, God makes a person he calls ‘Compo.’

GROWING IN THE SOIL
The earth produces our food. Jesus uses the image of sowing and growing to explain our relationship with God. The word of God, he says, is like scattered seed. Some falls on the path and is eaten by birds. Some falls in shallow ground and has no root. Some is choked by weeds. But some lands in good soil and produces a rich harvest. St Paul uses the picture of seed being planted or buried in the ground to illustrate the Christian hope for eternal life

HOT-CROSS BUNS.
The cross on the bun is a reminder of Jesus being executed on Good Friday.

EGGS.
Have long been a symbol of new life. For Christians they are a reminder of Jesus raised from the dead and bursting out of the tomb.

Milking the recession???

Unlike the UK government, the Irish are tackling the recession by trying to reduce government spending. This means there's more Irish cheese on the market because there's less money to keep it in storage to produce "mature" cheese.
With the Irish and UK market having an oversupply of cheese there's been downwards pressure on the farm milk price.
Add to that the increase in the dairy herd on New Zealand's south island and the reduction in demand for dairy products from China.
That all adds together to mean that farm prices are down to between 20-24p a litre at a time when costs are going up. Complying with NVZs (Nitrate Vulnerable Zone regulations) are increasing expenditure for dairy farmers.
Experts say that the situation should sort itself out in the next 6 to 8 months as more UK producers give up the struggle or decide that investing for the future isn't worthwhile. Whether in the future we'll have the capacity to produce the milk we need is another matter. But we can always get powdered from New Zealand.
And the price of milk at the supermarkets? Tesco and Sainsbury are both currently charging 86p for 2 pints. That's the equivalent of just under 76p per litre!

An insult to farmers

That was what the NFU called the government proposals for sharing the cost of animal disease control between the livesttock industry and the government. I can understand why.
The proposals work on the basis that if the industry has to pay a greater share of the costs to keep itself free of disease, that this will provide an incentive to farmers. This is insulting to farmers for many reasons.

1. Farmers already have substantial costs to bear from disease. The compensation for Foot and Mothh, bird flu or TB only meets a small part of the costs. Increasing costs for farmers wont increase motivation
2. Farmers aren't in the business just for the money! If they werre they would be doing something else! Most farmers have a genuine concern for the welfare of their animals
3. A lot of disease controls are not in farmers hands - they're in government hands. Foot and Mouth (except when it leaks from a Government laboratory) is an imported disease. Farmers have no control of border crossings or scrutiny of portss and airports. That's in government hands.

Yes, you can ... Yes, You can... Yes, You can...

I spent Sunday morning at the National Weddings Exhibition. The photo is of colleagues on the stand.
I had lots of conversations with brides to be, grooms to be, mother-in laws.... Most of what I was saying was "Yes, you can."

• To the couple who wanted to get married in the church the bride's father had been part of, the answer was "Yes, you can."
• To the couple getting married abroad but talking about a church blessing when they come back, the answer was "Yes, you can." And when told that one of them had been married and divorced, the answer was still "Yes, you can."
• For the couple where one is an Anglican and the other a semi-lapsed Roman Catholic wanting to know if they can get married in a CofE Church, the answer is "Yes, you can" - and you can ask that the Roman Catholic priest can be part of the ceremony too.
• Can we get married at 5.00pm? "Yes, you can."
• Can we have modern music? "Yes, you can."
• We're not sure if we believe in God or any particular church, can we get married? "Yes, you can."
  

It was great joy for the couples. What worries me is how the Church has got itself into a situation where people assume the answer will be "No, you can't"

And if you want to check what you can do then www.yourchurchwedding.org will tell you

Reading the signs

What does a blue arrow point to? In Portugal yellow arrows show the way to Santiago de Compostela - blue ones to Fatima . So if you were in Portugal and saw a blue arrow like the photo you could be pretty well certain that to follow it you would end up at Fatima.

BUT, if you followed this blue arrow you would end up in a mess. It doesn't point to Fatima. It's just down the road from here. I took the photo when I was walking the dogs. It points to a water main in need of attention.

It's sometimes to easy to look at signs an assume that we know what they mean.

Next to the land rover is...

...the guide who took us round Porto Santo. We had the half day "off road" tour seeing the sites of this small island just north of Madeira.
The guide's name was Carina Jesus.
She was knowledgeable, intelligent, fun...
I found myself comparing her to the narrow, judgemental "Jesus" of some churches.
I'm sure the Jesus of the gospels was more like Carina, even if he did n't drive a landrover!

Power Cut?

"Has there been a power cut?" that was the question asked by practically every worshipper as they arrived for worship on Sunday.

There hadn't been a power cut. It was Candlemas when, according to the Churchwarden's diary, the candles that would be used in the coming year should be blessed.

So we started the service in the morning gloom. We thought about light that brings hope and the possibility of seeing a way through life. We heard the account of the child Jesus, recognised by Simeon as the light of the world.

We blessed the Easter candle, used in baptism services and prayed that we might be faithful to our baptismal call to be lights in the world.

We blessed the communion table candles. Candles were first used in Christian worship when the church went underground (literally) to the catacombs and we remembered Christians persecuted for their faith today. In some traditions one of the communion table candles is called the "epistle" candle, the other the "gospel". I never can remember which is which, but they remind us that scripture is a light for us.

We light a candle from the Diocesan Assembly and were reminded that we are part of something bigger than the small group gathered that morning.

And we heard some words from a book by Lesslie Newbigin. They're so good that I think they're worth repeating here.
"I think that a very good and valid symbol of our mission is to be found in an experience with which those of us who have lived in India are familiar. When we have to go to a distant village in our pastoral duty we try to start very early in the morning, so we do not have to walk in the heat of the day. And it sometimes happens that we have to set off in total darkness; perhaps we are going towards the west so that there is no light in the sky and everything is dark. But as we go, a party of people travelling the opposite way comes to meet us. There will be at least a faint light on their faces. If we stop and ask them: "Where does the light come from?", they will simply ask us to turn round (do the U-turn - repent) and look towards the east. A new day is dawning, and the light we saw was just its faint reflection in the faces of those going that way. They did not posses the light; it was a light given to them. The church is that company which, going the opposite way to the majority, facing not from life towards death, but from death towards life, is given already the first glow of the light of a new day. It is that light that is the witness" (Mission in Christ's Way World Council of Churches p21)