St Leonard's News 10-26
3rd October: 10.30am -12pm Coffee Morning
4th October: 11am Holy Communion
11th October: 11am Morning Prayer
18th October: 11am Family Service
25th October: 11am Morning Prayer
1 st November: 4pm - 5pm All Souls, reflective time accompanied by gentle music to remember those we mourn.
This evening I am sitting at my computer thinking about what to write for this SEDCA piece and also my morning prayer service which I am leading later this month. I started writing articles for this magazine 40 years ago, prior to my 10 years as SEDCA editor, with my Grandmother when she wrote about local history as Mrs Royal – her name was Queenie Noble – and I am sure some longtime residents of Sherfield will remember her column. As an ex-school teacher, Grandma was a bit prone to jotting poems and reminiscences on the back of cut up cereal boxes and they dotted the kitchen sideboard. My mother will reuse her Christmas and birthday cards for shopping lists, and invariably thinks fondly of those who have signed their name on the reverse, and my sister is keen on writing lists, and I love a post-it note for chores which might, or might not, get done. Writing is something we have always done – we can’t always read what we have written but ink goes on paper happily. 21 But I am typing, you don’t need to concentrate as much because you can constantly change your direction of thoughts, add in bits, and have your spelling corrected (AI love it, or hate it!). Everything involves typing these days, the art of writing and admiring good handwriting is long past. We rarely write letters or postcards now. Where will we be in 100 years looking back at history – we can read Queen Victoria’s letters but will we be able to read Prince William’s or Andy Burnham’s emails? Without handwriting I am sure it will not be such a pleasant experience anyway. Which draws me on to my subject for my church service – the start of the Christian church. I have recently purchased from our church coffee morning book stall some hardback tomes by Professor Alice Roberts (thank you to whoever donated them, I quickly snapped them up!). Alice is the archaeologist from Dig for Britain, and other historical based programmes and author of “Dominion – The fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity”. And a very interesting read it is too – excerpts from scribes in BCE/Before Common Era (formerly known as BC/Before Christ) and CE/Common Era (formerly known as AD/Anno Domini meaning “in the year of our Lord”). The letters and documents describe events and using archaeology, and modern technology, she addresses how the popularity of Christianity grew. As we work our way through the season of Creationtide (1st September – 4th October) we consider harvest, nature, the environment and the people in the world so why not write a letter to someone or send them a postcard? Or simply create something memorable which your desendants can reminisce about in years to come. In my case celebrating Mrs Royal dedicating her time writing in SEDCA. Today’s creation is tomorrow’s history, so do get busy and if you want to come to know more about Creationtide at a church service then St Leonard’s will welcome you at 11am every Sunday. Julia Noble, Churchwarden
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