Truth Telling

Dear friends,

Going through some old university memorabilia a couple of weeks ago I found a “Michaelmas Term 1983” edition of the college student magazine. One of the contributors to this light hearted and sharply scurrilous organ was Chris Lambe, who was in the year below me. She is still writing, almost forty years on, having become one of the finest war correspondents of our era. In a deeply prescient piece for the Times, when this week Trump and Putin sit down to play poker with the world’s chips, she reminds us that Ukraine has (at least) twenty thousand children in Russian captivity, forcibly removed from their homeland, and now undergoing “re-education” as Russians. Any negotiations for peace in Ukraine should not forget the crimes against these children, (hostages?) and plans for their repatriation.

Sunday 17th August

9.30am Informal Worship at St John’s Stoke Row with Mr Peter Ferguson

11am Family Worship at St Peter and Paul, Checkendon with Revd David Benskin.

Sunday 24th August

9.30am Holy Communion at St John’s Stoke Row with Revd John Blair

11am Holy Communion at St Peter and Paul, Checkendon with Revd James Leach

Sunday 31st August

10.30am Team Service at St Leonard’s, Woodcote, with Revd David Benskin

Nature Notes

The garden creaks and cracks with aridity. The watering can is busy, the water butt draining. Goldfinches and greedy pigeons share the bird bath. Tomatoes relish the hot sun, the mower stays idle as the grass browns. Butterflies abound this year, along with wasps, driving us indoors when we take our sandwich to the patio table at lunchtime. The heat brings its own fierce silence, the trees providing welcome shade, but they too feel it. Carrots, beetroot, courgettes, beans, soft fruit. It is a good harvest, but only where water has been provided. Farmers with acres of grazing pray for rain. Arable is taken off, combines throwing up tornadoes of dust. In the aftermath the stubble is almost bleached white under the sun.

Thank you all for your support for our churches, whether home or away. Your generosity in both time and money keeps the sails aloft, and the keel watertight. As members of the team staff return from their summer breaks at this point in the holiday I will shortly be taking the other portion of mine. The services for the next few weeks are above – please do support as you are able. My next missive to you will be, God willing, on Sept 2nd, the first day of the new term. And it will be the autumn.

May the peace of the Lord be with us all. Remember Christians in places where they face hostility, and even violence, such as Syria, parts of the West Bank, Gaza, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Your Rector, Canon Kevin.