Oh no it isn’t!

Oh no it isn’t! Rev John Belfield, Catholic Church, King’s Lynn

Well, Christmas is over, fight in the sales, take down the decorations and look for the Easter eggs!
Or perhaps shop for discounted Christmas cards and wrapping paper for next year first!
Oh and find a way to get rid of all that wrapping paper and packaging. Put away unwanted presents for a future raffle. Anyone for turkey AGAIN!

Why is it over so quickly? It took ages to get ready. Credit cards to pay off. Was it worth it? It’s over the next day and everything seems so gloomy and depressing. What with the rain, cold and the thought of work again.

Well, if that sounds like you I am sorry for you. You have missed the point.

It doesn’t have to be about being religious. This time of year is a time for everyone of whatever faith or none to look at friends families and neighbours in a different light. To spend time thinking how to make others and yourself happy in a different way. Different because most of the world is doing it at the same time. People greet each other, sometimes complete strangers, with ‘Happy Christmas’. There are more smiles. Sending cards to folk you rarely see. In the writing you are thinking of them – you may not have done so since you wrote them a card last year, but you are thinking od them now.

Getting ready should be a build up of anticipation for the fun day. Like getting ready to go on a holiday you have been waiting for, for ages. Enjoy the moment. Make it last as long as possible. Hang on to the warmth and friendships.

Christmas isn’t over yet. Christmas Day is, but the celebration goes on. If we let it. In fact there is no reason why the heart of it – the celebration of peace, joy and love should not be a daily part of our lives. Many of us try to live like that and share it with others outside of our circle of friends and family. If you don’t then its not too late to start.

Many organisations in West Norfolk are looking for volunteers and supporters. There are so many ways the spirit of Christmas can be shared every day of the year. We just have to want it to.

Should Church Roofs be Made of Glass?

Should Church Roofs be Made of Glass?

To God belongs the enduring wholeness and wholesomeness of everything; a vast existence. God makes a home in each loving person (John 14:23) and this is why we pray and how we all become equal. There is then no place for the inequality of tyranny, race or power, no need for male domination or reactive feminism and no superiority of the rich or talented over the poor, jobless, sick, deformed or dead.
The symbol of God is light and this is why some people find a sense of God in the visual beauty of the sky. In his book ‘The Meaning of Blue’ Luke Bell OSB, who is a Benedictine monk at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, points out that blue is the colour you get when you look through the atmosphere towards the sunlight. This is why Mary, the mother of Jesus, appears in paintings dressed in blue, because she looks towards the light which is God. So when I look at the sky, which is blue, beautiful and vast, I am reminded of what is behind it, creating and maintaining it, the vast existence of God.

A Vast Existence

Give me a view of the Norfolk sky,
That lovely blue,
Where shapes of cotton wool drift by;
A vast existence.

Give me a view of the Norfolk sky,
In an age of dysfunctional thought,
Where clouds make shapes like animal faces,
Changing, drifting, merging, lifting;
A vast existence.

Give me a view of the Norfolk sky,
When I am stressed or hurt,
Where sunny clouds will shine like pearls,
And rays beam down through cloudy curls;
A vast existence.

Millennia past evolved our minds,
Viewing the heavens high,
Perhaps it’s why I feel depressed,
When buildings hide the sky.

Give me a view of the clear night sky,
That Norfolk sky,
That vast existence,
Where countless stars vault rustling trees
Or the yellow moon shimmers on rippling seas,
A silent sky;
An awesome sky;
A vast existence.

Give me a view of the Norfolk sky,
That high sky,
That vast existence.
No me, no lack,
No world, no work,
And no distress;
A sense of God;
A vast existence.

There is no judgment given,
There are no violent acts;
In looking up at beauty,
From the grief of imprisoning facts.

For God is the only
Vast existence.

Peter Coates, Secretary of Churches Together in King’s Lynn.

The Gospel for Every Generation

Today in most towns and villages there are one or more Christian churches, each having different names and different identities but having the same origin. Every church is a community of people who identify with the risen Jesus Christ and together they share God’s love in many ways with friends and neighbours in their neighbourhood.
The first church wasn’t a stone building but was just a group of ordinary men and women who had one thing in common; they knew about the death of Jesus Christ and were among the 500 people who together saw and witnessed that Jesus had risen from the dead.

At that time, Gamaliel – a senior teacher of Judaism, made a profound statement to those who wanted to stop the growth of new Christian converts. He told them not to oppose the new Christian movement, because, if their work was of human origin it will fail and disappear, but if it is from God it will last! We can all see that it has certainly lasted.

The church was birthed and empowered by God’s promised Holy Spirit and continues to grow throughout the world with thousands of ordinary people being added every day. We live in a world where we have so much media information from many different sources and it isn’t easy to know what is true and what is false; what or who to believe and what to dismiss.

When it comes to matters that have an impact on our lives, both now and into eternity, it must be better to have the authoritative truth of Jesus Christ rather than just following common or cultural opinion which is certainly unreliable. The question we will all have to face one day is ”What will happen to me when I
die”? This question is fully answered in the New Testament gospel of John, where we can find out everything we need to know about life and death, from the One who is the only Way, the only Truth and the only giver Life; Jesus Christ. God has chosen His church to be the only custodians of the good news of Jesus
Christ and has given his church the mandate to spread the gospel message to every nation, to every culture and to every generation, bringing God’s message of free grace, forgiveness and hope into our world of increasing hopelessness and despair. Why not contact your local Christian church this weekend and find out for yourself some of the wonderful promises that God has in store for you.

Geoff Duncombe
The Gateway Church, Kings Lynn
4 December 2017

Mental Health Week

It was World Mental Health Day last week and lots of different celebrities talked in public about their own mental health struggles, including Dame Kelly Holmes, hip hop artist Stormzy, retired goal keeper Chris Kirkland and actor Ryan Reynolds. I’ve had my own difficulties with it too. Princes William and Harry have spoken movingly about their struggles after their mother died work to end stigma around mental health. With famous people talking openly about mental health, hopefully the stigma around mental health problems will stop. Everyone has mental health and sometimes it’s good and other times it’s not and we need help. Going to the doctor is the first step to getting better.
One of the hardest things about having a mental health illness, and indeed physical problems too, is that we can feel alone and scared.
Charlotte Elliott was a Christian woman in the Georgian era of the nineteenth century who was struck down by illness in her thirties and spent the rest of her fifty years in a wheelchair struggling with depression. Her brothers were busy vicars doing lots of good works and she felt useless. And yet, on a day of frenzied activity for fundraising for a new local school, Charlotte sat down and wrote one of the most influential hymns of all time. It’s called ‘Just as I am’ and my favourite verse is this one:
Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears, within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come.
She was writing honestly about how she felt. She had fightings and fears from inside her and from the world outside and she doubted that she was good enough for God. This honesty makes it such a refreshing and helpful hymn because we all feel like that. I have conflicts, doubts, fightings and fears like everyone else. But I also hold on to the fact that God loves us more than we can imagine and never thinks that we’re ‘not good enough.’ To him, we are his beloved children and his beautiful creation.
So I offer this verse of the hymn, with the story of Charlotte Elliott to you, especially if you are struggling with mental or physical illness. You are not alone, God is near and He loves you just as you are.

Reverend Laura Baker
Curate of King’s Lynn Minster

Unity

Unity?

An often-used word by Christians in relation to their various traditions, churches and fellowships. It is a word I have been pondering since attending a retreat a couple of weeks ago and since reading some of the work of Chiara Lubich.

Hitherto, the word, unity, seemed a somewhat wishy-washy word related to Christian ecumenism. Now it is something much more relevant to my daily life. Set aside religion and take unity to be an attitude of life, whoever and wherever we are.

Unity starts with ourselves. Be content to live each day as best we can. Unity between us and the world around us. Unity we can help foster with our immediate loved one – be it partner in love or our closest friend or companion. We can take our sense of unity into our work place, into our community. Then we come back to our starting point – us and the world in general.

Unity is not compromise. Unity is not seeking to impose ourselves and our belief system on someone else. Unity is not judgemental. Unity is dialogue. Listening to the ‘other’. Unity is humility. Unity is accepting the other person or people being as of value. As vulnerable as we see ourselves and our views and opinions. Our strength is not measured in what we have or have achieved but in the way we respond to others who are different from us. In fact everyone is different from us! Let us strive to bring a sense of unity – acceptance – wherever there is discord, unhappiness, a sense of brokenness.

The shortness of this article prevents me from delving into to how this unity relates to our everyday, in our homes, for example. Suffice it to say that it is for me a liberating view of the world which transcends one’s religion – or lack of it – one’s politics and one’s condition in life.

John Belfield
Kings Lynn Roman Catholics

Be still and know that I am God

“Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10ff)

The Sunday before last, our church worshipped slightly differently from usual. I arrived at church a few minutes before the start of the service and noticed: there was no guitar, no percussion and no keyboard. Not even a ukulele! Just a solitary microphone on its stand. I lead worship from time to time but had declined the request to play guitar as it was my daughter’s birthday. I’ll level with you: I felt uncomfortable. I scurried around the building looking for something I could strum as an accompaniment, but I found nothing.

I still felt uncomfortable during the first song, but by the second song I’d found my voice and I was singing freely, as were the others in the congregation. People started songs spontaneously from where they were sat; others read scriptures or prayed aloud. It felt like, as a church, we were worshipping as a community. And in the pauses, in the gaps between songs, we could dwell and contemplate. We could listen to God.

I’m terrible with silence and with pause. I have music playing, I have my phone to hand, I am buried in a newspaper, but when do I ever just stop? And even in church – do we leave enough silence? What’s worse: to risk a little awkwardness from time to time, or to program God out of our meetings?

In the Psalms (songs and poems written by King David amongst others), the word “selah” appears on many occasions. We don’t know for definite what selah means – it could simply be a musical direction, but the Amplified Bible translates it as “pause and calmly think about that”. We had plenty of selah moments the Sunday before last. Amongst the quiet babble of toddlers, between the singing: we had a chance to pause and think.

Silence is a commodity to be nurtured, cherished and protected. These selah moments are not purely reserved for church services. I can, and should, pause more often. I can choose to put my phone away, to leave my headphones on the shelf, to stare out of the window of the train rather than tackle the newspaper puzzle page. Because when I do, I digest and I listen. And in doing so, I feel better equipped to deal with the stresses of the everyday, and more aware of God’s presence.

Andy King
The Gateway Church

Refugees

Organized actions to save Jewish children facing extermination in Nazi Germany and Austria began before World War II. In Great Britain, the Movement for the Care of Children group organized the travel and shelter of over 10,000 central European Jewish refugee children between December 1938 and September 1939. The operation became known as the Kindertransport, because these children traveled without their parents. Britain, in fact, was rightly proud of the part it played in this movement.
Now the home affairs select committee is calling on the government to halt plans to limit the number of child refugees coming to the UK to 350, and to conduct a thorough investigation into the capacity of councils to take in unaccompanied children.
About 3,000 children were originally expected to come to the UK under the scheme but the home secretary, Amber Rudd claims that the number was lowered because councils did not have enough capacity. However, evidence given to the select committee challenges the government on how far it consulted councils, and suggests that at least 4,000 children could be found homes if central funding was forthcoming.
It is not only a question of receiving child refugees. How we treat the poor is how we treat God. Jesus’s words about the Last Judgement, as we find them in St Matthews Gospel, chapter 25, tell us how we will be judged. We will be judged not only on our treatment of the poor, but also (quoting Jesus’s words) ’I was a stranger and you made me welcome’. This statement is most topical when we are faced with refugees and asylum seekers today. Not only is starvation in Sudan and other parts of Africa the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II, but equally millions of people are being driven from their homes and countries with no place willing to receive them.

The issue of refugees and asylum seekers is very sensitive and complex. Countries need to defend their borders and protect their citizens. There are real political, socio-economic and security issues involved. But we are, in religious terms, told to welcome the stranger in spite of inconvenience and even possible dangers.

We can find all sorts of reasons, political, social, economic, and security for not welcoming the stranger. But how far are these excuses for rejection and exclusion and how far a denial of our obligations? Will the words addressed to us at the Last Judgement be: ‘I was a refugee and you did not welcome me’.

John Cairns, King’s Lynn Catholic Church

Mental Health – what can I do?

Thought for the Week 21.03.17
Mental health: What can I do?

Recently Hannah Cooper and Jackie Wrout, from the charity One to One Project, gave a talk to Churches Together about the One to One Project (www.onetooneproject.com 01553 770770) which has been running for 34 years helping adults with mental health problems.
1 in 4 people from all backgrounds experience a mental health problem in any given year, and 3 in 4 of them fear the reactions of family and friends. Almost 9 in 10 people with a mental health problem have faced stigma and three quarters have lost friendships. 1 in 10 young people will suffer from mental health problems. It is a myth that people with mental health problems are violent; they are more likely to be victims.
According to a ‘Vital Signs’ report, published in 2016 by Norfolk Community Foundation, 70,477 women and 44,434 men in Norfolk are affected by common mental health disorders. The prevalence of depression in Norfolk is 12.3% and this is above the national average of 11.2%.
What can I do?
1. Offer emotional support, patience and encouragement.
2. Remind them that you care.
3. Invite them to talk about their feelings.
4. Keep in touch.
5. Encourage them to take part in activities that give them pleasure.
6. Find out about self-help / support groups and mental health services.
Try not to:
1. Get drawn in to ‘cheering them up’ but instead validate their true feelings.
2. Show fear and avoidance.
3. Pressure them to talk.
4. Assume you know how they feel.
5. Assume that you know what is best.
What can we do for ourselves? Five ways of Wellbeing:
1. Connect with the people around you, with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours. Building these connections will support and enrich you every day.
2. Be active: Do what you enjoy, go for a walk or a run outside, cycle, dance or play a game. Exercise makes you feel good.
3. Take notice: Be curious, catch sight of the beautiful and savour the moment. Reflecting on your experiences will help you appreciate what matters to you.
4. Keep learning: Try something new. Set a challenge you will enjoy achieving. Learning new things is fun and will make you more confident.
5. Give: Volunteer or do something nice for a friend or a stranger. Seeing your happiness, linked to the wider community, can be incredibly rewarding.

Peter Coates, secretary of Churches Together in King’s Lynn.
Linden, Bircham Rd, Stanhoe, Norfolk, PE318PT.
01485 518191.
peter@stanhoe.plus.com.

Collaboration and Community

Last weekend I was working with a friend on a project in the garden and it reminded me again of the importance of collaboration. We completed in two hours a task that on our own would have probably taken over eight. A simple example, but it opens a bigger concept I think we often struggle to grasp.

We read in the bible that Jesus lived a collaborative lifestyle and he taught the disciples the wisdom of collaboration. In Luke 5:4 he invited Simon Peter “Now go out where it is deeper and let down your nets to catch some fish.” Jesus first invited a level of faith and then created a moment beyond their own resource and waited. In verse 7 we read “a shout for help brought their partners in the other boat and soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking.” The disciples were astonished with the catch of fish they had taken. The key: They first trusted and then decided to reach for help and not try to haul the catch in themselves.

Jesus, the ultimate supplier of all things, borrowed many items including homes and even a donkey. We don’t always know who these people were that loaned Jesus these things but we know that they were people with whom he had built a collaborative relationship. He worked with the rich and the poor, religious leaders and business leaders. He modeled partnership and collaboration and so the early church thrived on this.

When I first heard this teaching, around the time we started the Foodbank project in 2011, it stuck with me. But it was one phrase that perhaps had the greatest impact: People do not have to be 100% for us to not be against us. A collaborative mind understands that but in life we often major on the 20% we don’t agree on and that prevents us moving forward. A growth environment will often put you into partnership with other people you may not have expected, but maybe that’s what being part of a community is about.

I want to encourage you in 2017 to think much more collaboratively than perhaps you’ve done to date. We all have a limited amount of time and resource and the idea isn’t to keep squeezing more out of our often-busy lives. You can achieve much more with God than you can with your own limited resources, but that often involves partnering with others.

This has been the foundation that we have built on at the Kings Lynn Foodbank, that we can achieve more together. When our focus is about the goal and not ourselves then we can reach more people.

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

January is the month of Holocaust Memorial Day and the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and both of them are really about how human beings live together throughout the world. January 27th is the anniversary of the liberation of Aushwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi death camps, and therefore a day to remember the slaughter of 6 million Jewish people in an attempt to exterminate all Jews. But it is much more than that, partly because we mustn’t forget that maybe 250,000 homosexual people, 250,000 disabled people, many Roma people and other minority groups, that were also slaughtered, by the Nazis. And it doesn’t stop with the Nazis: well over a million Armenian civilians were murdered during the First World War; over two million people died in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979; over a million Tutsi people in Rwanda in 1994; 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Bosnia in July 1995; the continuing civil war in Dafur has claimed up to half a million civilian lives. And what can we say of Syria? In the UK during 2015, there were over 900 antisemitic incidents, about 2,500 hate crimes against Muslims, 5,500 attacks because of the victim’s sexuality and 2,500 because of the victim was disabled. Since June last year, the number of crimes against immigrant people has greatly increased. Why are human beings capable of doing such things?
The theme of Holocaust Memorial Day is “How can life go on?” How can those who have experienced the victimization demonstrated by these statistics, live now? How can all of us change to turn away from this hatred and violence and realize that blaming and victimizing other people for our perceived misfortunes will never benefit us.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is a positive response to the scandal of division among Christian Churches. Mostly the divisions are cultural and administrative, although perhaps a few disagreements are more fundamental. But the importance of Christian unity is because Christians believe that God’s will is for the unity of all human beings. God loves us, and loves every other person as much as he loves us. Divided Churches are a bad example, but the prayer of all Christians is that all human beings may be united in love. Whether we pray or not, that’s a worthwhile ambition for us all, and it is the only hope for overcoming all the hatred and violence that destroys human lives.

Canon Chris Ivory
Kings Lynn Minster