Thursday, April 19, 2018

St Philip's from Easter Three. Looking forward to Good Shepherd Sunday (22nd April 2018).

Dear Philippians!
welcome to new parishioners. This general email group includes many who are Philippians in their heart of hearts but live in many and varied places.
The drainage works should be finished and Pandora's open for business on Friday morning!
Thank You to all involved in this work!

a windy market day last Saturday! It was a miracle that the books roughly stayed where they were. The three amigos (men in black: Martin, Scott and Colin) fed the hungry hordes with their sausages, eggs and bacon! The morning tea did a constant steady job in a more sheltered place. Elizabeth and David entertained with their amazing craft work. Biscuits and jams and produce went well too.  Many neighbours, friends and family came along, with those who just came. Pandora's winter collection is well and truly launched. And there are diamonds! (still)

Perhaps we will soon feel we are in autumn. It just isn't too sure yet!
We will celebrate St Philip and St James on May 7th (and baptise young Adeline);
The ANU annual dinner and discussion is on the evening of May 16th. Should there be a theology school at ANU?

please continue in prayer for those on our prayer list, and for Baden and the people of PNG; for our deacons and priests, and for Bishop Trevor,
with love and prayers,
Linda

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from the Pewsheet for the Third Sunday of Easter. 15th April 2018

Prayer of the day
Lord of life, by submitting to death, you conquered the grave; by being lifted upon the cross,
you draw all peoples to you; by being raised from the dead,
you restore to humanity all that was lost through sin:
be with us in your risen power,
that in word and deed we may proclaim the marvellous mystery of death and resurrection. 
For all praise is yours, now and throughout eternity.
Amen

This Coming week, Easter Four, 22nd April 2018:
[nb: note that the link for the first letter of John is: bible.oremus.org/?passage=1+John+3:16-24]

ROSTERS:
Presiding and Preaching: Rev'd Canon Scott
8am:
Sidesperson: Tim
Liturgical Assistant: Elizabeth
Readers: Shane
10am:
Welcomer: Helen 
Sidespeople: Fred  & Hardy
Music: Colin
Liturgical Assistant:  Sarah
Readers:  Fred ,  Linda
Chalice Servers: Hardy & Volunteer
Morning tea: Alison & Rosemary
PLEASE PRAY:
For those in need:
Elizabeth; Pat & Colin; Fred & Erika; Roger & Chris; James & Brian; Cath & daughter Bronwyn; Grace; Roberta; Margaret & Claude; Barbara.
The repose of the soul of Brenton and for his family and friends.
Those we remember:
Brenton (10/4/18); Ken (14/4/01); Irene (17/4/04); Noel (18/4/70).
Include in your prayers too great thanks for the ministry of our Deacon Robin at Northbourne Community.
Pray for the people who have been ministered to, and those who have ministered.
Much more about Robin's ministry is in

The Servant Ministry of Jesus: Twenty years of a renewed diaconal ministry in the Anglican Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn
$15.00
This book tells the story of the redevelopment of diaconal ministry in the diocese of Canberra & Goulburn from 1996 to 2016.

https://stmarks.edu.au/product/the-servant-ministry-of-jesus-twenty-years-of-a-renewed-diaconal-ministry-in-the-anglican-diocese-of-canberra-goulburn/
There are 17 copies left at St Mark's. There should be one in the parish library.
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Sermon from last week: http://stphilipsoconnor.org.au/sermons/index.php
http://stphilipsoconnor.org.au/sermons/2018apr15_mj.php

" Putting the Bible into the hands of the uninitiated is both a wonderful and fearful thing - "...
Martin also mentioned that he would be using The Prince of Egypt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWs81poMgiM in this year's confirmation classes. (It is on Netflix if that means more to you than it does to me!)
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There are many stories on both the ABC and the Anglican News
Baden (previously from St Pips)  is about three hours drive (on bad roads) from Mt Hagen. The earthquakes in Papua New Guinea are continuing.
https://www.earthquaketrack.com/p/papua-new-guinea/recent
ABM online appeal:
https://www.abmission.org/pages/donate-online-to-the-png-earthquake-emergency-appeal.html
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https://tinyurl.com/ycozcgc5
ABC Religion and Ethics
Rethinking King, Unthinking Service: From Faith to Pilgrimage.  By  Paul C. Taylor    12 Apr 2018

"I've been invited here to help carry the weighty burden of reflecting on the unfinished work of Martin Luther King.

Taking up this burden puts me in mind of a moment in one of King's later sermons, the one usually published under the title, "Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool."

Dr King delivered this sermon in August of 1967, and took a moment then to address the question of his worldly ambitions. Here is what he said:
    "All that I do in civil rights I do because I consider it a part of my ministry.
I have no other ambitions in life but to achieve excellence in the Christian ministry.
I don't plan to run for any political office. I don't plan to do anything but remain a preacher."

I want to dwell for a moment on this remarkable assertion...."
Paul Taylor finishes: "Martin King's life has become a monument. It should be a command."
Quickly  have a look for what Taylor writes about servant ministry. Good in the light of our contemplations on Maundy Thursday.
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"...The cathedral was all-but destroyed in a 2011 earthquake. The diocese’s property trust wanted to replace the building with a modern purpose-built construction; but faced a series of unsuccessful legal challenges from campaigners who wanted the old building reinstated. Last year, after a lengthy consultation and a promise of funds from campaigners and local and national government, the diocesan synod voted to go ahead with re-instatement rather than replacement..."
“It’s business as usual, folks, with the wealthy and the powerful telling you, the people of the province of Canterbury, that they know best. Good luck with that.”  

“Looking back on her 10 years' service, most people will remember the earthquakes and the cathedral debate,” Christchurch diocesan spokesperson Jo Bean told Anglican Taonga. “Perhaps fewer realise that she was bearing the burdens of hundreds of Cantabrians whose parishes, vicarages, churches and halls were left stricken by the quakes. And fewer still will know that the Bishop lived for much of her time in Christchurch in a sleep-out, because her own home had to be demolished. ..."
I met an elderly couple in the Cathedral in Goulburn a year or so after the Christchurch earthquake. They had moved to Goulburn when they could no longer stand the aftershocks and the not knowing if any one of them would be another big one.
Bishop Victoria is returning to Canada. Canon Scott has heard of a possible place for her.
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and for those who want some poetry! Found for the month of April on my Leunig Calendar...

INTERVIEW WITH AN AUTUMN LEAFhttp://www.leunig.com.au/works/recent-cartoons/746-autumn-leaf

Q. How would you describe yourself?
A.L. Dead, I suppose. Finished.

Q. How did this happen?
A.L. I just couldn't hold on any longer.
     I let go and down I fluttered. It felt O.K.
     My work was done. I'd had enough.

Q. You mean you couldn't take it anymore?
A.L. No, I mean I was satisfied. I'd had a
     good enough life. I guess I was happy.
Q. What were the high points?
A.L. I can't remember. It was all pretty good.
Q. Any advice to the readers?
A.L. No. Not really.
Q. Thank you.
A.L.  My pleasure.


Sunday, December 4, 2016

ah, a new post... Dillard again.

I wrote this to my tutor at the Mindfulness course I am on at the moment. (Nov/Dec 2016)
https://simplymindful.com.au/

Much of the reason I am doing the Mindfulness course is my reading of Annie Dillard. 

An essay of hers that I really like is Living like Weasels. It is on line in an English course somewhere, but I posted it (without comment) at:  http://members.tip.net.au/~lindafrd/Dillard.htm

I will leave you with a few quotes as well as the links. Don't go too far into it. It was simply useful to me. (I have had the experience of eyes locked with skinks as well as with magpies)

-----------------------------------------------------------

The bits I like are especially:

I have been thinking about weasels because I saw one last week. I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance. ...

The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild-rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness, twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.
Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don't. We keep our skulls. ...
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live.
We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience — even silence — by choice. The thing to do is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he is meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.


In looking around the web for comments I saw: http://ewp.cas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/37493/sternliving10.pdf
a very stern criticism of Dillard. (I don't think they get it). Perhaps this too is a criticism of mindfulness or meditation in general. But isn't clearing the mind a task that is done in order to then engage the world?
The writer, Emil Stern, is bouncing off Elie Wiesel, rather than Dillard's Weasel I think. Cleverly comparing the two but maybe missing the point. (interesting that I also have a page of ideas from Weisel!)

Living Like Wiesel EMIL STERN
History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage need not be lived again. —Maya Angelou 
Annie Dillard’s blithe and lively little essay, “Living Like Weasels,” is at heart actually quite corrosive—insidious, in fact, in its undermining of the need for a sense of history and human empathy, both of which are rooted in the intellect she finds so deplorable. Dillard chooses not to face history at all, let alone with courage: “

Thursday, March 17, 2016

2016 Holy Week is upon us



Hmmmm, once again a "new" year; another year; and I had lost a blog and now found it again.

I can now change my web site but haven't. I am frustrated that facebook takes up too much time if I go onto it, but that does make it easy toA be out there.... Holy Week is nearly upon me and work needs to be done. This year's journey and new discovery is "The Reproaches". Thanks to deacon Robin for the impetus to go searching for them. I still have to work on the Easter Vigil preparation too. The Candle and The Exultet. but it will be a special few days.

Monday, February 2, 2015

New in 2015

Having just found my old blog I now will start to post again! I changed computers last year which means I no longer have my ftp program to change the web site, so I rely on blogs and facebook etc to "publish". oh dear.... back to mere mortal! We now live in Ainslie and eat at Breizh, and shop at Ainslie IGA and follow the boy from the northside village who plays tennis! (Nick Kyrgios)...  more of the 2015 letter soon!

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

A Christmas Letter for 2011

https://members.tip.net.au/~lindafrd/Christmas2011web.pdf
This is set up for printing an A5 page. So pages 4 and 1 are followed by pages 2 and 3. 

Friday, December 23, 2011

Two Sermons


http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=606

The Manchester Sermon 2010
The Temptation of Jesus
Jeanette Winterson

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/books/review/the-book-of-books-what-literature-owes-the-bible.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&smid=fb-share

The Book of Books: What Literature Owes the Bible
By MARILYNNE ROBINSON
Published: December 22, 2011


both very profound and wonderful!

worth pondering.