Concert of Hope -27 November.

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The Sisters of Minster Abbey are holding a Concert of Hope, an evening of celebration with local choirs and musicians.  You are very warmly welcome to join us at St Mary the Virgin Church, Minster on 27th November at 7pm. Entrance is free and there will be a retiring collection for the work of “Canterbury for Ukraine”, an Incorporated Association of volunteers helping Ukrainian refugees to settle in Canterbury and East Kent. Canterbury for Ukraine have been vital in providing support to enable the Sisters to welcome a Ukrainian family to Minster. We now want to support them so that they can continue to offer assistance to those welcoming our brothers and sisters from Ukraine. We realise that not all of our friends are local enough to attend the concert on the night but some would like to make a donation. We have set up a Go Fund Me page to make this easy- just click below

DonatePlease pray for the success of this Concert of Hope! We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on the night! Love and prayers Mother Nikola and the Sisters of Minster Abbey

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October 28: of Starlings and Sparrowhawks.

A late summer flock of Starlings.

Grandson Abel was very pleased when starlings nested under his roof. Of course they did not stay long in town but took off to the countryside for the summer once the chicks were fledged. Mary Webb enjoyed them too, in Shropshire, with their howls and hoots and shrieks and whistlings.

Their enemy in this part of Canterbury is not the owl but the sparrowhawk: one caught a starling right beside me in the back garden a few years ago, and last month I surprised one with a kill just 100 metres away. I also helped the young hawk by frightening off the thieving magpie!

It’s good to witness a previously persecuted bird establishing itself in our city, though the neighbour who generously feeds the little birds might not be too happy about the little piles of feathers that appear near here house from time to time. Enjoy Mary Webb’s poem, and Laudato Si’!

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Starlings by Mary Webb

When the blue summer night
Is short and safe and light,
How should the starlings any more remember
The fearful, trembling times of dark December?
They mimic in their glee,
With impudent jocosity,
The terrible ululation of the owls
That prey
On just such folk as they.
‘Tu-whoo!’ And rusty-feathered fledglings, pressed
Close in the nest
Amid the chimney-stacks, are good all day
If their indulgent father will but play
At owls,
With predatory howls
And hoots and shrieks and whistlings wild and dread.
Says one small bird,
With lids drawn up, cosily tucked in bed,
‘Such things were never heard
By me or you.
They are not true.’

Conference: Christian responses to the migration crisis

The English Channel from Dover’s White Cliffs

• Sep 11th, 2022: shared from Independent Catholic News.

Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover, Dr Ulrich Schmiedel of the University of Edinburgh and Rev Dr Keith Clements will be speaking at an online conference this coming Saturday, addressing the question of what should be the Christian response to those who seek asylum and refuge in our country, and asking what insights can be derived from the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Contributions will also be invited from groups currently working on the ground to meet the needs of asylum seekers and refugees in Calais, Kent, and the North of England.

This free conference: Faith and Frontiers: Christian responses to the migration crisis takes place on Saturday 17 September 10am – 4pm.

To book a place see: www.projectbonhoeffer.org.uk/events/

Tags: Refugees, Migration, Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Dr Ulrich Schmiedel, Rev Dr Keith Clements, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

14 August: Pushing the boundaries.

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A spire of hollyhocks at St Mary’s.

While Mrs T took our grandson to the swimming pool in Faversham, I wandered the streets. I took myself to St Mary of Charity church for the first time in years. Although the tower with its ornate spire stands out for miles around, especially on the marshes, it could easily be missed close to, with the approach to the West Front through a narrow canyon of a back street behind a supermarket.

Once there I saw clumps of hollyhocks, some well over 2 metres tall, along the iron fence between the churchyard graves and the path. Lovely in the group, lovely each spire and individual bloom, and nature’s way of pushing the boundaries between tame and wild.

The church yard would be tidier without them but something better than tidiness would be lost. The ancestry of these blooms must be quite diverse – white, cream, yellow, apricot and magenta – but they also probably derive from a small number of parent plants, their seed blown around town till it found soil to root into. What were the great-grandparents like?

Let’s be thankful for beauty in diversity, in humans as well as flowers, and let us strive to make everyone welcome in our church communities.

Let us also take courage and find our own ways to push the boundaries in favour of beauty and of our climate.

13 August: Saint Radigund

 Saint Radigund’s story – she died in 587 – has parallels with Saint Mildred, who died in 768. At a time when women were seen as the possessions of men, second class beings, they stood out for women to be making their own decisions, and living the lives God was calling them to.

In this woodcut, Radigund has put her crown to one side and is studying scripture. Radigund or Radegund was a princess forced into marriage by the Frankish King Chlotar, who had taken her after a battle as his sixth wife. When he had her brother murdered she fled to the bishop of Noyon who helped her establish a monastery, where the sisters had to read and write as well as work at weaving and embroidery.

L’Arche Kent have their workshop on Saint Radigund Street, Canterbury, where weaving and candle-making are carried out, both monastic activities. Saint Radegund is one of the patrons of Jesus College, university of Cambridge. Let’s pray for both of them.

18 June: The Battlefield

The Battle-Field

 They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
    Like petals from a rose,
When suddenly across the June
    A wind with fingers goes.
 

They perished in the seamless grass, —
    No eye could find the place;
But God on his repealless list
    Can summon every face.”

(from “Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series)

I’m not sure how literally to take these two stanzas from Emily Dickinson, I have no clue what particular battle, if any, she had in mind, but this is Waterloo Day, when great horse-backed armies clashed and Napoleon was finally beaten.

The British troops that day were led by the Duke of Wellington who later became the honorary Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and had his official residence at Walmer Castle in Kent. Like its nearby companion, Deal Castle, it was built by Henry VIII to fortify a vulnerable stretch of the English Channel coastline.

It is the chapel of Deal Castle that we see here. This was built in the 1920s for the Captain of Deal, another honorary position then held by another military commander, General Sir John French, the First Earl of Ypres who commanded the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War.

The chapel is a memorial to all who have died in armed conflict. The petals on the altar are from British Legion poppies, which represent those who died in the First World War and conflict since then.

On this summer’s day, let us pause and pray for peace; for all those who are fighting around the world, for those injured in battle and for bereaved families.

11 January: Brownings XXV and silence by the shore

In her long poem, The Soul’s Travelling, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is by the sea as well, though not at Broadstairswhere we were yesterday. In a previous stanza she described a hollow where she could hear, but not see, the ocean ebbing and flowing across the beach. Broadstairs is a bit more open than that, but in the next bay after the pier I used to snatch a few minutes of silence in a hollow at the foot of the cliff. The curlews and other sea birds were calling right through winter, but the silence was still all around.

Except that sound, the place is full
Of silences, which when you cull
By any word, it thrills you so
That presently you let them grow
To meditation's fullest length
Across your soul with a soul's strength:
And as they touch your soul, they borrow
Both of its grandeur and its sorrow,
That deathly odour which the clay
Leaves on its deathlessness alwày.

from The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume II.

Another beach for silence in the sounds of the sea is Aberdaron in West Wales – follow the tag to read more posts about it. The church is at the top of the beach and the sea’s singing accentuates the message embroidered on this seat runner. You don’t need external silence to be still; the Lord is on your side wherever you are, you vessel of clay, holding his treasure! (2 Corinthians 4:7)

WT

29 December, Thomas Becket.

The Martyrdom of Saint Thomas, 29 December 1170

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.

Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics, p215.

Thomas enjoyed his finery and the wealth and privileges that went with being Chancellor of England and Archbishop of Canterbury. But he realised that life was more than fun, hard work, hard play, and being King Henry’s friend. He was wearing a hair shirt when he died but was already revered by the Kentish poor whom he supported through food kitchens. Poverty is real; poor people are real; God is real.

18 November: The Field of Waterloo, I.

The chapel at Deal Castle, now a memorial to all who fell in conflict.The Duke of Wellington had his official residence as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports nearby at Walmer Castle, Kent.

Sir Walter Scott wrote a long poem on the Battle of Waterloo, 18 June 1815. This extract is from near the end of the epic and is addressed to the Duke of Wellington, Commander of British forces. Scott justifies Wellington’s gallantry as always ‘for public weal’. He has a point when Napoleon’s imperial ambitions are considered. But as we shall see tomorrow, there was and still is another side to conflict; death, injury, bereavement, loss. Hardly Heaven’s decree.

For not a people’s just acclaim,
Not the full hail of Europe’s fame,
Thy Prince’s smiles, the State’s decree,
The ducal rank, the gartered knee,
Not these such pure delight afford
As that, when hanging up thy sword,
Well may’st thou think, “This honest steel
Was ever drawn for public weal;
And, such was rightful Heaven’s decree,
Ne’er sheathed unless with victory!”

(from “Some Poems” by Sir Walter Scott)

15 September: Reminder, Kentish Saints

We repeat our post announcing these talks from Canterbury Christ Church University in churches around the city.

The ‘Kentish Saints and Martyrs’ public, free talks begin at St Paul’s church with Dr Sarah James on Saturday 18 September at 7.30pm and conclude the following Saturday at St Thomas’ RC church with Dr Rachel Koopmans. This is a brilliant opportunity for the Centre for Kent History and Heritage to work with Canterbury’s churches and to showcase some fascinating features of these saints and their cults. There are posters around Canterbury and please also see the previous blog at: https://blogs.canterbury.ac.uk/kenthistory/kent-history-in-the-news-talks-exhibitions-and-other-events/ 

You are invited to join
A Week of Presentations in September 2021 about Kentish Saints and Martyrs, from 600-1600.

Each evening at 7.30pm.

The presentations will take place at Canterbury Church venues as listed OR online OR some of each.

St Mildred, princess and abbess, with her grand-father, Ethelbert of Kent, at St Mildred’s church.

Saturday 18 September: St Paul’s church:
‘An introduction to the cult of saints’
by Dr Sarah James (previously University of Kent)

Monday 20 September: St Martin’s church:
‘Ox jawbones and Blacksmith’s tongs: Saintly Bishops in Early Medieval Kent’
by Dr Diane Heath (CCCU)

Tuesday 21 September: St Paul’s church:
‘St Anselm’s philosophical legacy’ by Dr Ralph Norman (CCCU)

Wednesday 22 September: St Mildred’s church:
‘The importance of locality and identity for the cults of
Kent’s Anglo-Saxon female saints’
by Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh (CCCU)

Thursday 23 September: St Dunstan’s church:
‘Conflicting convictions: martyrs of the 16th century’
by Dr Doreen Rosman (retired University of Kent)

Friday 24 September: St Peter’s church:
‘In Becket’s shadow: late medieval Kentish minor and failed cults’
by Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh (CCCU)

Saturday 25 September: St Thomas RC church:
‘The role of clothing in Thomas Becket’s life and cult’
by Professor Rachel Koopmans (York University, Toronto)

For full details please see https://bit.ly/3s59igM or individual church’s websites
For the sake of vulnerable other people, please bring a mask, thank you.

Donations or any other arrangement will be organised by the respective churches for their benefit.