Dear friends,
Where has the last week gone? We’ve been home from our holiday for a week already, and I’m only just about back into the swing of things! We had a lovely time away in the Scottish Highlands - surprisingly warm, certainly a lot warmer than it’s been around here the last week!
Please find below details of what’s coming up tomorrow, and over the next week across Middle ESK Moor, plus some thoughts from me that appeared in June’s parish magazines.
Looking forwards to catching up with you soon.
With love and blessings,
Reverend Anthony
Coming up in the next few days
Tomorrow - Sunday 16th
9:00 Traditional Holy Communion in Lealholm at St James'
10:45 Traditional Holy Communion in Egton at St Hilda
6:00 pm ‘Awakening Service’ at St. Stephen’s, Robin Hood’s Bay
7.00 pm Special ‘Churchwardens Admission’ Service in Lythe
Ed Mangles and Nigel Parr are about to take up their exciting new roles as our two new churchwardens. Their Admissions Service is on Monday 17th June at 7pm at St Oswald’s Church, Lythe, Anyone from across Middle ESK Moor is most welcome to come along and support them.
Meet at Ed’s House for drinks and snacks first from 5pm: Green Farm, Egton YO21 1UG - this is their What3Words location https://w3w.co/social.listening.twilight. We can then car-share as needed.
Lifts can be arranged too, just email [email protected] if you would like to come but need help with transport.
6:30 Sharing Space in Lealholm at St James'
8:30 Contemplative Communion in Goathland at The Bield.
Taizé next Sunday 23rd
Join us in the beautiful St Thomas’ Church for a special time of prayer using meditations and chants from the Taizé tradition. This will be a new monthly event on the Fourth Sunday of each month at 7 pm, led by our new worship planning team.
No need to be able to sing, and no prior experience needed. All welcome!
For further information email: [email protected].
Our next Community Forum meeting will be taking place alongside a joint meeting of our four parochial church councils (PCCs) on Saturday 20 July, 2:30-5:30 at St Hilda’s and The Vicarage in Egton. Further details to follow, but all are welcome to attend - you don’t need to be on one of our PCCs.
I’m writing this just a few days before 21st May – that was the date I started work here last year. So, It’s virtually my first anniversary, and I’m almost a third of the way through my initial three years with you. I’m not a traditional ‘vicar’ – I’m an ‘interim minister’ – appointed here to see if I can help and nurture a collective positive difference in this place; to help build a sustainable church presence across our beautiful part of the world.
Over the last year we’ve been developing various ideas on how to streamline and simplify the work our four parishes do to keep our five church buildings open, and all our events and services running. We’ve had three community forum meetings, and I’m grateful to those of you that have enthusiastically got involved with those. We’re currently working on ways of bringing our four church councils closer together so we don’t repeat things in quadruplicate, but instead concentrate on where we can work together. The goal is to simplify our day-to-day ‘management’ jobs to release time and energy for our core mission: to share God’s love more widely, to serve our communities more deeply and, as a result of that, to grow our church presence across Lealholm, Glaisdale, Egton, Grosmont and Goathland.
This time last year I was writing about pilgrimages, and you could say that I’m one year into a three-year pilgrimage. When I’m at St James’ in Lealholm, I often think about the Camino de Santiago de Compostela: the Way of St James, that famous pilgrimage from France through to North Western Spain. A couple of people in our new weekly congregation at St James’ have done the walk, and I’d love to walk it one day.
We need to choose to go on a pilgrimage. I made the conscious decision to apply for this role here. Pilgrimages are planned: we need to book train and air tickets and arrange places to stay. Pilgrimages have defined endings in terms of the obvious place you aim for when you stop walking: that beach on the Spanish coast with all the shells, or Robin Hoods Bay if you’ve just done the Coast-to-Coast walk. But we have to travel on from the end of a pilgrimage. Our journey through life continues.
Our pilgrimages connect together into a series of longer seasons on life’s journey, and we can’t predict how our individual pilgrimages will define those seasons. It’s even harder to predict how all our individual pilgrimages will connect together and merge into our collective journey together. In many ways, I feel we’re making good progress on that collective journey, but there are still some quite considerable challenges to overcome. The next year will be quite a pivotal one.
As my pilgrimage continues into my second year, I would welcome any feedback on the progress you think I might or might not be making. I would very much welcome any comments, positive or negative. Please email any thoughts to me: [email protected].
With prayers for you as you continue on your pilgrimage. I pray our paths will cross and we can journey together through the current season, with all the opportunities and challenges that brings.
God bless,
Anthony
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The Reverend Anthony Bennett
Interim Minister – the Benefice of Middle ESK Moor