Saint Andrew On November 30<sup>th</sup> we celebrate St Andrew’s Day and I have no doubt that our brothers and sisters over the border will celebrate that day with great enthusiasm, because St Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland (as well as several other countries as well). I also have no doubt that our Rector will also lift a glass to the Saint after who he is named – one of the most worthy and faithful disciples of Christ. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus is walking by the Lake of Galilee and sees two men fishing and asks them to leave their net and follow him. These were Simon Peter and Andrew. The Gospel of Luke also mentions Andrew as Peter’s brother. In the Gospel of Mark we read the same story. The Gospel of John tells another, and in my view, a more powerful story. For here Andrew is named as being a disciple of John the Baptist and when John points out Jesus walking by and calls him the Lamb of God, Andrew immediately leaves John and goes, with another man, to join Jesus. The name Andrew means manly or strong and the disciple Andrew certainly lived up to that name. Although not mentioned in Acts, the Christian tradition is that Andrew went through Turkey and Greece preaching and was eventually martyred in Patras. The story is that he was sentenced to be crucified but did now want to be honoured by being crucified on the same shaped cross as Jesus and asked to be crucified on a cross with two beans crossing diagonally. This is known as a saltire cross and this form has been adopted on the Scottish flag as a whites diagonal cross on a blue background. St Regulus, who was a monk at Patras, received a vision and was told to gather up Andrew’s bones and hide them. Many of the relics were then taken to Constantinople. However, Regulus also had another vision to take some bones to the ends of the earth and wherever he was cast up he was to build a shrine for them. He eventually was cast up on the coast of Fife in Scotland and there built his chapel and built a shrine for Andrew’s bones. This is one of several stories about the transfer of the relics to Scotland but it is certain that in 908 AD the only Bishopric in Scotland was transferred to St Andrew’s and this rapidly became a great pilgrimage site. So St Andrew became established as the patron saint of the Scots and quite properly so. Some more relics of St Andrew came to Scotland in more modern times. In 1879 the Archbishop of Amalfi in Italy (where the bones had been brought in 1453 after the fall of Constantinople) sent to Edinburgh what was believed to be the shoulder-blade of St Andrew. This was followed by a most generous gesture made in 1969 when Pope Paul VI gave part of the skull of the saint - to Cardinal Gordon Gray, at that time Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh. "Peter greets his brother Andrew," where the words of the Pope to the Archbishop. The relics of the Apostle are today displayed at St Andrew's altar in the Metropolitan Cathedral of St Mary in Edinburgh. St Andrew evokes many images but the one that we should , perhaps, all hold dear is of a simple fisherman following John and then Jesus and attempting to bring back the Jewish people into a true worship of God and then after the death and resurrection of God to go on and preach the Gospel among the Gentiles and wild barbarians in very violent lands. Don Peacock
Thought for the Day - What’s in a Candle? During a recent visit to Hereford Cathedral, Catherine and I came across the shrine of St Thomas of Hereford. Just like multitudes of pilgrims for hundreds of years we took up the offer to light a candle and say a prayer for a personal and private intention. Just by the shrine were the following words. As you read them perhaps you will think of times present and past when the words have real meaning for you personally. Lighting a candle is a PRAYER. When we have gone it stays alight, continuing our prayer. Continuing our prayer of thanksgiving and intercession for those in need. Lighting a candle is a PARABLE Burning itself out it gives light to others. Christ gave himself to others. He calls us to give ourselves. Lighting a candle is a SYMBOL, Of love and hope Of light and warmth Our world needs them all For me personally, lighting a candle and saying a prayer are the door-openers that help make small and big miracles happen such as happened in St Catherine’s the other day, when a couple came into church to pray and left £250 worth of Tesco vouchers for the Food Bank. When we light a candle to guide our prayers, we acknowledge that our Saviour Jesus Christ is the Light of the World and His light shines both for us and in us. St Catherine’s Church is open every Monday from 11a.m to 1p.m, on Thursdays from 6 p.m to 7p.m and Saturdays from 10a.m to 12 noon for quiet prayer Everyone is welcome and candles are provided. God Bless Clem.
THE WORD I have always been interested in power - probably because I have never had any of it. I find it interesting to read my newspaper and try to understand where power is in different situations. Sometimes it is very obvious, perhaps the American military, or the wealth of the extremely rich, or perhaps the inventor or discoverer of something new and of great benefit to humankind, or perhaps the opposite. However, sometimes the power is the newspaper itself. This is especially so nowadays, not so much in newspapers, as in social media, where anyone can expound wild theories about any subject or any person with impunity. When I was a child a popular party game was Chinese Whispers, where a sentence was passed from one person to the next in a whisper. They then had to pass it on to the next person and so on, until the person at the end of the line was asked to state it out loud. The original sentence was then read out and it rarely bore any similarity to the final version. This is how facts get distorted, and at the time of the early Church when very few people were able to read or write, there was great opportunity for falsehoods and exaggerations to arise. The New Testament that we read today evolved after much debate in the three centuries following the life of Jesus. In the first century after Christ the written word was of less importance than the sayings of Jesus that were remembered in the oral tradition by the Apostles and those who had known Jesus. The writers of the Gospels, The Acts of the Apostles, The Epistles and the Revelation did not write their contribution as part of a “New Testament”, but were inspired by the Spirit to put pen to parchment to spread the good news about Jesus Christ and evangelise the future Church. The early Church had to scrutinise a great many writings that were circulating in the second and third centuries to ensure the fundamental doctrine of Christianity was correct in their understanding. These documents became the canon, or the New Testament, we see today. How well they did, that we will never know until we meet Christ, but to Christians they give us the words of faith, hope and love that change lives. Words can be very powerful and sometimes a speech can resonate for centuries. I am sure that most of us can remember the “I have a dream” speech of Martin Luther King, or “The few”,or the “Fight them on the beaches” speeches by Winston Churchill. We then have the words of the great writers such as Shakespeare, Dickens, etc. who’s quotations still form a great part of our language today. Having a “way with words” is a gift which is greatly valued, although sometimes when I see the language of texting or even emails I do worry about how our vocabulary will develop over the next generations. The language of younger generations, different ethnic groups and classes seems to be diverging from what was taught to be the Queen’s English with BBC pronunciation when I was at school. Having said that, perhaps the strictness of the formal rules of language restricted many people (including myself) from daring to experiment and play with the multitude of words that overwhelm us in our lifetime. I was always amazed at school when I saw a friend reading his dictionary, when I was much more interested in playing football. I turned out to be a useless footballer and he became a play-write and Hollywood scriptwriter. Perhaps I should have “swallowed my dictionary” as they say. As Christians we talk of living by the word of God, and the beginning of St John’s Gospel starts with the sentence, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. St. John wants us to understand that the whole story of Jesus and our salvation is seen in the words that have come to us through God since the beginning of creation. St. John knew the power of words - that power still exists today. In his “Battle of Britain” speech, Churchill said “Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation”. As Christians we now have another great battle - against secularisation and indifference. Churchill also said “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war”. Speak up for your faith as best you can with the word of God. Fr. Terry
Thoughts for Today From the real world, sublime and challenging St Kitts and Nevis In the steps of Alexander Hamilton, Horatio Nelson, natural rainbows and fifteen minutes of tropical mayhem… At the time of writing the election results of the United States are coming to their conclusion. On this day, Wednesday 4<sup>th</sup> March, we were to visit the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton (1757- 1804) one of the main authors of the US Constitution. He described it as ‘…strong but flexible….’! Basettere is the capital of St Kitts. We disembarked Balmoral to the Grand Hall where security checks saw us on to the 50 minutes ferry to the ‘Island in the Clouds’, Nevis. Its population is the size of Burbage within 26 square miles. Sylvia our guide told us ‘Gossip is a hobby here’. We had first sight of the island through the famous clouds, and as we drew nearer we saw the welcome arch: ‘Welcome to Nevis – The birthplace of Alexander Hamilton’. It was a short coach ride to Trott House and Hamilton House, Charlestown - the rebuilt home by the sea where Alexander was born and grew up as a child. It is now a museum of Nevis telling the story of Hamilton and Nevis in storyboards and artefacts. Alexander was born on the 11<sup>th</sup> January 1757 (or 1755) in Charlestown to Rachel Faucette who was half French Huguenot, and James Hamilton, a Scotsman whose grandfather was the Laird of Grange in Ayrshire. He was orphaned at the age of 11, when his mother, who was bringing him up, died of Yellow Fever. By this time they had moved to St Croix in the Virgin Islands. The local Church of England school refused him entry because he was born out of wedlock. You never know where breakthroughs are going to come from despite great odds. Alexander was tutored by a Jewish headmistress, and he took advantage of the 34 books inherited from his mother’s estate. He was spotted by one of the local community leaders, who read his essay on the effects of a devastating hurricane on the island. He became a Cargo Clerk at the age of 14, and was supported by the same local leaders who raised money for him to go to Boston USA and then to New York. In the post-war years against the British he studied Law at Kings College, New York (now Columbia). He passed his Bar Exams in 1782 and became a Captain under the army leadership of General Washington, and gained further promotion. Under Washington’s presidency he became Secretary to the Treasury from 1789 until 1794. During that time he was responsible for developing tax raising, founding the US Mint and the production of the American Dollar. In 1794 he resigned, and went back to his law firm, putting family first as his wife Eliza had suffered a miscarriage. They had 8 children, 6 sons and 2 daughters. In 1798 he re-joined the Army taking on various leadership roles and was never far away from the politics of the day. He witnessed his son Philip die in a duel in 1802, and Alexander himself was killed two years later in a duel with his main political rival Aaron Burr on the banks of the Hudson River in New Jersey. We had seen the show ‘Hamilton’ in London before going on the voyage, but at the time we didn’t know we would be in Nevis the following March. I noticed two quotes in the Hamilton archive which rang bells. The first from 1780 ‘The want of money makes us want everything else.’ From February 1791, ‘ Who talk most about liberty and equality… is it not those who hold the Bill of Rights in one hand and a whip for affrighted slaves in the other?’ It is extraordinary that the lives of Hamilton and Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) mirror each other. Born one year apart, both died aged 47 - the first in a duel, and the other at the Battle of Trafalgar. Both were hugely influential in their distinctive ways. Nelson also came from a rural beginning in Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk and was given the opportunity of going to sea at the age of 14. Our next destination was the island’s Botanical Gardens. Driving there we saw an open truck full of prisoners in uniform on their way to community service. We stopped at the Montpellier Estate and were shown the tree under which Nelson married Frances (Fanny) Nisbet on the 11<sup>th</sup> March 1787. She was a young widow living on Nevis (this was 12 years before Nelson met Emma Hamilton in Naples). Horatio was on the island having become the Captain of HMS Boreas in the West Indies (between 1784 and 1787) encouraging British interests. ‘Nelson’s Spring’ can still be seen where he watered his crew during their time on the island. It is now bottled under that name. We arrived at the Botanical Gardens via a cattle road-block, and wild goats grazing outside the huge Courts Supermarket. Ray the gardener showed us around the family-owned gardens and tropical house. He revealed the Fiddle Leaf Fig tree and a Trinitarian flowering blue shrub called ‘Yesterday,Today and Forever’. There was a Labyrinth of stones in the grounds and an extraordinary Rainbow Gum Tree (Eucalyptus Degulpta) that exuded a horticultural covenant of hope. Meantime, a large palm tree pod measuring 4 feet by 6 inches, fell by Jane’s head and narrowly missed another traveller. As if this wasn’t enough excitement for one day, we stopped by on the Cotton Ginnery at New River. We saw there the old water and steam-powered machinery (manufactured in London and Derby!) used to drive the cotton and sugar cane industry. We lunched surrounded by palm trees at the inevitable ‘Hamilton’ Beach Villas and Spa. Chicken Tapas was on the menu, with iced tea served in jam jars! Just after 3pm we scattered for cover as 15 minutes of mayhem of a tropical storm descended upon us. Even the locals were caught by surprise. On the way back to port we saw a very wet St Thomas’s Church (founded in 1643) by the sea - the oldest Anglican Church on the Caribbean. As we sailed back to St Kitts a rainbow appeared below the clouds of the island. The storm delayed our arrival back to the Balmoral, but just in time for the sailing and our 5pm Holy Communion ‘on the move’. This heralded the beginning of 6 days of sailing to Ponta Delgada in the Azores. We waved farewell love and thanks to the Caribbean. Blessings…Edward and Jane
