Our church is dedicated to St George, the Patron Saint of England, and his feast day on April 23rd is our Patronal Festival.

We will celebrate this special day with a said Eucharist at 12 noon followed by tapas and a drink. Please let Fr Louis know if you'd like to come to lunch afterwards.

Very little is known about St George, although, according to Greek tradition, he was born to Greek Christian parents, in Cappadocia, and, after his father died, moved with his mother to her original hometown of Lydda in Syria. Here he became a soldier in the Roman army, serving as a member of the Praetorian Guard under Emperor Diocletian.

However, the fact that George was a Christian became a problem, and he was arrested and tortured for refusing to recant his faith. He was executed by beheading and his body was buried in Lydda, where Christians soon came to honour him as a martyr. A witness of his suffering convinced Empress Alexandra of Rome also to become a Christian and she joined George in martyrdom. George died on 23 April 303 and this has become his feast day.

The earliest known record of the legend of Saint George and the Dragon comes from the 11th-century, The tradition is that a fierce dragon was causing panic at the city of Silene in Libya, at a time when George was there. In order to prevent the dragon from attacking individual people from the city, they gave two sheep each day to the dragon, but when the sheep were not enough they were forced to sacrifice humans instead. Eventually, the king's daughter was chosen to be sacrificed, and no one was willing to take her place. So George stepped forward and saved the girl by slaying the dragon with a lance.

Our feast day gives us a timely opportunity to ground everything we are currently engaged with as a church community in gratitude and joy. Please make time to come if you are able - it is a gift!

The picture above is taken from a stained glass window within the church.

There is a Holy Eucharist with hymns every Sunday at 11.30am. After the service there is a time of fellowship when refreshments are served outside the church.

After Easter Sunday there are another 5 Sundays of Easter before we move into Ascensiontide. And, rightly, our minds are still full of the Easter story - the apostles huddled together and the women bursting in with that unbelievable tale of the empty tomb and the risen Lord. And how the apostles ran, so desperate were they for an answer, a way forward. And how all they found was emptiness, absence, the lack of a body. And you could easily stop there and say, ‘OK, that was it: that was the Jesus story’.

But what happened over the coming weeks, was that their perspective changed. Where some people saw only an empty tomb, the apostles saw a risen Lord – today in the garden, tomorrow on the road to Emmaus, the day after, perhaps, walking by the lakeside. God standing there in front of them, in front of their very eyes, in the person of Jesus Christ…and to recognise him and to know him.

And, if we can live with that new perspective, then we can follow the example of the apostles and we will find we are in the presence of Christ, sometimes in the breaking of bread, but more often in unlikely encounters, in unlikely places.

And that gives us tremendous hope. It was Mother Teresa, who said, “Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of Christ risen”.

Picture above: Easter window at the Taizé Community in France, depicting the lamb and flag which are symbols of Easter

Every Tuesday morning at 10am

Simply tune in on Zoom and enjoy a few moments of quiet, prayerful reflection as the week unfolds. It will last no longer than 10 minutes.

Meeting ID: 892 2955 4820 Passcode: 836488
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86523047387?pwd=cZ8g29z3nUYTbXh1VlxdGedrf7Pvid.1

A time to pause, pray, reflect and reconnect.

No preparation needed.

Time for conversation for those who can stay.

“….Waiting on God, learning to be passive in a way creative for your inner life, is not a question of thinking about God, but of growing in stillness. It has to do with prayer, and with music or from the simple contemplation of the world about you.” (Michael Mayne, ‘A Year Lost and Found’)