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One week to go. And I’ll be voting Remain. Out of many compelling reasons to stay in the EU, two are particularly close to my heart: Northern Ireland’s relaxed borders and the UK's flourishing design industry.
Having grown up as a child of the Troubles I don’t want to see new ‘hard’ borders being erected between the north and south of Ireland again. The two hundred lanes blocked with concrete barriers for decades would be closed once more threatening peace and stability. And if Scotland - following a Leave vote - sought a referendum on independence and then applied for EU membership, Northern Ireland would face customs and immigration barriers to its south and customs and immigration barriers to its east.
Then there’s the creative industry in which I’ve spent much of my working life. The EU is an important market for the UK's architects and designers and I’m concerned what a Leave vote would mean for London’s status as the world's design capital. Yes, we might begin to manufacture more in the UK which would be a good thing but would London stay the international platform that it has become, encouraging our creative industries that generate £84bn each year? We’ll all have our own personal reasons for voting In or Out on Thursday. But I agree with Justin Welby that “a vision of peace and reconciliation, of being builders of bridges, not barriers” is a crucial part of our faith.
The Revd Alan Ramsey Acting Priest in Charge |
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| | | Services
—Tuesdays & Thursdays at 12.15pm
Lunchtime Eucharists —
Sunday 19th June Trinity 4 10.30am - Choral Eucharist Preacher - The Revd Alan Ramsey Music: Frank Martin, Mass for unaccompanied double choir
Charles Hubert Parry, There is an old belief
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| | | | Adopt a Room for a Syrian Family Appeal
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The Syrian family we have been collecting for arrives in Oxford shortly and we will be delivering all the items for the kitchen, bathroom and 3 bedrooms to Asylum Welcome this coming week. The Sunday School have made a special card of welcome and have also collected books and toys for the 2 children of the family.
A huge thank-you to everyone who has given so generously to this appeal. There are 4 more such families coming to Oxford in the next few weeks, and we hope to have sufficient funds remaining to take on the furnishing of another room or, possibly, rooms.
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| | Forthcoming Concerts & Other Events—
Wednesday 29th June 18pm Bach & Big Band Oxford Festival of Arts
Oxfordshire County Big Band and Magdalen College School Jazz Band will join forces for an extraordinary concert of Big Band numbers interspersed with contemplative music for organ by Bach in what promises to be a uniquely captivating musical experience.
Tickets £8/£6/£2
Check out our website and Facebook pages.
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| | ‘Adopt a Room for a Syrian Family’ Appeal
Last Sunday we launched an appeal to help furnish a Master Bedroom, Children’s Bedroom and Kitchen for a Syrian refugee family moving to Oxford towards the end of June. There was such a generous response from the visitors (with the children’s choir) as well as members of the congregation that we have already been able to buy most of the bedroom furnishings and some of the kitchen equipment. We have therefore decided to take on extra rooms and Asylum Welcome has asked us to sponsor another Bedroom for the family’s 75-year-old granny and also the Bathroom in the house, which would then complete the soft furnishing of this particular home.
We are most grateful to those who have already pledged or donated, but there are now many more items needed and those of you who have not yet had the opportunity to donate please speak to/contact Margaret Lipscomb (M.Lipscomb@ntlworld.com), Janet Greenland, Mary Lean or Jenyth Worsley. Cheques should be made out to ‘St Mary’s Charities Committee’ and cash donations are also most welcome.
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| | | Poetry Corner —
‘Thow knowest my hart and thought in especial
Therfor, good Lord, after my hart reward me!’
- Mary Magdalen, 15th century
Last week saw the staging of the Digby Mary Magdalen, a madcap rollercoaster of a medieval morality play, in the University Church gardens. What struck me – purely as an audience member this time; I’d had no input beyond arranging rehearsal dates in the Old Library – was how funny and imaginative this play was. Performed by students from Brasenose and Corpus Christi, it was a slightly offkilter delight – from the opening, where a curiously Australian Satan preps his Gallaunt to seduce Mary, to the flamboyantly pagan King of Marseille whose wife Mary later cures of infertility, the play is full of ciphers and caricatures and, one can’t help but suspect, characters sidled in just for the fun of it.
Yet this is a serious play, too, concerned with forgiveness and piety; Mary Magdalen is conflated with several other biblical Marys so that it is she who dries Jesus’ feet with her hair, as well as being the first to encounter him after the Resurrection. Fleur Snow, in a nuanced performance, managed admirably to convey both comedy and theological gravitas, so that even Lazarus’ miraculous (and comically sudden) return to life has in it something of wonder.
Liv Robinson, who directed the play, has written a fascinating piece on the production, which will be published on our website shortly.
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