| View this email online if it doesn't display correctly |
| | |
|
|
|
| | |  |
The Christmas trees have arrived at St Mary’s and yesterday the lights went up, giving a glow to the church and reminding me of the words from the Collect for Advent Sunday:
“Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armour of light.”
But as we chomp through advent chocolates and minced pies, wrestle with wrapping paper, watch nativity plays and listen to piped Christmas carols in shopping centres, we must remember Advent is also a time of preparing and waiting for the coming of Christ, during which darkness surrounds so many lives.
Helping me through this period of prayerful expectation, I am reading an anthology of poems for Advent put together by Janet Morley. It opens with Advent Calendar by Rowan Williams. Its last stanza reads: He will come, will come, will come like crying in the night, like blood, like breaking, as the earth writhes to toss him free. He will come like child.
Janet says “the mood could hardly be further from the sentimentality that is commonly found in our Christmas celebrations. But the tone is absolutely traditional for Advent. The Christ Child will come but not until the world is at its darkest, and there will be struggle and violence surrounding the event. It will be both utterly ordinary and yet apocalyptic.” For me, it is an arresting poem that helps me focus on the expectation of the incarnation, while not being overwhelmed with Christmas cards and decorations.
The Revd Charlotte Bannister-Parker
Co-Acting Priest-in-charge
|
| | Services
—Tuesdays & Thursdays at 12.15pm
Lunchtime Eucharist —
Sunday 11th December Third Sunday of Advent 10.30am - Sung Eucharist
Preacher - The Revd Charlotte Bannister - Parker
If you are driving to church on Sunday, please note the Santa Fun Run is happening in central Oxford. |
| | Advent Appeal
Oxford Food Bank is hosting a giant Christmas Dinner. The guests will be families struggling to cope with the cost of Christmas, people who would otherwise be on their own, homeless people and others on the breadline. We have been asked to help with providing presents. We aim to fill 50 washbags with toiletries, socks, underwear, torches and a few treats like chocolate. We also hope to fill 40 rucksacks with presents for children. Any contribution of any item or any cash donation will help us reach our target.
Please go to the Adam de Brome chapel after the service for full details and to pick up a washbag or rucksack to fill. Thank you.
|
| | | | Forthcoming Concerts & Other Events
—
Check out our website and Facebook pages.
|
| |
| |
| | | Poetry Corner
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden
|
|
|
