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Next Tuesday evening, we welcome the Revd Dr William Lamb to be our new vicar at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin with a very special installation ceremony. The Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Revd Steven Croft, will be conducting the service which is open to all.
In part of the service, Will will receive the keys to the main door of St Mary’s – this physical handover symbolising his taking possession of our parish. Apart from being one of Britain’s most historic, important and priceless church buildings, St Mary’s is a community of souls that is utterly unique and special.
With the keys, Will is being entrusted not only with our parish’s physical assets, but also to become our spiritual guide and mentor. I can’t think of a vicar better suited than Will to take forward the church into its next chapter and continue building St Mary’s into a beacon of Liberal Anglo-Catholic theology.
St Mary’s motto has always been ‘Faith seeking understanding.’ That was a saying of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury nearly a thousand years ago, and it captures well the ethos of our University Church. In the Trinity termcard (available on the website or in the church) you will see that we have a packed programme of lively debates, fascinating preachers and engaging evening events. For the first time, St Mary’s next term will even host a photographic installation in the chancel: Of Things Not Seen (http://www.ofthingsnotseen.com/). So St Mary’s continues to inspire, stimulate and innovate.
So it just leaves me to say that looking back over a year of interregnum there are so many people to thank for making this such a special time of growth and consolidation. It would be impossible to mention everyone here but from my clergy colleagues, the church wardens, the sacristans, the PCC, all those in the office, education, the shop, the café, the choir, organists, director of music, the Welcomers, the Sunday School, the florists and the whole congregation (and many more) a huge thankyou for not only keeping the boat afloat but also helping it sail so smoothly into new waters. We, as a community, continue to serve rather than be served; and in the words of the theologian Richard Rohr, ‘whenever possible continue to seek the common good over private good, give preference to those excluded and in pain, seek just systems and never doubt that it is all about love in the end’.
The Revd Charlotte Bannister-Parker Acting Priest-in-Charge |
| | Installation of Revd Dr Will Lamb as Vicar
The installation, induction and institution of Revd Dr Will Lamb as our new Vicar by the Bishop and Archdeacon of Oxford is this coming Tuesday (2nd May) at 7.30pm followed by drinks in the church. Please come as early as possible in order to secure a seat and for catering purposes please email claire.browes@universitychurch.ox.ac.uk if you intend to come.
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| | Services
—Tuesdays & Thursdays at 12.15pm
Lunchtime Eucharist —
Sunday 30th April Easter 3
10.30am - Choral Eucharist
Preacher - The Revd Charlotte Bannister-Parker
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| | Moot, Old Library, 7.45pm, Thursday 4th May
On your knees or on the couch: therapy or spiritual direction?
The journey to living well, and life in all its fullness can be a rocky road. Sometimes we avoid taking spiritual counsel, sometimes we prefer to avoid a secular framework. Are there two different languages speaking of the same thing? Or are they two very distinct and different pathways? Do we need therapy or spiritual direction? Bruce Kinsey Chaplain of Balliol and sometime chair of the Psychoanalytic section of the UKCP tries to chart these turbulent waters.
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| | | Appearance of the Lasting: Art, Spirit and the Digital Age - An evening with Dr Gareth Polmeer Art’s relation to reason has become obscure in the digital age. Postmodernism and its legacies influence the humanities, with relativism and determinism negating central questions of culture and selfhood. In an age
marked by impermanence can the digital image represent anything lasting? And in what ways might art reconcile reason with the spiritual, in a contemporary world that has variously divided them?
Join us on Friday 20th May at 7.30p.m. in the Old Library for a unique lecture by Dr Gareth Polmeer who will explore these questions in a number of ways, considering themes of eternity, time and the work of art. Gareth will discuss his own work in relation to the philosophy of art, and works by several prominent thinkers on the relation of reason, aesthetics and spirit.
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| | | Architecture and the Medieval Mind
A six-part series of talks on the important role that architecture – both physical and representational – played in the imaginative, artistic, and theological life of early medieval England.
3rd May, 7.30pm in the Old Library: Hannah Bailey and Daniel Thomas – The Architectural Imagination in the Early Medieval Period
Dr Hannah Bailey and Dr Daniel Thomas, both lecturers in Old and Middle English literature, will
introduce the series, touching on the importance of architecture and architectural representation as
sources of evidence for the medieval cultural, literary, social, and religious imagination
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| | | Forthcoming Concerts & Other Events
Friday 28th April : Bristol Grammar School Choir, 1pm Free concert
Saturday 29th April: New College School Concert, 7.30pm Tickets on the door
Check our website and Facebook pages for more events.
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| | | Poetry Corner
Last night I had the pleasure of hearing the baritone Roderick Williams speak at Wolfson College. Amongst other things, he was discussing his approach to operatic roles – in particular the vastly different roles of (kind, loving, inarticulate) Billy Budd and Eugene Onegin (a possibly-reluctant cad). He talked about the need to acknowledge the discreteness of – if not actually to separate – his own personalities in bringing these roles to life: to be simultaneously aware of both the singer and the poet. The poet in him is emotional – rehearsals, he said, are an psychologically taxing experience – while the (technically-minded) singer knows he must exercise restraint in performance or his voice will crack, he’ll forget his lines and lose the plot. It reminded me of the poem ‘Wolves’ by Louis MacNeice, which we read in Good Friday’s ‘Poetry of the Passion’:
‘…The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not want
To be always stressing either its flux or its permanence,
I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorus
But to keep my eye only on the nearer future
And after that let the sea flow over us…’
This dual state – acknowledging and recognising emotion, while keeping it at bay – is tough work, a sort of emotional doublethink.
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