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Whatever the weather, I am greatly looking forward to the Newman Walk this coming Sunday. Members of our congregation will be setting off on the sponsored walk from The University Church of St Mary the Virgin to Littlemore’s church of St Mary and St Nicholas. The idea of the walk is to support the renovation and refurbishment of Littlemore Church and reflect on the connection that the Blessed John Henry Newman created between the two parishes.
Littlemore became part of Newman’s life when he was appointed Vicar of St Mary the Virgin in 1828. For centuries Oriel College had provided one of their own fellows as the Vicar of SMV and at the same time made them Vicar of the small hamlet of Littlemore. Newman first saw Littlemore in 1828 – describing it as “a straggling street between two and three miles from Oxford” – and because there was no church and no village school he was determined to help start giving catechism classes to the local children. Newman soon asked permission from Oriel to build a church. At first there was much resistance but by 22nd September 1836, after petitioning and fundraising, Richard Bagot, the then Bishop of Oxford, consecrated the church, blessed the church yard and in celebration handed out buns to the little children!
Please come and join us this Sunday to find out more about the extraordinary life of Newman’s, the creation of the Oxford Movement, the “monastic life” at the Colleges of Littlemore, the link between our two churches and the vision for the new Littlemore building. All you need is good walking shoes, waterproofs and a back pack containing a sandwich or two. We will start the walk at 12.00pm from SMV and hope to reach Littlemore at about 1.30pm. The wonderful Vicar Margreet Armistead says we will be welcomed by members of the congregation and the most delicious cake and coffee! We will have a chance to tour the church and see SMV’s 13th-century front and many other great treasures. Below is one of my favourite Newman prayers – which could have been inspired by the peace of Littlemore’s beautiful countryside:
“Oh Lord, support us all the day long,
until the shadows lengthen,
and the evening comes,
and the busy world is hushed,
and the fever of life is over,
and our work is done.
Then in his mercy,
may he give us safe lodging, and a holy rest
and peace at the last. Amen.
P.S. If you don’t want to walk you are most welcome to bike or bus to Littlemore and join us that way too. But you might have to give the walkers a head start!
The Revd Charlotte Bannister - Parker Associate Priest |
| | The Week Ahead:
—This Sunday
Sunday 1st October Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
9.30am Family Service
10.30am Choral Eucharist
Preacher: The Revd Charlotte Bannister-Parker
12noon Newman Walk to Littlemore
3.30pm German Lutheran Service
This Week
Monday
9.00 Morning Prayer Chancel
12.15 Eucharist Chancel
Tuesday Thomas of Hereford, 1282
9.00 Morning Prayer Chancel
12.15 Eucharist Chancel
Wednesday Francis of Assisi, 1226
9.00 Morning Prayer Chancel
12.15 Eucharist Chancel
Thursday
8.00 Latin Communion Chancel
9.00 Morning Prayer Chancel
12.15 Eucharist Chancel
Friday William Tyndale, 1536
9.00 Morning Prayer Chancel
12.15 Eucharist Chancel
Saturday
10.00 PCC Away Day
Next Sunday
Sunday 8th October The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity
10.30 Choral Eucharist
Preacher: The Revd Dr William Lamb
12.00 Michaelmas Parish Lunch, The Old Library
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| | Michaelmas Termcard
You can view our Michaelmas Termcard now on our website and at this link: http://www.universitychurch.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Michaelmas_2017.pdf
The termcard contains lots of information about our programme over the next few month and includes our Advent and Christmas services. |
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| | Newman Walk
Newman Walk
On Sunday 1 October at 12noon (following the Sunday morning service), we are going on a little pilgrimage to Littlemore as we walk from St Mary's to the church in Littlemore, which was established by Blessed John Henry Newman, who was Vicar of St Mary (1828 - 1843). Please bring a packed lunch, stout walking shoes and a waterproof (in case of inclement weather). If you would like to use this walk as an opportunity to raise funds for the restoration of Littlemore church, please email universitychurch@ox.ac.uk for a sponsorship form.
Here is the map of the route we will be taking:
http://www.universitychurch.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Newman-Pilgrimage-Walk.png. |
| | Virgin Sport Oxford Half MarathonThis event takes place next Sunday and there will be a number of road closures in the centre of Oxford and to the north of the city. Please check their website to learn more: https://uk.virginsport.com/event/oxford-2017 |
| | | Poetry Corner
Bavarian Gentians
Not every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.
Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto's
gloom,
ribbed and torchlike, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off
light,
lead me then, lead me the way.
Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness,
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness was awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the
lost bride and groom.
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Saturday is Michaelmas, and at this time of the tipping of the year – the equinox just past – we are especially concerned with light and the dark. Lawrence lingers on the dark in this poem, and does unusual things with it; his darkness is a ‘blaze’, ‘blue-smoking’, ‘burning’. It radiates as much as – more than? – daylight, as he leads us with this peculiar negative illumination down the steps of the underworld. ‘Not every man has gentians’, begins the poem, ‘at slow, Sad Michaelmas’: it’s not everyone who welcomes this duality of illumination and shade. But Lawrence, writing this poem at the end of his life, is an inhabitant of the dusk, and helps us to address emotions we can’t necessarily quite distinguish.
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