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Golders Green Parish Church – Newsletter
30 March 2021
Greetings to everyone: Now we have entered into the most sacred and sombre week of the Christian year during which we follow Christ’s long, lonely road to his crucifixion. As we reflect during this week, we cannot but be aware of many people during this past year who know about being isolated, lonely and suffering in the ways many could not have imagined at least two years ago; how much we have depended upon each other and those who have supported us and give thanks for them. The lock-down may be coming to an end but we still have to take great care of each other and in all aspects of our lives - our goings out and coming in. The pandemic is still unfortunately with us and we still have a long way to go before we can live as we did or, perhaps, change the way we live from all that we have learnt from it. What have we learned from it I wonder that would make returning to some normality a much better way to live?
We are so grateful that the church was opened on Palm Sunday and we were, with Tony’s expertise, able either to go in person or join in through zoom. Thank you so much Tony.
In this week’s edition there are poems and prayers that may help us reflect on Holy Week and look to Easter, and rejoice at the Resurrection, a time of great light, joy and hope.
We have two priest-poets, Michael S, formerly Dean of Durham Cathedral, writer, theologian and spiritual director, who has been sending us a weekly prayer and often a poem for the newsletter,
and Malcolm G, poet, singer-songwriter and academic, born in Nigeria. His poetry is widely published and increasingly popular. He broadcasts on spirituality, how religion and the arts link and writes for the Church Times. If you ever get to link-in to his sessions, you will not be disappointed. Three of his books are recommended in the book section below.
Also included, is a speech given by the Revd Helen B, who is an active member of the Extinction Rebellion Organization. Helen was arrested in central London last year for obstruction. She camped in Marble Arch over much of Easter weekend taking part in peaceful protests along with others up and down the country from all walks of life. Extinction Rebellion is a global environmental movement whose aim is to use non-violent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse. There is a very active branch in Barnet. Helen’s speech is an amazingly prophetic, clear statement about a Christian’s duty to, “to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth” (which is the Anglican Communion‘s 5th mark of mission) in keeping with our responsibility to care for the creation that God made it and “saw it was good” (Gen 1:13). It also links with the, “Climate Crisis Appeal” posted by Jenny from Christian Aid below.
Just to say thank you to our young ones’ who are sending in drawings for next week’s Easter edition. We have a beautiful golden Cross from Mahalia for this week. Lots of Easter egg pictures to come I suspect!
Love and good wishes – Sally
The Cross by Mahalia /Aged 5 Years Old
This weeks edition includes:
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Update from Tony.
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Palm Sunday Message from Archdeacon John;
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Lenten Prayer;
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Address to Court on being fined for Protesting: The Rev’d Helen B
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Climate Crisis: Appeal from Christian Aid – Jenny;
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Holy Week Poem – Michael S
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Lent and After Books
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How We Are.
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Links to services, hymns, and broadcasts.
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Zoom links.
Update from Tony
Easter is upon us and so to let you know what is planned - on Maundy Thursday we plan to have a service at 7pm. On Good Friday at 12 noon meditation on the stations of the cross and on Easter day at 10am easter Day service. Both the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday gatherings will be Zoom only but Easter Day will be in person and Zoom.
The link for Thursday is as follows
Time: Apr 1, 2021 07:00 PM London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89718699090?pwd=TnJqV2FGTnhZdERnMkozckViWlRvQT09
Meeting ID: 897 1869 9090
Passcode: 447134
One tap mobile
+441314601196,,89718699090#,,,,*447134# United Kingdom
+442030512874,,89718699090#,,,,*447134# United Kingdom
Dial by your location
+44 131 460 1196 United Kingdom
+44 203 051 2874 United Kingdom
+44 203 481 5237 United Kingdom
+44 203 481 5240 United Kingdom
+44 203 901 7895 United Kingdom
The link for Good Friday is as follows
Time: Apr 2, 2021 12:00 PM London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88006841143?pwd=K2hQZGJmQmNmMGFKN0g4MTlnMjBzUT09
Meeting ID: 880 0684 1143
Passcode: 038896
One tap mobile
+442034815237,,88006841143#,,,,*038896# United Kingdom
+442034815240,,88006841143#,,,,*038896# United Kingdom
Dial by your location
+44 203 481 5237 United Kingdom
+44 203 481 5240 United Kingdom
+44 203 901 7895 United Kingdom
+44 131 460 1196 United Kingdom
+44 203 051 2874 United Kingdom
Palm Sunday Message from Archdeacon John
Palm Sunday is an evocative Sunday within the Christian calendar with the image of Jesus entering the holy city of Jerusalem at the beginning of what many of us think of as Holy week. It is often referred to as “Christ’s Triumphal Entry”. Of course for many of our churches this year this is the Sunday in which they have chosen to reopen our doors for worship following the difficult decision to close at Christmas.
Maybe as the vaccination is rolling out at a truly impressive rate, maybe as we see once again the infection and death rate fall within our city and nation, we can start to begin to think of how we will re-enter the city as the church? How will we re-enter the world that for many of use for the last year has been a closed and barricaded world in which we have been compelled to remain in our homes and in our bubbles?
What does Jesus Christ model for us as he enters the holy city? For it was a time in which his disciples must have had a mixture of joy and foreboding, as we do today? In preparation for this triumphal entry the disciples were told on numerous occasions by Jesus himself of the dangers that lay waiting for them in Jerusalem.
It is curious that this triumphal entry is on the one hand greeted with joy from the crowds, their garments creating the 1st century equivalent of a red carpet, but on the other hand see’s Jesus sitting upon a donkey, and there by making a clear statement that this entry is more nuanced than might at first hand be obvious. He does not enter the city as a conquering hero demonstrating right and might. He does not enter the city with an army at his back but with love in his heart, a love that will change this and every city forever.
As we seek to re-enter our churches, our lives and all that they contained and demanded from us before Covid-19 changed the world, the image of Jesus on a beast of burden, a figure who speaks not a word as he enters into the city with the expectations hopes and fears of the crowds around him, might be a stark reminder of the necessity for us to re-enter our buildings and the future with some humility.
Just at this triumphant entry into Jerusalem led to the events of Good Friday and Easter so it is that we acknowledge again this Easter God’s ability to bring from the hopelessness, despair and death of the cross the glory of new life and a renewed relationship with God and one another that is our Easter faith and our gift to the world and the church this year.
Lenten Prayer
Eternal God
On this day your Son rode into the city and was acclaimed as king.
Help us to welcome and acclaim him with hosannas,
Not as the fulfilment of misplaced messianic hopes,
But as the compassionate One who wears the crown of thorns,
and stands forever with his suffering brothers and sisters in this and every age.
We ask this through him whose kingship is not from this world,
Your crucified and risen Son Jesus Christ. Amen.
Malcolm Guite
The Rev’d Helen B: Speech to the Court Fining Her for Protesting at the Extinction Rebellion Demonstrations
The Rev’d Helen B is known to many of us in the Church and beyond. She a person of huge integrity who takes action about those areas in which she has strong convictions no matter what the cost. For that alone I am proud to know her consider her actions prophetic. As another friend says of her, “She talks the talk and walks the walk”.
During last week she was in court after being arrested for protesting at the Extinction Rebellion protests of October 2019. As Helen expected, she was found guilty and given a 6-month conditional discharge and a £350 fine but she clearly made them stop and think, none of us were surprised when she gave a closing statement which she read out in court and which I share below with Helen’s permission:
‘This is the first week of Passiontide, a time in the Christian year when the truth is revealed and this trial began with an oath on a bible – the sacred text that teaches a radical way of love and which includes the account of Jesus before Pilate when he famously replied ‘what is truth’ before falling silent in the face of a justice system that had nothing of real truth and justice to offer him.
Well, I’m afraid you are not going to have silence from me and I hope you can offer more than Pilate.
Here is my truth, the truth of thousands of activists, and of the truth of millions too busy trying to survive, too busy grieving, too busy coping with the real live effects of the climate and ecological emergency.
On Oct 7th 2019 I was sitting on the ground, for that brief spell, a small patch of Millbank was holy ground; holy ground being held against all odds, against the state, against ecocide, against corporate power, against self – serving politics, against a fossil fuel economy and against all that contrives to damage our earth and its fragile web of life………………..against all that desecrates the sacred.
And for a brief moment there was full autonomy, I held tight to love and to a tenacious hope. What a contrast to this space……………
Mark (another priest charged in court) and I stand before you, 2 priests, people of faith who sat in the road for their beliefs. We stand here charged and brought to court, while governments and corporations go unchallenged on countless charges of Ecocide.
During the course of that day on Oct 17th I gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph, to Christian Premier radio, spoke alongside representatives of faith based NGO’s, prayed in a multi faith gathering on a bridge that was blocked by the police helped to carry an enormous ark – a striking symbol of hope in the face of despair.
I had multiple conversations with multiple people who love and care for this planet and the people who live on it, and then I sat with people I’d never met before in solidarity with our neighbours on the other side of the globe. And I prayed, prayed in the deepest most profound way that happens, only when all else seems lost and we touch the very heart of the matter.
What kind of a mad world is it that has two vicars who can see and understand the catastrophic harm to human, animal and plant life that is the climate catastrophe standing in a dock before you for telling the truth about an existential threat.
We have looked into the abyss, seen the despair, and our hope is to find agency in whatever way we can through action and contemplation to do something before we die for a world that is dying.
As I prayed a young woman sang Bread and Roses – I want bread and roses for the world – beauty and sustenance, a sharing of life’s glories, glories that should be available to all.
A stranger prayed for me, and blessed me, and a police officer repeatedly said that he didn’t want to arrest me, called me padre and begged me to desist because his girlfriend would never forgive him for arresting me.
Today, 17 months later it is my eldest son’s 30th birthday, he is living through a pandemic that is caused by the catastrophic effects of the minority world lifestyle.
In the course of his life I have marched, signed petitions, written letters, educated myself, and many others and been a teacher, mother and priest. That vocation commits me to the fierce love and protection of my children, and of, by extension the children of the world.
As a priest in the Anglican Communion my vocation brings a commitment to the 5th mark of mission, which is :
‘to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth’
This duty I hold in common with Christians across the globe linked by a faith that demands love for aviorr and, where necessary, demands personal sacrifice.
As vicars we have the ‘cure of the souls’ – that’s not some mere ephemera that flies off to heaven – it is the fully integrated body and spirit – the spiritual and physical well-being of the people in our parishes.
With a care also for creation that then extends to the soil, the trees, and all that lies within our parish.
I am called to pastoral care for people and planet in the place of my work in the parish of Chaldon where I preach that we must love our aviorr and that our aviorr is not just the person we can see, but the person we cannot see, in Bangladesh, in the Niger Delta, in the Maldives, where people are suffering as we speak from catastrophic climate change – on their behalf I claim immediate and urgent necessity.
They are my aviorr; to pass by on the other side as a member of the minority world that created the catastrophe, is not an option…….
My faith compels me to love my aviorr, to cross over even went it is dangerous to do so; not to turn a blind eye to the truth and pass by on the other side.
By demanding action on climate change I am exercising my faith, by praying as I take action, I am exercising my right to freedom of worship in article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and to assemble with others in solidarity under Article 11 of the same convention.
When governments won’t listen, when profit is the golden calf and we commodify every part of the planet, when we are crucifying our earth, a crucified earth will not have a risen life; on the current trajectory this crucified earth will come to an end and take with it millions of souls for whom I wish to advocate, the imperative must be to act.
That imperative to love ferociously culminated for me in a moment of deep clarity and deep prayer on Monday October 7th 2019. I knew that all that all I had left at that moment between myself and the appalling climate injustice of this world, was my body to place between the oncoming disaster, and the powers that be, my body, on the line, in the face of the social and economic structures that prevail, in the face of systemic refusal to face this disaster with honesty and with immediate action.
And so I prayed and my prayer was protest, that is a right enshrined in law a right to be exercised in an emergency.
I did this on behalf of those who are in immediate danger and I did this for my own children and godchildren, for the children in my church and in my school, all of whom will witness in their lifetimes what happens beyond the cliff edge. Ultimately, my faith and my understanding of the world convinces me that love must prevail. So, today when secular laws fail in their duty to protect our earth I am compelled to turn to a higher moral and spiritual authority, this court could have the courage and the capacity to do the same….
Yes 17 months ago I sat in the road, it was a tiny miniscule moment in the greater scheme of things and since when no change has been effected, it was my only remaining option in the face of massive negligence.
I will close now with the words of the late Polly Higgins:
“The rules of our world are laws, and they can be changed. Laws can restrict or they can enable. What matters is what they serve. Many of the laws in our world serve property – they are based on ownership. But imagine a law that has a higher moral authority… a law that puts people and planet first. Imagine a law that starts from first do no harm, that stops this dangerous game and takes us to a place of safety….” Polly Higgins, 2015. Will this court begin that journey towards a place of safety for all people today?’
Climate Crisis: Appeal from Christian Aid – Jenny
2021 is crucial
The world’s poorest people have long been living with the impacts of climate breakdown. Families are torn apart by disaster, crops are ruined by drought and houses are lost to rising seas. For many of our friends and neighbours around the world, further inaction is a matter of life and death.
This year is a moment of urgent opportunity. Spurred on by the actions of our friends on the frontline of the changing climate and the school strikers, people are really waking up to the severity of the crisis. We can halt this climate crisis, and we can do it in a way that will also tackle inequality and restore creation.
But we can only do this if we seize this moment and build a movement to sustain it.
This year, leaders will be making decisions that could set us on the path to a better, safer world. In November, the UK Government will host the United Nations’ key climate change talks, COP26. All eyes will be on the UK and the government will be keen to show its leadership. We have to ensure that leaders make the right choices.
Underpin the year in prayer and help make climate justice a reality.
Caid.org.uk/prayerchain
Together we
STOP this climate crisis
Christian Aid is a key member of ACT Alliance. Eng and Wales charity no. 1105851 Scot charity no. SC039150 Company no. 5171525 Christian Aid Ireland: NI charity no. NIC101631 Company no. NI059154 and ROI charity no. 20014162 Company no. 426928. The Christian Aid name and logo are trademarks of Christian Aid. Printed exclusively on material sourced from responsibly managed forests © Christian Aid November 2020 Photos: Christian Aid/Tom Pilston J215230
Photos of “The Beauty of Creation” by Alison Barnes
Holy Week Poem
Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,
The seething holy city of my heart,
The Saviour comes. But will I welcome him?
Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;
They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,
And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find
The challenge, the reversal he is bringing
Changes their tune. I know what lies behind
The surface flourish that so quickly fades;
Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,
The hardness of the heart, its barricades,
And at the core, the dreadful emptiness
Of a perverted temple. Jesus come
Break my resistance and make me your home.
Michael Sadgrove
Lent and After Books
How we are:
Good news this week:
Simon: How good to hear that Simon’s father, Michael, is having some good days and is being well supported by family and friends. We send him our good wishes and prayers as always.
Jenny: Jenny’s mum, Beryl, had a great 90th birthday which Jenny described as, “an amazing day with lots of cards, emails and facetime conversations from all over the world. She clearly felt loved and appreciated” How good is that! Great news to hear at this time.
Please continue to pray for those who have asked us as a community to pray for them
Okey Jnr. O, Margaret M, Yvone S, Anna M, Jason E, Ian K, Eva M, Juliette D, Ivor S, Myfanwy K , Dorothy N, Rose O, Judy N, David A, Gideon O, Simon H |
Zoom link numbers
The link for the next seven Sundays starting with Easter day is
Golders Green Parish Church is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Parish Worship
Time: Apr 4, 2021 10:00 AM London
Every week on Sun, until May 16, 2021, 7 occurrence(s)
Apr 4, 2021 10:00 AM
Apr 11, 2021 10:00 AM
Apr 18, 2021 10:00 AM
Apr 25, 2021 10:00 AM
May 2, 2021 10:00 AM
May 9, 2021 10:00 AM
May 16, 2021 10:00 AM
Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.
Weekly: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/tZIsdOGgpj4oHNMB8p6osRV8TMRZNkl0eTkV/ics?icsToken=98tyKuGurzgiEtyQsh-ARpwABYjCWfzxiCVBgo1wvkf1VS9AUDWuAs9wCJx0HIjV
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86138885267?pwd=OVN4ZXo5N2VoV3kxVlBLdmhrU2Z3Zz09
Meeting ID: 861 3888 5267
Passcode: 410819
One tap mobile
+442034815240,,86138885267#,,,,*410819# United Kingdom
+442039017895,,86138885267#,,,,*410819# United Kingdom
Dial by your location
+44 203 481 5240 United Kingdom
+44 203 901 7895 United Kingdom
+44 131 460 1196 United Kingdom
+44 203 051 2874 United Kingdom
+44 203 481 5237 United Kingdom
Meeting ID: 861 3888 5267
Passcode: 410819
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kbNe17nmyQ
Daily Hope - The Church of England Phone line church service - is available 24 hours a day on 0800 804 8044 – has been set up particularly with those unable to join online church services during the period of restrictions in mind.
We at Golders Green Church will continue to offer a number of ways we can and will keep in contact though emailing and phoning each other, the use of Facebook and the website, sending out updates by supporting those who need shopping, prescriptions fetched, letters posted and anything else you may need if you are isolated at home, whether you are in the over 70-year-old age group, or, have underlying health conditions.
The important thing is, PLEASE LET US KNOW. Please email churchwardens@gg-pc.co.uk
Radio, Television and Online Worship
You may wish to join in worship during this time through television and radio.
Check online, in the Radio Times and elsewhere for details:
Songs of Praise BBC 1, Sunday afternoon, variable times
Sunday Worship BBC Radio 4, Sunday, 8.10am Choral Evensong BBC
Radio 3, Wednesday Daily Service
BBC Radio 4 (Longwave only), weekdays, 9.45am
Big Sunday Service Premier Christian Radio, Sunday, 7am, 8am, 10am Easter Sunday Eucharist A service is usually broadcast on the BBC on Easter morning
Free 24 hour telephone church service 0800 804 8044
Online resources Church of England Daily Prayer
https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/join-us-service-dailyprayer
https://mailchi.mp/b9d86a4acdc7/coming-up-from-st-pauls-cathedral-1274047?e=377e26b1db St Paul’s Cathedral have a number of resources available for us to use.
Church of England Online Resources during this time
https://www.churchofengland.org/more/media-centre/coronaviruscovid-19-liturgy-and-prayer-resources
Go On-line to " ps://www.achurchnearyou.com", put in Area or post code and find a local church that broadcasts Worship.
Prayers from Christian Aid
https://www.christianaid.org.uk/pray/churches/coronavirus-prayers
https://pray-as-you-go.org/ Pray as you Go (a short service each day in the Jesuit Tradition)
LICC have some great resources on their website https://www.licc.org.uk/
Especially on Covid-19 https://www.licc.org.uk/ourresources/prayer-journeys/presence-pressure-purpose/
Golders Green Parish Church, 04/04/2021