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'Maureen's
Musings'
 April 2016
With Easter behind
us, can the APCM be far behind!
This year's Annual Parochial Church Meeting - 17 April after
Evensong - is a time when I hope as many as possible will come
to have a voice in the future of our church in Pattingham and
the surrounding area. I am not anticipating any great changes
in our church officers this year ... although you can never be
certain! We have a good team at present, but it will only be
another year or so until we need to honour the promise made to
Ken that his term as Churchwarden would only be for a maximum
of 3 years... So someone will need to step up to the mark! It
would be good if someone began properly 'shadowing' our Wardens
this year, so that they might be ready when the time comes....
You may feel this role is well beyond you - we all do at first,
but everyone brings something new and unique to the tasks in
hand - so you may be just the person to take it on! And within
a year or two I know that Iain will also be looking to relinquish
his duties to someone else. So no room for complacency and thinking
"Someone else will do it" to quote the Lottery Ad from
a few years ago, "It could be You!" - God works in
mysterious ways...
At the time of writing I am hopeful that this month will see
the installation of our long-awaited Audio-Visual System. To
those fearful that I may be changing the nature of your beloved
St Chad's - please rest assured that my motivation is only to
help even more people continue to love and care for the building
and what it means in Pattingham. But for this to happen, they
need to feel it offers them something relevant to their lives
too. Not just to the Victorians! (when some of the most radical
changes to the building were introduced) The A/V system will
be discrete and out of the way when not in use - and I do not
expect that every service will make use of it - but there are
times and particular services when it would be very useful -
not least in helping people to see what is happening at some
of our busier services - both for the School and for the community.
During April we will also be repeating the "Everybody
Welcome" course. This proved very useful a couple of
years ago. We hope that all sidespeople in particular will find
time to attend the sessions - but absolutely anyone in the church
congregation would get something from the course. Mondays
at 7.30pm - more information from Dr Ken Scott elsewhere
in this magazine.
To leave you with this month, I pass on a small piece 'harvested'
from the iBenedictine sisters blog, all about the body-language
of the bowed head (very C of E!)
When we bow, our gaze is lowered, our perspective altered.
We have to shift our position, to see what grounds us, maybe
to confront our own feet of clay. We have to acknowledge the
existence of the other, whether that other be God or one in whom
God dwells. We move from centre stage and are reminded that our
true dignity rests on something we all share equally, our common
humanity... And while that may seem a small thing, I have never
yet heard of a truly humble person starting a war, tricking or
defrauding another, or treating anyone with contempt.
And at this season especially we remember when God in Christ
bowed his head on the Cross and redeemed the world. Something
to ponder there, perhaps.
The blessing of Easter
be with you,
Maureen.
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