washburnmidwharfe (Page 2)

Dear Brothers and Sisters Many of you will already be aware of the death of Rosemary Row who was Churchwarden at Weston for so many years. Rosemary’s funeral service will be at Weston on 23rd of December at 10.30am. Rosemary’s family will be organising who can attend as we are only able to allow 30 people to attend. Please give thanks for Rosemary’s life and keep her children; Sally, David and Caroline and all of her family and friends in your prayers. Christmas Day is often the time of year when our churches are packed. This year this will not be possible. We need toRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters It is fortunate that I don’t belong to a Union. For the past few weeks, I have been working in cramped, uncomfortable conditions. And I have been loving it. My study has been full to bursting with food parcels donated by people all over the Benefice. All I have is a little walkway from the door to my desk. Even my prayer area has been taken over with boxes. Thank you so very, very much to all of you who have donated food or cash, and to all of you who donate throughout the year. Thanks to you, local families willRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters During my time in the Army I experienced the odd hair raising moment. (In those days I still had hair to raise!) One of my scariest experiences was in Basra in Southern Iraq in the Spring of 2005. I had recently arrived in Iraq at the start of a 7 month operational tour and was being taken to the airport to fly north to what would be my home. The personnel transporting me were going home the next day and they had, as we say in the Army, ‘switched off.’ All they could think about was their impending leave, seeing familyRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters In 1925, following on from the ravages of the Great War, and with Communism and Fascism becoming dominant forces throughout Europe the Catholic Church instigated a new feast day; Christ the King. This feast celebrated the belief that the true King of this world was the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, rather than the demagogues of the day who demanded power and authority over mankind. From the 1970s onwards other Christian denominations started to celebrate this feast and since 2000 it has been part and parcel of the Christian year in the Church of England. This feast began as a responseRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters My Colour  Sergeant at Sandhurst was a very kind man. He always tried to give some positive feedback even when my level of achievement didn’t warrant it. I was pretty awful at drill. I did eventually manage to pass off the square but as he said to me, ‘Padre we know that you can count, and that you can tell your left from your right. It’s just that you cannot do both things at the same time!’ I suspect that most of us have had several moments this year when we have felt  that we were not up to the mark.Read More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters For much of my life, Normandy has been almost a second home for me and my family. Charlotte’s father and uncle were among the first Allied soldiers to land in Normandy in the early hours of the sixth of June as members of the Parachute Regiment. And so Normandy in June has been part of our family life since Charlotte was a young girl. I have always been struck by the regard, perhaps a better word is love, which  the people of France still hold towards their liberators. Having been a country occupied by your enemy is such a painful eventRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters When I was a little boy I loved reading comics like the ‘Victor.’ This always had a true life story of bravery by a serviceman (it was always a man back then). These stories inspired me and fed into the ongoing games of soldiers that me and my friends seemed to spend all of our time on. Because I was brought up in a Christian household I also read a lot of stories about saints. Their lives inspired me as well. It is good to take inspiration from those ‘big names’ of the faith and we will all have our ownRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters I woke up with a sore throat on Friday morning. Straight away I thought the worst and then remembered what I had been doing the day before. When I read the Bible each day I like to read it out loud, even if I am alone. I think that speaking God’s word out loud helps me to listen to what God is saying. I read some of the psalms every day but a friend had suggested to me that reading them all in one day was a really helpful discipline to do. So as I was on retreat I decided toRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters As a young man I studied philosophy at a Spanish University for two years. Please don’t get the wrong impression about my linguistic abilities; the  Spanish for philosophy is filosofia. So I didn’t have to strive too hard to keep up with my studies. However Bishop Nick is a fantastic linguist. I know he speaks Russian and German exceptionally well but I think his use of English is outstanding. In the first weeks of the pandemic he reminded us of something crucial to our common life. The Government was (and still is) talking about the need for us all to SociallyRead More →

Dear Brothers and Sisters Have you managed to feel a little more thankful this week? Don’t worry if you have struggled to be thankful; it can be hard, especially when all around us the news seems so bleak. But being thankful; remembering, in the darkness, all the good there is in our world, and in our lives, helps to keeps the darkness at bay, helps to put everything into perspective. This weekend it is a bit easier to be thankful as we hear of all those who have been recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Those who have been recognised for what they haveRead More →