Happy New Year

On Thursday evening you’re invited to welcome in the new year with friends from church – on Zoom, of course!  Here’s the plan – please dip in and out whenever you want:

• 11.15pm – Zoom link open for us to chat together
• 11.45pm or so – pause for thought and prayer
• Midnight – hear the chimes of Big Ben, then raise a glass, share good wishes etc

We’ll be using our usual Zoom meeting room, so hope to see you then – but if not, Happy New Year anyway!
(In case you need it, Zoom meeting id 9951954464  Passcode: 123456).

Journey

The vestry is itself again.
Pervasive scent of Christingle oranges long gone,
Angel-wings, paper crowns and tinsel star tidied away.
Mother and Babe and Joseph,
Attendant kings and shepherds,
Soon to be snug in their cupboard for another year.

Gold has been lavished on our ritual gifts,
Frankincense offered in majestic worship,
And myrrh twice over – penitence for sin,
And wistful yearning for the absent ones
Gracing our festival in former years
Who travelled hopefully and have arrived.

So a new year begins, a journey starts
Along a road as yet obscure, uncertain.
One thing alone we know –
And it is all we need to know.
Because of Bethlehem –
Because the Godhead took on mortal flesh –
None will walk uncompanion’d on the way.

(a poem for January by Peggy Day, in her calendar of poems 2001)