Columns (July/August 2009)
Green Links
By Janis Irvine
Forty-plus years ago anyone with a garden was most likely to have a vegetable plot within its boundaries. Usually at the back of the house either side of the path which led to the shed, these veg. plots were a natural part of life where Dad or Mum spent a few hours a week growing staples for the plate; potatoes of course, plus carrots, cabbages, broad and runner beans, peas, leeks and onions, as well as some salad crops and a few herbs. Children grew up naturally absorbing knowledge of how things grew — the digging over of the ground in the early Spring when the weather was fair and the ground reasonably dry, then when the weather was a bit warmer there would be the raking of the soil to a fine tilth which was followed by lines of string attached to sticks showing where the seeds had been planted — and woe betide you if you stepped anywhere near these precious areas! Ball games? Forget it!
Rural Affairs
By Dagmar Winter
This month the Rural Affairs column offers a snapshot of a significant event in the local rural calendar – the Northumberland County Show. This year, for the third time, Churches Together in Corbridge headed up the coordination of the Church stand at the show. And what a brilliantly sunny day it was, with over 27,000 visitors this year. Our thanks go to this year's organisers, Max & Monica Philbrick.
Pictures show (top) the Revd. Leo Osborne, chair of the Newcastle Methodist District, ofering a pebble prayer, judging taking place at the sheep pens opposite the Churches Together Tent, and Monica Philbrickm showing a map of Northumberland.
Christian Aid
Christmas in July ?
If you are interested in having a Big Christmas Sing, please contact Kerry Crellin at Christian Aid Newcastle on 0191 228 0115 newcastle@christian-aid.org Picture shows Vivian in Nicaragua with the medicines she is able to distribute.
Whilst it may seem a long way away yet, Christmas has a tendency to sneak up on all of us every year. Whilst it is a time of joy – to celebrate the birth of Jesus as well as the company of family and friends - it is also appropriate to remember others whose lives are so much harder than our own.
To this end, last year, Christian Aid in the North East launched its regional Great Big Christmas Sing, encouraging local churches and schools to work together to make a beautiful noise for Christian Aid!.
This year it’s back again, bigger and better to include more singing and fundraising in churches, schools, town centres and shopping malls. It is now stretching nationwide, under the new name of the Big Christmas Sing.
This Christmas, Christian Aid is encouraging you to sing your heart out to raise funds for Christian Aid. Invite friends, family and colleagues over for a good old sing song; take a break in the office and belt out a number with colleagues on the karaoke; or hold a Big Christmas Sing at your school, church or community hall. However you choose to do it, by singing you’ll be changing the lives of people in poor communities around the world.
You can make the event as small or large scale as you like, because whether you sing with a group of friends or your whole congregation, raising a £1 or £100 makes a difference to those who most need help. Richard Sharp of St Columba's Church, Seaton Burn, said “I organised a local Great Big Christmas Sing after I saw Christian Aid’s work on a visit to Zambia. I knew that the money we raised would go straight to the people that needed it.” He is looking forward to doing another this year.
Money raised will give people around the world a better chance at life – like Vivian and her son Rogert in Nicaragua. During the wet and windswept winter months, Vivian’s village is completely cut off from the outside world. At exactly the time when people most fall sick, because of the cold and damp, it’s impossible to reach a hospital or health centre. So Christian Aid partner organisation Nochari has trained village health promoters like Vivian in how to make and use medicines from local medicinal plants. When Vivian’s son Rogert was stung by a scorpion, she was able to treat him at home.
Taking part in the Big Christmas Sing this year means you will help generate more success stories such as this one. Christian Aid will supply you with a useful resource pack to support you and make sure you get the best experience you can.
Last year, the Revd. Malcolm Sellers from Seaton Delaval organised a carol service at Elsdon Avenue Church with local Brownie and Guide Units singing and doing readings. He says: “Everyone had such a good time doing it that we are certainly looking to do it again. The resource pack was very useful and provided a focus for us.”
View from the Lantern
By Canon Sydney Connolly
“Dear Diary.................”
On Tuesday mornings, the Dean meets with members of the staff from the various departments which make up the Cathedral community. It is at this meeting that prayer is offered on behalf of those who have visited the Cathedral, perhaps lit a candle in St Margaret’s Chapel, and left a note of their intercessions. This is a valuable and important part of the Cathedral’s ministry, not only to the city, but to those who come from far and wide. We count it a privilege to be invited to pray with and for those who have passed through the doors of this holy place.
Another important element of the Tuesday meeting is to look at the diary – at events, meetings and services that have happened, but also to look ahead to what is to take place in the future. There is an amazing variety of things going on at any one time, and I thought it would be interesting to have a View from the Lantern into a typical week in the life of the Cathedral (not that there is such a thing as a “typical week”, you will understand)
At the heart of everything there is the worship of almighty God. Day in and day out, the offices of morning and evening prayer are prayed – with the latter sung on certain days in school term time. The eucharist is celebrated at least once a day, and sometimes more than once – especially on feast days and festivals. In one week in June, for example, there were 26 of these acts of worship. From time to time there are the big diocesan services, such as the ordination of deacons and priests. This calls for an enormous amount of preparation, and everything is planned to the smallest detail. Simply preparing the order of service booklets and the tickets take up a great deal of time, and has to be fitted round the many routine tasks of a busy office.
The vergers help to keep things running as smoothly as possible, and they still find time to help young people who come for work experience. There is a lot of music going on, day by day. The girls’, boys’ and men’s choirs as well as the Lantern Singers, all have to be rehearsed for both the “ordinary” services and the “special” ones. Free organ recitals take place on some Mondays at 1pm – the next one being on 6th July, by Simon Earl from the Cathedral, and on 13th July there is to be a School Outreach Concert. The music department, incidentally, is saying farewell to Mike Dutton, who has been assistant organist at the Cathedral for the past 25 years. We wish him well in his new post as head of music at Dame Allan’s School in the city.
Our volunteers work in all sorts of different capacities, and the place simply could not carry on without them. They help run the cafe and the shop (both of which have recently opened on Saturday mornings). The bell ringers are a dedicated band who ring out for our main services, and practise during the week.
The Cathedral still functions as a parish church, and people come here for baptisms, confirmation, weddings and funerals. The Cathedral clergy offer a pastoral ministry to many in the diocese, a work that is necessarily unseen, but is of inestimable value. In fact, the whole ministry of the Cathedral is of inestimable value to the diocese and far beyond. This little peep into the diary may give you some idea of the breadth and depth of that ministry, but more importantly, I hope it will inspire you not only to visit this great house of God, but to keep us in your prayers and affection.
Other aspects of ‘the back garden’ were just taken for granted; the water butt and watering cans, the compost heaps, the odd collection of galvanized buckets, tins and jars, clay pots, lengths of corrugated iron and bits of wood and glass all stacked near the shed in one far corner with the rhubarb patch in the other. As the evenings grew lighter, someone would be out there watering or raking for an hour or so after the evening meal while a blackbird sang out his last sweet call before bedtime. Then, in the long hot days of Summer, there would be crisp red radishes, fresh lettuce and baby carrots for lunch or tasty new minted potatoes and peas for dinner, followed by mouth-watering strawberries and cream! In the Autumn the jam pan would come out and there would be the sweet smell of jam for weeks on end and then cupboard shelves packed with blackcurrant, raspberry and plum deliciousness, perhaps even a few pots of strawberry if enough fruit could been spared. Later still, there was the satisfaction of seeing bags of potatoes stored in brown paper sacks in the shed beside a sand box filled with carrots all ready for the long Winter to come while outside the turnips, leeks, cabbages and Brussels sprouts showed they were made of hardier stuff and would sit there covered in silvery frost as the days grew colder.
Did we realize then what a precious way of life this was? Or how lucky those people were who had a garden and could do all those wonderful things? Or how lucky we kids were who learned all these skills without even knowing it (surely the best way of learning)? Slowly, the veg. plot gave way to the back lawn and flower borders or the place where the new car was parked — while the supermarket provided all the fruit and vegetables we could possibly want, and even ones we had never seen before like peppers, aubergines, rocket, kiwi fruits, blueberries and other exotics.
But after three or four decades of veg. plot wilderness, things are changing again and people are discovering anew all those garden delights of the pre-seventies . The kids who missed out on the gardening osmosis knowhow are picking up information from the TV or the Internet, or they are going to one of the new gardening groups which are springing up all over the country. In our village, one such group is now in its second year and has a growing (!) membership. They have invited speakers at their monthly meets and pick up tips on tomato varieties, compost making, the merits of raised beds etc. and have plant and seed swaps. These primarily thirty and forty-somethings even go and visit other gardens to see how its done there and come back clutching seed packets and new plant varieties to try.
Transition Town movements also heavily champion ‘grow your own’ and Transition Tynedale recently held a plant and seedling swap as part of the May Farmer’s Market in Hexham where I picked up a black tomato plant, which I am following with great interest, as well as some salad crop seedlings. Like last year, I am again growing my salad crops in large tub trugs (with holes suitably pierced in the base and with a good layer of broken crock before filling with home-made compost) that I have placed near the back door. There is something quite magical in picking off a few leaves, giving them a quick rinse then adding them straight to a cheese or tomato sandwich — how fresh is that?
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