Rev. Ruth’s Ramblings July 2024     

A friend of mine recently recommended that I down load onto my smart phone a free App called ‘Merlin Bird ID’ by The Cornell Lab.

It is a brilliantly clever piece of software that allows you to record the bird song you are hearing and then identifies the birds that are calling. I’ve never been good at bird song. I might, if I am lucky, recognise a black bird and a robin and sometimes get the great tit call right but generally it is just a melange of calls to me. Now, I easily identify which birds are singing and I realise I have far more wrens in the garden that I expected, and even have an elusive song thrush.

I really enjoy my garden birds and now I am getting more pleasure by having confidence that the song I am hearing is genuinely from the bird I am watching.

There is an element of making explicit, what was previously implicit. The sound I am hearing is from a wren, even though I might not see it from one week to the next. I know it is there.

Perhaps that is what I hope my ministry over the past 18 years has been about, at least in part. I have tried to make both the love and the action of God explicit in the lives of our community.

I believe that God is always present in our lives but too often we fail to notice how he is working in and around us. Like bird song, we are so accustomed to his touch on our lives, that it becomes just part of the background of our being. Yet, when we stop and notice, we are conscious that he has held us through the difficult moments of our lives, put the right person along side us at the challenging times and given someone the word we needed to hear when we have needed encouragement.

I hope and pray that I have helped people to notice that it is God there holding each of us in love and guiding us in our life’s journey.

As I move away, to start the next part of my life’s adventure, God remains here with you – before and behind. His love for each of you and for all that you do doesn’t change – it is just that it will be someone else, in the future, helping you to listen to his voice and to feel his touch.

I have loved my 18 years of being part of the community, of sharing in joyous times and being there for the hard ones too. I want to thank you all for helping me also to experience the presence of God through your friendship and care. I can’t thank you all enough for your warm best wishes for my future, your cards and gifts and most of all for the unconditional support and care I have received from you all in this most wonderful of communities.

I will continue to hold you in prayer, remember my time in Woolpit and Drinkstone with happiness, and be ready to welcome you when you turn up on my doorstep in Leiston wanting coffee.

May God bless you and keep you.

May he make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.

May he lift up his countenance upon you

And give you peace.

Now and always.

After a long dry spell the recent rain has come as a real relief. I found that, returning to England after nearly four weeks in Australia, I was shocked by how dry so much of the country side was looking. There was an August look in June. So the rain has brought a respite from the dry, warm weather and restored freshness to the fields and gardens around us.

As long as the rain falls gently it brings new life: plants that were struggling start growing again (including weeds!) while birds and insects seem to thrive once more.

What is happening in nature around us can also be a metaphor for what is happening in our lives too. We feel stale and dry. Creativity can be stifled when we experience internal drought too. We need the rain of new inspiration, a change of scene or a new perspective to bring back freshness into our lives.

Our spiritual lives too need refreshing at times. Jesus spoke of himself as having the gift of living water. In John’s gospel there is the wonderful story of his conversation with a woman from Samaria. She has come to draw water from a well and Jesus asks her to draw some for him. This leads to a deep conversation in which Jesus says: ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink the water that I give them will never be thirsty. The water I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’

It is easy for the pressures and routines of everyday life to distract us from coming back to Jesus to be refreshed by his gift of water. This is as much a challenge within the church as it is in the course of normal life. We allow routine or familiarity to support us when we should be seeking Jesus’ living water to sustain and renew us. Why should anyone want to come to church when the worship is dry and stale?

Yet, any change risks ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’. Seeking God’s will for the church and for his people needs to be done constantly and sensitively to ensure that we really are listening to his voice and not just our own anxieties and prejudices.

I wonder if there are things that would improve your experience of church or enable you to worship more deeply. I would love to hear from you so that we can together listen to God and help refresh us all with his living water.

I’m just old enough to remember the serials that used to be shown at the cinema, before the main feature film. Occasionally as a treat my sister and I were allowed to go to the Town Hall, which doubled as a cinema, on a Saturday afternoon. Because we didn’t go very often we would be left with the cliff hanger at the end of the serial, never to know how the hero or heroine was rescued the following week. It was, I recall, often literally a cliff hanger, with someone left dangling by their finger tips from a cliff edge, when only a few moments before they had been walking on solid ground. The device of a cliff hanger is still used frequently in our TV soaps – although with more jeopardy involved for the central characters. It might be a cynical way of attracting more viewers, or keeping them loyal, but in many ways it also mirrors what happens in our lives so often.

Just as the hero in the old western serials would walk over the ground, oblivious to its presence, until something slipped or he was pushed, and left clutching at the very ground he took for granted only moments before, so we go through much of our lives. We too take for granted so much that is in our lives until a piece of news or a sudden illness brings us up short and we clutch at the very things we hardly noticed around us. The last year of lockdowns and restrictions made us realise how precious the time with family and friends was. We were aware of them in our lives but only when we couldn’t spend time with them were we reminded of their importance to us.

We often treat God in the same way. We are dimly aware of his presence, as we might be the air we breathe or the ground we walk on. Acknowledging him at Christmas or Easter as we recall the stories of Jesus birth, death and resurrection. Then we are faced with a crisis that is beyond our control and we clutch desperately at the God we know only slightly, feeling that our grip on him is slipping as we ask ‘why me’ or get angry on behalf of another. I remember the year in which both my sister and my mother died. It felt that I slipped over the edge of the abyss. Worry, anxiety and uncertainty left me floundering.

But although it felt as if I was only holding on with my finger tips I was in reality being held very firmly in God’s grasp. I may have slipped off one firm place but I found that God had put something even more solid under my feet. Life might have been very different but it was no less secure.

Just as we were able to be confident that the hero or heroine of the old serial would not be left in jeopardy for too long so we can truly trust that God will not leave us dangling from the cliff edge.

He promises that: ‘I will never leave you or forsake you’ and it is a promise that we can rely on.

At the end of Matthew’s gospel Jesus says to those who were on the mountain with him and to us today: ‘and surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’

You may not know the person of Jesus well; he may only be a character from of story most of the time, and God may only be a distant memory but God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, can be trusted. So when you feel that you are walking on the edge of the abyss and the ground is crumbling beneath your feet, turn to him and trust him. He will be with you and bring you to a safe place.

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A lovely fund raising event for St. Mary’s – we held a pop up sale along the church wall with cakes, books, plants and bric-a-brac. All safe and in the fresh air.

St. Mary’s PCC is very grateful to everyone who helped and supported the event. Like most churches at present we are desperately in need of money and this not only helped raise fund but meant people could enjoy being out and about with each other.

Recently I was asked if it was wrong to imagine God, during prayer, as a mature man – something like Michelangelo’s depiction of God on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel at the Vatican.

I said that it’s not wrong but while it is useful to have an image as we pray we mustn’t limit God to one stereotype. We are made in God’s image so it can be helpful to use that image in prayer. Through out the bible we are told that God loves us like a father loves his children. Through Jesus’ use of the word ‘Abba’ for God we not only get the sense of God as a father but one who is loving and approachable. Who welcomes us and guides us. We are also told that God loves us as a mother – whether a hen gathering her chicks under her wings or a mother nursing her child at the breast. As long as our own experience of being parented was a good one, visualising God in human form helps us to draw nearer in prayer and to trust both the love and the discipline.

However, if we allow our imaginations to limit God to human form we run the risk of creating God in our likeness and not worshipping God at all, Instead, we try to have him as a puppet to do our bidding or we make him completely irrelevant.

Many different metaphors are used for God in the bible to convey that he is far more than an imagined person. One of the most powerful is that of fire. Fire is both positive and negative – creating and life sustaining but also destroying and cleansing. This, too, is the God we approach in prayer. We pray for the life giving power of fire to burn in others and in our world, to sustain with heat and passion both ourselves and those we pray for, but we also know that he will burn away the dross in our lives – a necessary but painful experience.

God sent his son, Jesus, to be the image of the invisible God – to enable us to approach him with confidence and trust. But for prayer and a life of faith to be truly joyous and powerful we must acknowledge that our God is beyond our imagination. He can be trusted but not tamed. He calls us to grow into his image not shrink him into ours. As we come to know more of God and let him be beyond us he enables us to be more than we ever thought we could be, too.

23rd March 2021

As you will undoubtedly know, today we remember that it is a year since we were put into the first lock down, to slow the spread of corona virus.
It is also the day when we were told to lock our churches – they could no longer remain open even from private prayer. This last year has been a year of pain, of grief and of some joys too.
We have learnt that stock piling toilet paper is a very niche hobby and not to be copied, that things we took for granted – particularly time with family and friends – are never to be dismissed as the back ground of our lives and that we, blessed by living in our rural part of Suffolk, have had our gardens and the countryside to lift our spirits when things seem oppressive.
We have lost family and friends and not been able to grieve with the wider circle of others through this time, we’ve watched as people we care for have struggled with loneliness or grief on their own and we have felt helpless as  others have had to work and put themselves at risk while we have had to stay home.
We have volunteered, phoned and supported others as much as we can and we have laughed at every joke on social media (and every email sent out by Lynn Hannant)
We have known that God is with us – through every difficult and challenging minute of lock down – and that his promise that he will never leave us or forsake us has been tested and found trustworthy.
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While All Saints Church has had to remain closed for the short term, for a number of reasons, St. Mary’s church was able to open as soon as the first lock down was eased – thanks to the people who have gone in tirelessly to clean it every day – and today there will be candles available for those who want to go and light one – to remember, to give thanks, to grieve.
At midday there will be a national minute of silence and we will mark this in St. Mary’s with both the silence and with prayer.
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The Lord bless you and keep you.
The lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
the lord look kindly upon you and give you peace.

Sunday 8^th November

Remembrance Sunday

There will be a brief service of Remembrance

at the War Memorial

Woolpit

starting at 10:55 am

with the laying of wreaths

and an Act of Remembrance.

Wednesday 11^th November

10:55 am

A brief Act of Remembrance

will take place

at the War Memorial

for 11 on the 11^th of the 11^th.

St. Mary’s Church will host a short and light hearted look of the life of actors during lock down on

Sunday 18th October at 3:00 pm

Tickets from Rev. Ruth

Dear All,

Yesterday’s announcement by the Prime Minister that far from allowing new activities and freedoms to take place some would need to be postponed – such as wedding receptions – and other new and tighter ones introduced – such as the compulsory wearing for face coverings in church from the 8^th August (for those not exempt) didn’t come as a surprise. It underlined the continual threat of the virus and that life will have restrictions for months to come. We are about to start Sunday worship in St. Mary’s church (All Saints, Drinkstone, has to remain closed until the window project is completed) and suddenly there is the feeling that we need to make the most of gathering in church as this too may go again, if the virus spread continues.

Other events of the last week or so also have made me feel helpless.

All this has drawn me back to one of my favourite prayers – the Methodist Covenant Prayer. We used to use it at New Year in the churches but I think it is perhaps even more relevant in our current times. It is a challenging prayer to pray and really mean but one that we need to be praying at this time.

‘I am no longer my own but yours.
Put me to what you will,
rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing,
put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you,
or laid aside for you,
exalted for you,
or brought low for you;
let me be full,
let me be empty,
let me have all things,
let me have nothing:
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things
to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours. So be it.
And the covenant now made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.’

When I gave my life to Christ I surrendered my control and asked him to be Lord of everything. However, I have a very bad habit of trying to wrest control back from the Lord and take over myself. So I want to control what happens to the people I love and in the churches that mean so much to me. I want answers to be ‘yes’ and people to be healed and the freedom to worship in the way I want, where I want. Then I come back to this prayer. It is no longer my life but God’s and if, for a time, he doesn’t want to use me as I want to be used or he says ‘no’ to my prayer  I must accept it. I have given him my life so I know and trust that, with him in control, it will be his will that is done, not mine, and it will be his kingdom that comes – not the petty, selfish kingdom of Ruth.

This prayer is an aspiration. It is how I want to live my live with God. I won’t get it right all the time, or even much of the time, but if I keep aiming to allow God control of every part of my life, and keep handing back those things that I grab onto then I will see his glory at work – in me and in his creation.

Services in St. Mary’s:

We have now received some guidance from the Church of England and our bishops. Basically, it is as I had suggested in my last letter – social distancing of 2 meters, no singing and advice to keep our services as short as possible.

While a few people would like Sunday church services to resume the majority of you who responded said you would prefer to keep the Sunday Zoom service at present, with many agreeing that a Wednesday service would be a suitable addition.

Consequently the decision is:

We will keep our current pattern of Sunday Holy Communion at 10:30 am and an Evening Service at 5:00 pm on Zoom.

From Wednesday 8th July we will start a service of Holy Communion in St. Mary’s at 11:00 am – receiving in one kind only and with careful social distancing and hand sanitising in place. I won’t be putting tape on the floor – out of respect to our Victorian Webb tiles – but please do make sure you maintain distance when coming in and going out – just as you would do within the church. Hand sanitiser will be used before we come in and as we go out.

The church will be kept locked on a Wednesday until 10:30 am then cleaned and shut again after the service until Thursday, to ensure it is as clean and safe as possible.

It will feel very strange coming back together and please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or queries.

I will still be taking home communion to people, in their gardens, for those who will feel safer that way.

We will be reviewing what we are doing very regularly and I will, of course, keep you informed.