THE LANCE

www.stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk

APRIL 2021

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In The Lance this month: (ctrl-click to follow a link)

Editorial 3

The Reverend Stephanie Writes 4

Holy Rus—The Story of the Russian Orthodox Church 6

In Memorium 15

(Un) Orthodox Easter 17

Charles Mitchell and Russia 20

Spring is Spung 22

Caption Competition 22

Belarus surveys Orthodox Discontent 23

Christians in Europe Face Uncertain Future as Covid Restrictions Continue

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Vicar Becomes a Blues Brother 27

Geordie Proverb 27

Book Reviews - Yevgeny Zamyatin: The Russian novelist from

Sanderson Road.

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I Cannot Tell 32

Knitting for Children Northeast 34

St George’s Book Group 35

Children’s Section—the Children’s Russian Quiz 36

Recipes 37

Traditional (and Vegan) Borscht 37

Vegan jackfruit Chinese style 'no-duck' pancakes 38

Letters to the Editor 39

Liturgical Calendar 41

Who is Who at St Georges and how to contact them 42

The Seventh Word Answers 43

The Back Page 44

Front cover: The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow. Dynamited December 1931. Rebuilt 1995-2000

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Editorial

We are still in lockdown despite the triumph of the vaccination programme, and now

cannot travel to Europe. We must travel in the mind and for this edition, to Russia.

There are many profound links between our Church and Russia. St George’s beautiful

building and land was the gift of Charles Mitchell whose fortune lay in building the

ships of the Russian navy in Newcastle and later, St Petersburg. His story is here.

Strolling the streets of Jesmond a generation later came Yevgeny Zamyatin, a Rus-

sian naval engineer. He spent his time writing lampooning sketches of our Church, its

clergy and even this magazine, before producing the first ever dystopian novel, much

admired by Huxley, Orwell and later writers. Stalin sent him into exile. We review two

of his books. Our Organist Emeritus visited Moscow just as it threw off anti-religion

dogma in the 1990’s and church goers could once more worship in freedom after a

century of terrible persecution. He witnessed their profound joy. And then there is

the extraordinary history of the Russian Orthodox Church itself, its adoption, its de-

struction and now its resurrection. We devote our main article to this story.

There is a children’s Russian Orthodox quiz and a Russian recipe!!

We have reports about the state of European churches and also from Belarus, where

Orthodox congregations are using their church membership to signal dissatisfaction.

Nearer to home, there are poems reflecting on the great sense of loss this pandemic

has caused. And reports from some of our charities who uphold hope and give us a

chance to do better. And Spring has sprung at last.

Margaret Vane

‘Our noble winner of the CAPTION COMPETITION, Ali-

son Mattinson, with her winning wine and her Mother’s

Day flowers. CONGRATUALTIONS from the Lance’

See page 22 for this month’s competition.

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The Reverend Stephanie Writes

Dear Friends,

April has arrived. The clocks have not long sprung forward signalling the beginning of

Summer Time (technically ‘Daylight Saving Time’) and, in the Church, we find our-

selves celebrating the season of Easter, the eight weeks that follow Easter Day, lead-

ing us to the Ascension, Pentecost and the long, rolling weeks of Ordinary Time,

which see us through the summer months.

It’s another cycle, another succession of seasons, which show us one of the princi-

ples of meditation and mindfulness, that of impermanence. Impermanence describes

the constant change that goes on around us in everything and everyone, the little

births, growings, deaths and re-births that give life its light and shade, its fallow and

fruitful seasons, its chills and warmth, its storms and calm.

So what has all this got to do with Easter? Well, for one, we have the birth, death

and resurrection narrative which we see in Jesus’ life, and in his trial, execution, buri-

al and resurrection. He might not have called such an experience ‘impermanence’ in

his time, but I would hazard a guess that he would have been far more familiar with

the passing of the seasons, what impermanence is pointing to, than we are now.

Very few of us will spend as much time outdoors or digging in the garden as our

forebears, and our acquaintance with the natural world and its seasons and cycles

may only extend as far as noticing the spring bulbs, the leaves growing on the trees,

those same leaves being shed, and the barrenness of winter. But this too shows us

something which the Resurrection brings to light, and that the hymn, ‘Now the green

blade riseth’, describes so beautifully:

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,

wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;

Love lives again, that with the dead has been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

In the grave they laid him, Love whom men had slain,

thinking that never he would wake again,

laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

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Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,

he that for three days in the grave had lain,

quick from the dead, my risen Lord is seen:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,

thy touch can call us back to life again,

fields of our hearts, that dead and bare have been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green

We’ve been living in the shadow of this pandemic for over a year now, these many

days of lying in the dark earth, living with Lockdowns, restrictions, and the conse-

quences of these limitations. We’ve lost loved ones, had to put off best laid plans for

a little longer than we imagined, had hopes and dreams shattered, maybe created

new hopes and dreams about what we’d like the world to look like when we emerge

on the other side, been unable to see friends and family especially those who live

farther afield. Our hearts may well have felt wintry, disappointed, cynical, maybe

even hopeless at times… maybe we felt stuck or that those inevitable changes came

too rapidly. But like Mary Magdalene, weeping by the tomb, caught up in the confu-

sion of Jesus’ body no longer lying where it had been, we may not be able to see the

Resurrection clearly. But Love will come again and call us back to life. And maybe in

the light of it all, in the beauty and frustration of hindsight, I for one hope that we ’ll

emerge wiser for having lived through this season. It may not be the new life we had

hoped for or expected, but it will be just as wonderful, and perhaps even more so,

for taking us out of our comfort zones.

Stephanie.

We praise you and we bless you, our risen Lord Jesus, King of glory,

for your resurrection overturns our expectations of life

and even your closest friends could not see the truth before them.

As the angel helped them to grasp your triumph and overcome their fear,

so help us to see your hand at work through the events that overtake us.

To you, Lord Jesus, whose ways astonish beyond our imagining,

be honour and glory, now and forever.

Amen.

Prayer for the Fourth Station (The angel appears to the women) of the Stations of

the Resurrection, from Common Worship: Times and Seasons.

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Holy Rus’ - The Story of the Russian Orthodox

Church ‘And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my

Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’

Prince Vladimir (The Great) (956-1015), the pagan Norse ruler of Rus, sent scholars

from his capital in Kiev, to study the religions of the various nations that sought to

convert him and his people to their respective faiths. Of the Muslims of Bulgaria they

reported ‘there is no gladness among them, only sorrow and a great stench’. And

Islam forbad drinking and pork and Vladimir replied ‘Drinking is the joy of all Rus! We

cannot exist without that pleasure.’ Of the Jews, Vladimir said their loss of Jerusalem

indicated they had been abandoned by God and he rejected their faith. His emissar-

ies visited pre-schism Latin Rite Christian churches in Germany where they saw ‘little

beauty’. But at Constantinople they witnessed the full Divine Liturgy in the Eastern

Rite of the Byzantine Church, in Hagia Sofia. His emissaries reported ‘We no longer

knew whether we were in heaven or on earth, nor such beauty, and we know not

how to tell of it.’ This was the very magnificence that Vladimir was searching for.

Vladimir had already

besieged and taken the

Byzantine Black Sea

city of Kherson and his

barbarian armies

threatened Constanti-

nople itself. The Roman

brothers who ruled By-

zantium, the Emperors Basil II (‘the Bulgar-Slayer’) and Constantine VIII, were anx-

ious to negotiate Vladimir’s withdrawal from Kherson, as was Vladimir, so long as it

was on terms that might be favourable to his ambitions. The negotiations involved a

marriage alliance with the Emperors’ sister, Anna, without which Vladimir threatened

to march on and destroy Constantinople. Anna was not too keen to be sent to Vladi-

mir simply as a hostage and to be another of his concubines. She said she would ra-

ther remain in Constantinople and die than suffer such a fate.

The Divine Liturgy

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But Anna was shrewd as well as

pious and knew that with a no-

ble lineage comes obligation.

She knew that a strategic mar-

riage alliance between Christian

Byzantium and the barbarian

Vladimir would neutralise the

threat to the Roman Empire in

the east and bring repentance to

the people in the heathen lands to the north. Anna was a Porphyrogenita, a legiti-

mate daughter of the Emperor, born ‘into the purple’ in the Byzantine palace in the

special purple chamber reserved for such births and completely lined in a veneer of

imperial porphyry which was purple with white spots like grains of sand sprinkled

over it. She insisted that if she were to accept his proposal Vladimir should personally

convert to Christianity. The 11th century Russian Primary Chronicle tells us that in 988

Anna journeyed to Kherson, accompanied by priests prepared to hold Vladimir to his

promise. She found him afflicted by an eye disease which had rendered him blind.

Anna shrewdly suggested that he could be healed by baptism. And the Chronicle rec-

ords that Vladimir said, ‘If this should happen, then assuredly the Christian God must

be great.’ He was baptised and, so the story goes, immediately the Bishop laid his

hand upon him, he was cured and Vladimir was convinced that he had been in com-

munion with the one true God.

The Chronicle says that after his baptism and cure, Vladimir and Anna travelled north

in triumph to Kiev. Anna was Vladimir’s sixth wife and she needed all her considera-

ble moral power to hold Vladimir to his promise to baptise all his people of Rus. A

contemporary of the scene, Ditmar von Walbeck, Bishop of Merseburg, credits Anna

as being personally responsible for the conversion of Russia. He did not think much

of the thuggish Vladimir whom he described as nothing more than a fornicatur im-

mensus – he already had more than twelve legitimate children by his five wives and

numerous others by his many concubines. He had a habit of picking up a wife in eve-

ry land he conquered. As a prelude to their baptism the people witnessed the huge

statue of their pagan god Perun pulled from its pedestal and dragged through the

streets of Kiev. They were then baptised en masse in the River Dnieper. Vladimir

gave thanks to the Lord that He had revealed Himself to him and his people, and

The Divine Mysteries

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prayed, ‘O God, who has created heaven and earth, look down, I beseech thee, on

this thy new people, and grant them, O Lord, to know thee as the true God, even as

the other Christian nations have known thee.’

That is the founding story of the conversion of Russia. From that time on, Christianity

grew over nearly a thousand years to become the central spiritual and moral force in

the life of the nation. When the Bolsheviks seized power in the coup in October 1917

they set about destroying Russia’s Christian heritage in a frenzy of terror and murder

that lasted over seventy years. For Marxism cannot live with Christianity. Nor can

communism survive free speech or answer moral argument. That is why all opposi-

tion had to be destroyed by force.

One of the first Christian martyrs to Bolshevism in Russia was the Metropolitan of

Kiev, Vladimir Bogoyavlensky, who on 25 January 1918 was arrested by five Red Ar-

my soldiers on a pretext, beaten up, tortured and executed in front of his monks, and

his body mutilated. The Solovki ‘Special Purpose Camp’ (SLON) was set up in 1923,

early in Bolshevik rule and one of the first of hundreds of death camps (Gulags)

across the Soviet Union, many of them established in former religious houses. SLON

occupied a wonderful fifteenth century fortified monastery, one of the most splendid

in Russia that had been established on an isolated archipelago well inside the Arctic

Circle across the White Sea from Finland. The hundreds of monks had been evicted

and either shot, left to starve, or incarcerated in one of the brutal camps.

The ‘special purpose’ of the Solovki prison was to isolate and ‘re-educate’ certain cat-

egories of prisoners who either actively opposed Bolshevik power or were supposed

by the newly formed state to be a threat. Places such as this were really created to

deal with the enormous numbers of people (men, women and children) who were

arrested but not shot, from October 1917. They were often interned because they

belonged to certain groups, such as the clergy, nobility, bourgeois, intellectuals and

White Russians who had fought against the Reds in the Civil War. The inmates were

worked to death on starvation rations; any that were slightly troublesome or too

weak or old to work were shot, or tortured before being beaten to death. Although

the Bolsheviks had a particular hatred for the Church and anyone connected with it

(anyone caught crossing himself or praying was shot) in the two decades from 1919

to 1940 all identifiable opponents of the Soviet state were eliminated, either physical-

ly or mentally, or both. The whole Soviet social system rested on fear of the Gulag; it

destroyed the human spirit and replaced friendship, family, love and goodness with

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lies, fear and the basest wickedness and cruelty. All Christian virtue was inverted and

the worst that humans are capable of was rewarded and encouraged. In SLON during

the first years of Bolshevik rule, eight metropolitans, twenty archbishops and forty-

seven bishops were worked to death, along with tens of thousands of laity who re-

fused to renounce their faith. 95,000 religious people were executed by firing squad.

In a remarkable account, An Island Hell, published in London in 1926 (which pre-

cedes Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago by fifty years) and which anyone

who would seek to defend Soviet communism should read, Soserko Malsagov de-

scribes his arrest, incarceration and fortunate escape from the Solovki prison. He and

four companions evaded the

Red army soldiers searching

for them in the Arctic wilder-

ness and walked in terrible

late winter conditions for 35

days until they crossed the

Finnish border. They were

some of the very few who

ever escaped from the Gulag.

SLON was an early manifestation of the merciless, vicious and brutal campaign of

terror and misery, intended to fashion homo sovieticus from the base metal of the

Russian people, purged of their Christianity. Some of the worst repression happened

during the four years between 1937 and 1940. In 1937, 136,000 orthodox priests

and other religious were arrested and 85,300 murdered. Most of the remainder either

died in the Gulag or of starvation, having been deprived of their livings. In 1938,

28,300 were arrested and 21,500 shot. In 1939, 1,500 were arrested and 900 shot

and during 1940, 5,100 were arrested and 1,100 shot. This cruelty continued

throughout the existence of the Soviet Union, although there was a ten-year partial

reprieve when Stalin cynically rehabilitated the Orthodox Church in 1941, because he

needed the co-operation of what was left of it to galvanise his people in defence of

the motherland against German invasion. And there wasn’t a lot left. In 1914 there

had been 55,173 Russian Orthodox churches, 29,593 chapels, with 112,629 priests

and deacons, 550 monasteries and 475 convents containing 95,259 monks and nuns.

By 1939 – twenty years later – fewer than 1,000 churches remained and by 1987

inside a Russian Orthodox church

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there were only three monasteries in the whole of Russia.

In its efforts to eradicate Christianity the Soviet state had used every lie and type of

brutality imaginable. Religious services ‘spread disease’; revering and kissing icons

was forbidden; priests were described in the official press as, amongst other things,

‘parasites’, ‘debauched’, ‘venal’ and ‘lechers’. Christian charity was made illegal in

1929. So any priest ‘harbouring’ beggars on his church steps was guilty of encourag-

ing ‘parasitism’; pilgrimages were condemned for ‘charlatanism’ and banned; it be-

came illegal to provide accommodation for pilgrims, so travelling to shrines became

impossible. Ringing church bells in the country during the hours of daylight was also

banned on the ground that it distracted from work in the fields. Many church bells

had been smashed and melted down. Church treasures accumulated over hundreds

of years were confiscated and sold. Names and addresses of all adults going to

church had to be recorded. The teaching profession was cleansed of Christian believ-

ers because they spread ‘reactionary’ ideas. Science teaching had to use an atheistic

curriculum that was hostile to and ridiculed Christianity.

Children belonged to the state (as did everyone else) and the right to bring them up

could be removed from parents if they taught them ‘religion’. All the sacraments of

the Church were made illegal: confession, communion, baptism, extreme unction.

Christian funerals were illegal, so people took to having funerals by ‘correspondence’.

They would send by post (rather as we used to send out little chunks of wedding

cake to guests) a little piece of earth to a priest who would say the office for the bur-

ial of the dead over the soil and return it to be reincorporated into the grave. Private

services in houses were also illegal without the express permission of the local soviet.

Known ‘believers’ were assigned the lower paid jobs and blocked from promotion.

The official line was that all believers were psychologically abnormal and it was natu-

ral for them to be sent to mental hospitals for treatment.

After Stalin’s death the repression was resumed with redoubled effort in the 1950s by

Khrushchev, who tried to re-impose the old atheistic beliefs to bolster an obviously

failing economy. After Khrushchev was deposed in 1964 the Church began to recover

again, but it took economic collapse to allow for the resurgence of the faith, which

had neither died nor been eradicated; it had merely been in hiding for three quarters

of a century in the hearts of many Russian people, enduring beneath the misery and

terror of Bolshevik rule. Official opposition ceased with Gorbachev’s perestroika in the

late 1980s. Starting in 1980, all over Russia, churches that had been desecrated and

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shuttered for nearly a century began to be restored or rebuilt. By 2019, in Moscow

alone 25 new churches had been built. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour [see pho-

to on front cover] dynamited on the orders of Stalin in December 1931, has been

rebuilt as it was, on a hill on the

banks of the Moskva River. The

$300m it cost was largely financed

by private donations.

The huge Cathedral of our Lady of

Kazan demolished in 1936 has been

rebuilt since 1990. From 1990 when

there were only 2,000 functioning

churches remaining in Russia, there

are now over 36,000, with an aver-

age of three places of worship open-

ing every day. In 1987 there were

three monasteries left. Today there

are 788 – 386 for men and 402 for

women.

It has since emerged that many of the communist elite had been secretly baptised

during Soviet times. In many cases it was women who kept the faith alive for their

children. Vladimir Putin himself has revealed that his mother took him in ‘serious

secret’ in 1952 to be baptised in Leningrad. He has since found out that the priest

who baptised him was the father of Patriarch Kirill, the current head of the Russian

Orthodox Church. Boris Yeltsin's appearance at a Moscow Easter service in 1991 was

considered a major reason for his success in the presidential election two months

later. Patriarch Aleksiy officiated at Yeltsin's inauguration that year in a ceremony

reminiscent of the anointing of a Tsar.

In the early 1990s the state returned a good deal of the Church’s property that the

Bolsheviks had confiscated soon after they took power. The state has also given fi-

nancial help to the Church for the rebuilding and renovation of churches. A huge new

cathedral dedicated to the Russian armed forces has been built in ‘Patriot Park’, an

hour’s drive outside Moscow. It has the largest amount of mosaic of any church in

the world, much of it commemorating battles from Russian history, the Great Patriot-

ic War (Second World War) in particular. The murals do not shy away from depicting

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour under con-struction in 1990s

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symbols of Russia’s Soviet past.

‘Only a nation that loves God could build such a grand cathedral,’ said Bishop Stefan

of Klin, who runs the Russian Orthodox Church’s department for cooperation with the

army and regularly holds services in the Cathedral as the Patriarch’s official repre-

sentative. The bishop, who was an officer in the Soviet and Russian missile defence

forces before becoming a priest, defends the use of Soviet symbols, saying the Ca-

thedral commemorates ‘all the epochs of our state, Holy Rus. It would be wrong to

leave out the Great Patriotic War, given how many Soviet soldiers were religious’.

But the imagery is not without its critics. Priests who were young in the 1970s and

1980s and personally suffered Soviet repression of the Church, are appalled. Their

objection is that the Orthodox Church has again got too close to the state and ap-

proved the building of a cathedral dedicated to a new post-Soviet civil religion, rather

than to Orthodox Christianity. On the other hand, Vladimir Putin’s socially conserva-

tive policies, which the Orthodox Church fully endorses, are very popular amongst all

ages of Russian society. A 28-year-old altar server, working at the Cathedral, is re-

ported as saying that the military and religious images in its mosaics, far from being

a jarring combination, are in fact a perfect fit: ‘In the war, our soldiers martyred

themselves so that we could be free and independent. Only Russians are capable of

sacrificing themselves to save humanity, just like Jesus did.’

Unlike in the west, young men are attracted to the faith in considerable numbers.

The leader of one Russian Orthodox activist group, called the Forty Forties Movement

hails the revival as of the Church as ‘the second baptism of Russia’. He wants the

Church’s status to be recognised in the constitution – in other words for the separa-

tion of church and state to be reversed. He argues that there would be no Russia

without Orthodox Christianity. The Forty Forties Movement refers to the fact that

there were apparently 1,600 churches in Moscow before the 1917 revolution. The

Armed Forces Cathedral in Patriot Park Moscow consecrated in June 2020

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organisation, which describes itself as a ‘human rights group defending Orthodox

Christians’, campaigns for the building of churches in the Russian capital to get back

to the forty times forty churches they had.

Another remarkable development is that there are more men training for the priest-

hood than ever before in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2019 there

were 1,593 ordinands starting their training for the priesthood – an increase of 19%

on the previous year – with 5,877 seminarians preparing for ordination and 827

young men embarking on the Church’s propaedeuticum or preparation course. The

Church is also heavily engaged in pastoral and charitable work. ‘Brotherhoods’ – or-

ganisations that go back to medieval times – have been revived to provide moral and

religious education, social services, child care, hospitals, hostels for the homeless and

drug addicts and also to give support to isolated agricultural communities. It is nota-

ble that the Patriarch enjoys more trust and respect than any other public figure.

Political leaders seek the approval of the Church to gain moral authority for their poli-

cies. But the Church is not simply the poodle of the state. The government’s man-

agement of the Covid epidemic has caused an open clash with the health authorities

over the state arrogating to itself

the power to close churches. One

priest recently said it was a satanic

plot against the faith. And that pro-

longing life by being afraid of physi-

cal illness is a denial of faith. He

said people should be more afraid

about the harm that is being done

by people wanting to change gen-

der, encourage abortion and ignore

the truth of traditional values.

The Orthodox Church distinguishes itself from western churches and society by em-

phasising the secular amorality of our culture. It draws on the apocalyptic belief that

Holy Russia has a divine mission to save the world from the forces of disorder and

evil. That the ‘anti-Christian disease’ (as one priest describes it) infecting the west

will pass; that ‘fake values’ such as those that promote same-sex marriage, drugs

and all the other manifestations of western decadence will also pass. And that Russia

will preserve Christian truth and the values that flow from it – family, church, state –

and one day the world will be grateful for Russian steadfastness in the face of evil.

Putin and the Patriarch

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The resurgence of Orthodox Christianity in Russia is an

astonishing phenomenon which, apparently, came from

nowhere in a mere two decades. But it has become

clear that the faith never died, because, as the Patri-

arch says, persecution will always fail to destroy the

truth. His own father and grandfather were imprisoned

in the Gulag, and following his priestly vocation was far

from easy. Yet he is sure that the Russian people have

come through the last terrible century of unimaginable

trial, as St Paul tells us, ‘persuaded that neither death

nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor

things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall

be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’.

© Philip Walling 2021

Philip Walling is a writer whose books include The Sunday Times bestseller Counting

Sheep (Profile Books) and Till the Cows Come Home (Atlantic Books).

On the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Di-vine Liturgy at the Ca-thedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow

a Russian Orthodox Bish-op’s mitre

PLEASE NOTE: The views expressed in this article about what constitutes Christiani-ty do not reflect the views of of the LANCE or of St George’s, which aims to be friendly, diverse, inclusive and to welcome all in Christ’s name.

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The Kizhi Pogost church, on Kizhi island, west Russia, is the world's tallest building made entirely from wood – even the pins

holding it together.

IN MEMORIAM

As the full flower head nods on the improbable stalk,

We, in sorrow, support this huge burden

On slender hope of continuity

Paper thin, like petals, sensibility shrinks,

From robustness, over reassurance, platitudes.

Comfort comes from Love which shines

So steadily

The lamp gleam in the dark of disbelief

Rosa Sommerville 1995

Front Cover: The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow consecrated in 2000 where the last Tsar and his family were canonised as ‘passion bearers’.

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(Un) Orthodox Easter - 1991 [A Visit to Russia During Peristoika]

Is it possible to celebrate Easter twice within the space of a few days? The answer is

“YES” – once in Jesmond with `western Christendom and then a week later in Mos-

cow with Eastern Orthodox Christians! Our week in Moscow and Leningrad (soon to

revert to its old name of St Petersburg) coincided with the Russian orthodox Easter,

and so Barbara and I joined a congregation of football-crowd proportions for the

Easter Vigil at a local church. Don’t believe it when some suggest that only the old

cling to religion in the Soviet Union – this vast congregation was from teenage up-

wards and included as many men as women.

There were no hymn books nor prayer books in sight but all still took part in the ser-

vice, responding at the appropriate time in voice and action. The people seemed to

cross themselves every couple of minutes without any apparent self-consciousness

about it! All were very devout in their demeanour and there were no attempts at be-

ing jolly and no clerical jokes from the pulpit. In fact a number of young people were

visibly moved to tears by the great solemnity of the occasion.

For many, this was the first time that they had been able to be seen openly in church

celebrating the Feast of Easter. There are no pews in Russian churches; it is standing

-room only with everyone packed in very tightly! All held lighted candles throughout

the service and it was a miracle that no hair was singed. The crowd was on the move

the whole time and edged forward very slowly towards the sanctuary and then out

again into the night air, thus allowing others to enter the church. This process took a

good two hours for us and we could not do anything about it – we had to move with

the great press of people.

The sanctuary was closed off from the main body of the church and at various times

during the service, priests would appear to conduct a sung dialogue with the people.

Every so often the Russian equivalent of ‘Christ is Risen!’ was shouted, to which the

congregation responded. This was the only time that the spoken word was used;

everything else was either sung or intoned. The Russians don’t go in for organs: the

singing was unaccompanied and of a professional standard. There were two choirs,

both hidden; one in a gallery at the back and the other behind the sanctuary screen.

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Music was an integral part of the worship and

enhanced the atmosphere of the occasion. The

priests and cantor had deep resonant Bass voic-

es, the quality of which would be rarely heard in

English churches.

Barbara and I visited the same church a day

later and found the cemetery very interesting.

The tradition is that families share the Easter

meal with those who have passed on and so

most graves had the remains of paste eggs and

bread on them. The graves were decorated

with coloured streamers which blew in the wind

and there were signs that both living and de-

parted had had a blessed Easter together.

Frederick Peacock

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FUNERAL DIRECTORS

JOHN BARDGETT & SONS

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20

Charles Mitchell and Russia

In 1882 Armstrong’s of Elswick went into partnership

with Mitchell & Co., a shipbuilding company at Low

Walker. Armstrong-Mitchell's became one of the largest

industrial enterprises in the United Kingdom. Usually, we

think of it as 'Armstrong's'. From the point of view of St

George's, however, Charles Mitchell is more important

than Lord Armstrong, because it was he who provided

the land on which the church stands and the money for

putting it up. Much of his wealth came from Russia. Why

so?

By the time Mitchell started getting involved with Russia, he was approaching the

height of his powers. Born in Aberdeenshire in 1820, he was apprenticed as an engi-

neer in 1836. After taking a degree in chemistry at Marischal College, Aberdeen in

1840, he moved to Tyneside in 1842 to work as a shipbuilder under the direction of

John Coutts (a fellow Aberdonian). After moving to London two years after that to

work at the engineering establishment of Maudslay Sons & Field, he moved back to

Tyneside in 1852 to set up as an independent shipbuilder at Low Walker. Within a

few years, he started receiving large numbers of orders from Russia. More than sev-

enty of the 450 ships he built between 1852 and the inception of his formal partner-

ship with Armstrong in 1882 had Russian names. Why so many?

After losing the Crimean War in 1856, Russia needed to modernise. In the nautical

arena, the Tsar founded 'The Russian Steam Navigation and Trading Company'. Be-

fore the end of 1856, the first head of the company was placing orders for ships in

western Europe. An agent in the UK informed the company's head office that people

in Newcastle upon Tyne ‘inform us that they would wish, through our mediation, to

enter into relations with the Company concerning ship materials’. The head of the

company picked up the baton. In the spring of 1857, The Times reported that Mitch-

ell’s firm at Low Walker was ‘constructing a fleet of vessels ranging from 200 to 1,100

tons for the Russian service in the Black Sea’. This was only the beginning. Towards

the end of 1861, Britain's Admiral Grey told the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich,

the Tsar's brother and the head of the Russian navy (who was visiting Portsmouth),

‘that building ships of the line out of wood had ceased completely in England, only

21

ironclads would be built henceforward, and only corvettes and

trifles would be made out of wood’. The Grand Duke immedi-

ately started thinking about how Russia could build ironclads for

herself. He turned to Mitchell. At considerable risk (because it

involved allowing his Low Walker operation to be valued by the

Russians and offered as a

guarantee of his financial

standing), Mitchell accepted

the brief. In the 1860s, on

Galley Island in St Petersburg,

he built Russia's first shipyard

for ironclads. It is still there.

Both Mitchell's big Russian launch days, 23 June

1864 and 12 September 1867, were major public

events. Two weeks after the first, Russia’s Minister of Internal Affairs acknowledged

in his diary that ‘Much has been done recently in respect of our navy … The northern

roads are now defended completely reliably’. The Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich

graced the second himself. In 1871, the Grand Duke called on Mitchell personally, at

his house in Jesmond (Jesmond Towers, the former La Sagesse), to confer upon him

a Russian medal, the Order of St Stanislas. It is still to be seen, modelled in stone, on

the left-hand side of Mitchell's coat of arms above the front door of the house.

Because, by 1867, Russia could build

some of its own ironclads, Mitchell's di-

rect involvement in shipbuilding in Russia came to an end at that point. At Low Walk-

er, however, he went on building for Russia until the day of his death in 1895. Even

by 1867 he had made a great deal of money out of Russia. The total sum he received

for the shipyard he built in St Petersburg and the five ships he launched there in

Galley Island slipway 1863

Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich

Jesmond Towers: Left: The front of the

house Right: above front door

(Russian medal left-hand side).

22

Caption Competition

Suggestions to mail@mmvane.plus.com

Best answers to be published in May’s edition of

the Lance.

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wunda where dem boydies iz,

Dem boyds is on de wing. But, dat’s absoyd!

De wings is on de boyd!

Anon.

1864 and 1867 was about £600,000. Since, in 1869, Jesmond Towers cost him a

mere ₤17,000, it is easy to see that his work in Russia took him into the industrial

and personal wealth stratosphere. By Octo-

ber 1888, when St George’s, Jesmond, was

consecrated, he had spent £30,000 on the

building. If, in the 1860s, he had not run

the risk of building a shipyard in St Peters-

burg, he might never have distinguished

himself from the many other Tyneside ship-

builders with whom Lord Armstrong could

have gone into partnership in 1882, or cre-

ated the funds to build St George’s Jesmond

and support many other charitable causes.

Prof. David Saunders

Prince Pozharsky

Return to contents

23

Belarus survey highlights Orthodox discontent

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, (left)

welcomes President of Belarus, Alexander

Lukashenko, to his Black Sea residence in

Sochi, Russia, last Monday. Almost all Ortho-

dox Christians in the survey disapproved of

congratulatory messages sent by Orthodox

leaders in Belarus and Russia to President

Lukashenko after his declared victory.

DISSATISFACTION is widespread among Orthodox Christians in Belarus, or at least in

Minsk, a rare survey suggests: most oppose the submissive stance of their Church’s

leaders, and up to one third are threatening to secede to other denominations. The

survey, conducted among 4400 citizens by Christian Vision, suggested that nine-tenths

of Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic Belarusians agreed that church leaders should

“take an active part in public life, advocating for human rights and condemning vio-

lence”. A further 20 per cent believe that they should back protests against the Presi-

dent, Alexander Lukashenko, whose disputed election victory last August has not been

recognised by Western governments (News, 14 August 2020). While more than two-

thirds of Catholics and 46 per cent of Protestants supported their church leaders’ posi-

tion, barely two per cent of Orthodox did the same: most considered that their Church

had failed in its duty to “condemn violence and lawlessness” and “give a true assess-

ment of what is happening”. Almost all Orthodox Christians disapproved of the line

taken by their patriarchal exarch, Metropolitan Veniamin, and of congratulatory mes-

sages sent to President Lukashenko after his declared victory, by Orthodox leaders in

Belarus and Russia. More than 40 per cent said that they had since stopped attending

church; 12 per cent were “turning away from religion”; and 30 per cent said that they

were ready to join other denominations, the survey, published by the independent Bel-

sat news agency, showed.

Ties between the Lukashenko government and Churches in Belarus have been uncer-

tain since he was proclaimed victor with 80 per cent of votes after 26 years in power.

Mass demonstrations followed, which were met by a brutal response from the Presi-

dent’s security forces. In a TV interview in January, Metropolitan Veniamin advised

against “further protests”, and called on citizens “to care for cohesion and peace in

24

society”. Patriarch Kirill of Russia has also backed the President’s leadership, warning in

a message in January against attempts to repeat the 2004-05 “Orange Revolution” in

neighbouring Ukraine. In contrast, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference,

Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, was barred from re-entering Belarus last summer

after criticising the mistreatment of protesters (News, 11 September 2020), and for-

mally resigned in January after his return was negotiated by Vatican diplomats. Com-

menting on the survey, an Orthodox theologian and political scientist, Natallia Vasile-

vich, told Belsat that Metropolitan Veniamin had not responded to letters of complaint,

and that many Orthodox citizens believed that their leaders were “either afraid or hid-

ing from the problems”, leaving them “increasingly detached from the people”.

“The church leadership can count on believers still attending church to baptise children

and bury the dead, while there are disciplinary measures for clergy who do not agree

with its position,” said Ms Vasilevich, who directs Minsk’s Ecumena Centre and sits on

the Church and Society Commission of the Conference of European Churches. “But it

will no longer be possible to intimidate priests who hold new values.”

Christian Vision said that the survey had focused on religiously committed respondents

with higher education, 80 per cent of whom were based in Minsk, and that it was un-

clear how representative the results were of the whole population.

BY JONATHAN LUXMOORE 05 MARCH 2021 © Church Times

Reproduced with permission from: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/

Christians in Europe face uncertain Easter as

Covid restrictions continue France is still under curfew; lockdown is extended

in Germany

A café in Prague last week offers a choice of des-

serts shaped like the Covid-19 virus or a phial of

vaccine

AS CHURCHES in Britain look forward to a slight easing of restrictions for Easter, Chris-

tians in Europe continue to face tight restrictions, amid fluctuating Covid-19 infection

Return to contents

25

rates and accompanying vaccine rollouts.

In Germany, where 5.2 million people had received their first dose by Monday, the

Chancellor, Angela Merkel, extended the lockdown on 5 March, with some relaxation

promised at seven-day intervals for shops and service-providers. In a website state-

ment, the German Catholic Bishops’ Conference reminded church members to observe

government and health-authority instructions, but recalled that the 27 RC dioceses in

Germany were ultimately responsible for their own safety measures, in co-operation

with the 16 state governments. Requiems were held nationwide for coronavirus victims

at the end of February, and a mid-April ecumenical service of remembrance will be co-

led in Berlin by the council chairman of the Evangelical Church, or EKD, Bishop Heinrich

Bedford-Strohm, who last week gave warning that the pandemic’s consequences were

still “far from over”.

In France, a government decree restricting all religious congregations to 30 was over-

turned as “disproportionate” late last year by the Conseil d’État, or supreme adminis-

trative court, prompting successful constitutional appeals in neighbouring Belgium and

Switzerland. A dusk-to-dawn curfew remains in force all over France. There are week-

end curfews in some areas, and medical masks are required in schools and shops. But

religious services have continued. An Evangelical megachurch at Mulhouse, in eastern

France, blamed for triggering a mass Covid outbreak in March 2020, reopened to con-

gregations of up to 600 at the end of February. Up to 3.8 million French citizens had

received their first vaccination by Monday — the same number as in Italy, which this

week reached the grim milestone of 100,000 Covid-related deaths.

At least 270 clergy and ministers are known to have died from the pandemic in Italy,

alongside 300 doctors, prompting calls for those in ministry to be prioritised for vac-

cinations. Standard safeguards remain in place for church services, including a ban on

handshakes and administration of the host on the tongue, and a halving of congrega-

tion numbers.

In Spain, where several RC bishops were accused of jumping the queue for vaccina-

tions, worship restrictions were relaxed in February by the socialist-led government of

the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, to allow 25 people to attend services, although this

was branded “discriminatory and excessive” by the secretary-general of the Spanish

Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Luis Argüello.

26

Singing is permitted in Spanish churches, although without service sheets or hymn

books, while the RC Church has urged an increase in masses during Holy Week and

the Easter Triduum to thin out crowds, as well as the avoidance of processions, and

rituals such as the washing of feet. With 70,000 deaths by the start of March, Spain’s

Health Minister, Carolina Darias, has warned that tighter restrictions could be reim-

posed. Church leaders have rejected a proposal by academics in Madrid that the whole

Easter festival could be postponed until the end of April, to allow more time for vac-

cinations.

In the Netherlands, lockdown restrictions were eased on 1 March, allowing schools and

shops to reopen, after an overnight curfew triggered riots in some cities. Church con-

gregations remain limited to 30, and prior booking is required, while Dutch Christians

have been encouraged to bring food donations to services for church-run foodbanks.

Further north, in Finland, which was hardly touched by the coronavirus in 2020, the

government of the 35-year-old Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, imposed a state of emer-

gency on 1 March after a sharp rise in infections.

In Denmark, where there have also been anti-lockdown riots, limited outdoor services

are currently permitted, although other restrictions will stay in place until 5 April.

Lenten reflections on lessons learned from the pandemic have been published by the

Vienna-based Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe, a grouping of more than

100 denominations, as well as by the 114-member Conference of European Churches

(CEC), based in Geneva.

The first CEC commentary for March, by a theologian representing the Orthodox

Church of Greece, Stavros Yangazoglou, noted how restrictions on worship and sacra-

mental life had posed particular “theological and ecclesiological challenges” for Ortho-

dox churches, by preventing the “absolutely crucial and decisive” presence of lay peo-

ple at religious services. Mr Yangazoglou conceded that safety precautions, including

suspension of the use of shared communion spoons, had been resisted by some Ortho-

dox churches, causing extra deaths, despite a plea last May by the Ecumenical Patri-

arch, Bartholomew I, for “uniformity as far as possible” in responding to Covid-19 reg-

ulations (News, 12 June 2020).

BY JONATHAN LUXMOORE 12 MARCH 2021 © Church Times

Reproduced with permission from: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/

Return to contents

27

The Geordie Proverb.

A man who says sorry, when he is wrong, is called, HONEST.

A man who says sorry, when he is not sure, is called WISE.

A man who says sorry, even when he is right, is called, HUSBAND.

Vicar Becomes a Blues Brother After a Digital

Malfunction!

Rev. Vaughan Roberts, 62, Vicar of St Mary’s

Church, in Warwick innocently enlivened his

sermon by appearing to his online Congrega-

tion for their streamed service as Jake Blues

from the 1980 film, ‘ The Blues Brothers’. The

Congregation of about 30 were expecting to

see their Vicar. Instead, he appeared sporting the sunglasses and fedora of the much

-loved character, Jake Blues from the film.

The Vicar’s wife, Mandy, spotted the error but could not rectify it. It seems that in

setting up her husband’s mobile phone, she had somehow selected the filter. She did

not know how to turn it off. During the first hymn, she managed to sidle up to her

husband and warn him to take evasive action. The filter only worked when he stood

at the altar. The Vicar decided to do the rest of the service from the bench! “ Unlike

in the film, I did not go cartwheeling down the aisle. It wasn’t until I got home and

photographs and videos were pinging around on social media, I realized it was the

Blues Brothers filter. It is quite fitting. In the film they are on a mission from God to

raise money for the nuns in the orphanage while we are trying to raise £2 million to

fund repairs to our landmark tower.”

Rev. Vaughan Roberts said that his disguise would not become a weekly tradition.

[taken from YouTube / Collegiate Church of St Mary’s, Warwick ]

Return to contents

28

Book Reviews Yevgeny Zamyatin: The Russian novelist from

Sanderson Road.

You may have seen the blue plaque to Yevgeny Za-

myatin in Sanderson Road. Friends of St George’s

who attended a talk on Zamyatin by David Saunders

in 2014 will remember what a significant writer Za-

myatin was. I was intrigued and read his most influ-

ential novel, ‘We’, and the novella ‘The Islanders’

which satirises Jesmond society around 1917. Za-

myatin trained as a naval engineer but soon drew

attention to himself for his radical ‘primitivist’ views,

arguing for deindustrialization and rejecting the idea of a ‘civilised’ norm. He was im-

prisoned the Czarist Government in 1906, in the same corridor of the same prison

where he was to be imprisoned by the Bolsheviks in 1922 after failing in his attempt

to have ‘We’ published in Russia, even though it does not appear to have been aimed

at any particular country or regime. The Soviet censors banned it in 1921, perhaps

influenced by the fact that he had just written an essay bemoaning the struggles of

Russian artists under the new regime. Somewhat surprisingly he was permitted in

1923 by Stalin to leave the country for France where he spent most of the rest of his

life.

The Islanders (ISBN 10: 0006541410)

What was Zamyatin doing in Jesmond? As a naval engineer he spent nearly two

years in 1916-7 supervising the building by the Armstrong Whitworth and Swan

Hunter shipyards of ice-breakers for the Russian navy, working initially for the Impe-

rial Russian government and being kept on by the new Bolshevik regime. His short

story ‘The Islanders’ is set in Jesmond.

What the primitivist Zamyatin particularly disliked about Newcastle, and Jesmond in

particular, was the regimentation and uniformity he thought inevitable in an industrial

society. He says of its streets: ‘All the streets, all the houses, are identical’. He was

similarly critical of London which he visited briefly. Living in Sanderson Road, he ob-

served with withering scorn the middle-class society of Jesmond, especially as they

went every Sunday to St. George’s Church, which he renamed St. Enoch’s:

29

‘The Sunday gentlemen were produced at one of the Jesmond factories and on Sun-

day mornings, thousands of them appeared on the streets with the Sunday edition of

St Enoch’s parish newspaper. Sporting identical canes and identical top-hats, the

Sunday gentlemen strolled in dignified fashion along the street and greeted their

doubles. “Lovely weather, isn’t it?” “Oh yes, much better than yesterday”.

These gentlemen must have stowed their hats in the curious wire racks still to be

found under the pews of our church. Echoing his rejection of a ‘civilised’ norm (see

above) he further writes: ‘As is well-known, a cultured man should, insofar as it is

possible, not have a face’ explaining further that this means ‘the face of a cultured

man must be completely the same as that of others (cultured ones)’.

The editor might be amused to learn that the ‘most serious question’ for a ‘meeting

of the Corporation of Honorable [sic] Bell-Ringers of St Enoch’s parish and of the edi-

torial staff of the parish magazine’ was whether to seek advertising revenue from

local tradespeople! We faced the same issue almost exactly 100 years later, and

made the same decision!

The novella starts with a car accident on the bend of Osborne Road in view of the

vicar of St Enoch’s. The injured man, Campbell (we are not told his first name!) is

carried to the vicarage, upsetting the rigid time-table of the vicar’s day. The Rever-

end Dooley, ‘the pride of Jesmond’, has ‘a timetable for the consumption of food; a

timetable for days of penance (two a week); a timetable for the use of fresh air; a

timetable for charitable activities and finally, among the others, one timetable, out of

a regard for decency untitled, which particularly concerned Mrs Dooley and on which

every third Saturday was marked’.

Campbell spends a few days at the vicarage, in turn upsetting the self-imposed cold-

ness of the vicar’s wife, and the rigid patterns of quiet normality are further chal-

lenged: ‘Even in Jesmond there was an anarchistic element’ in the form of the scan-

dalous lawyer O’Kelly in whose office Campbell works together with a two less than

scandal-free women, one of whom, Didi, Campbell hopes to marry. Campbell even

acquires an iron as the first element necessary to setting up house together. His

mother, the grotesque Lady Campbell (thought to be based on Lady Noble, née

Campbell, wife of the owner of Jesmond Dene House) and the vicar plan to stop the

marriage, arranging for Campbell to find O’Kelly entertaining Didi. Campbell shoots

O’Kelly and is condemned to death for murder, with the very satisfactory result that

‘the quiet course of Jesmond life’ can return.

30

We ISBN 978-0-14-018585-0

‘We’, an early example of the dystopian novel, was Zamyatin’s most influential work.

Dystopia is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehuman-

ized, fearful lives. Written in 1920-21 but probably started in Jesmond, it was smug-

gled to the USA and published in English in 1924 but banned in the USSR until 1954,

the year after Stalin’s death. In a fascinating article which George Orwell wrote about

the novel in 1946 after tracking down a copy with some difficulty, he claimed that

Aldous Huxley had been influenced by it before writing ‘Brave New World’, written in

1931 – though there is little evidence for this. His own ‘1984’ however, published in

1949, owes much to ‘We’.

Some aspects of the novel clearly reflect the time Zamyatin spent in Newcastle. ‘We’

can easily be purchased and there is plenty to be found on the internet about it, so I

shall not attempt here to give much detail of the plot. The novel is set at some time

in the 26th century in a fantasy society where people live in flats resembling glass

boxes in which everything can be seen. The characters are given numbers, not

names, recalling Zamyatin’s shock on discovering that workers in Newcastle’s ship-

yards were required to clock in to work with a work number, not a name. What

would he have made of the pin numbers, passwords, card and account numbers we

now depend on?

Society is controlled by the Benefactor supported by the police, called Guardians, for

the happiness of all. There is no suggestion that the Benefactor is corrupt or self-

seeking. Torture and capital punishment are used not out of cruelty or malice but to

ensure the people’s happiness, the guiding principle being that happiness and free-

dom are incompatible. Do we see here perhaps a reflection of the principles set out

in the Reverend Dooley’s book ‘The Testament of Compulsory Salvation’ in ‘The Is-

landers’? In ‘We’, ‘to be original is to violate the principle of equality’ and everyone

wears the same uniform. In ‘The Islanders’, the gentlemen of Jesmond are described

as being factory-made, living in identical houses and wearing identical clothes. In

‘We’, citizens are allowed to lower the curtains for a ‘sex hour’ at defined intervals

with an allocated partner who comes to visit for the purpose. In Dooley’s schedule in

‘The Islanders’, time with Mrs Dooley is, as we have seen, allowed every third Satur-

day. In ‘We’ love is regarded as a crime; in ‘The Islanders’, Campbell’s love for Didi

was considered illogical – a damning quality.

The principal protagonist in ‘We’, D-503, falls in love with I-330, member of an un-

31

derground resistance movement. She persuades D-503 to accompany her to forbid-

den areas beyond the Great Wall. He begins to imagine an exciting and tender life

with her. The Guardians discover this and D-503 undergoes an operation to cure him

of the disease of imagination. In ‘The Islanders’ we are told: ‘In Jesmond a thought

must move precisely along rails and in agreement with the strictest schedule’ - imagi-

nation is clearly not approved. Restored to acceptable normality, D-503, without a

second thought, betrays his revolutionary acquaintances and watches with equanimi-

ty the torture of I-330. She and her confederates are sent to the guillotine, known as

the Machine of the Benefactor. Having seen reason and accepted his duty, D-503

approves of measures taken by the Guardians to isolate the areas of chaos beyond

the Great Wall, and the novel concludes with D-503 opining: And I hope we’ll win.

More – I’m certain we’ll win. Because reason has to win. We’re back to the conclusion

of ‘The Islanders’ where, after Campbell’s execution, the quiet course of Jesmond life

can be resumed.

We is fairly readily available in an edition published in 1993 by Penguin Classics.

The Islanders was first published in Russia in 1921 and a rather jerky English transla-

tion soon appeared which can be tracked down with difficulty. Make sure you order

the translation!

Both novels can be found in the Parish Library.

Mike Oswald.

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32

I Cannot Tell

These words were written by the Rev’d

Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-

Fields, and are sung to the tune of Lon-

donderry Air. They are to ponder on as

you will.

I cannot tell why grief and sadness

linger Why jobs are lost, and people face despair; When this will end, if

vaccines come and rescue, Why isolation stalks the earth again.

But this I know, Christ feels the hurt upon the cross; The Spirit weaves our

lives together still.

And some glad day, through Providence, the Father May turn this wave of

loss to glory by his will.

I cannot tell how we can be together

When all our ways of doing so are lost;

How we can be one body in communion

If every form of touch comes at a cost.

But this I know, we’re sealed upon the heart of God The Spirit dwells within

our fearful souls.

And Christ finds ways to show his face to all of us To lift our hopes and

meet us in our mortal fears.

I cannot tell how long this time of fear will last If there’ll be months, or

years of damaged lives; When once again we’ll gladly throng together, To

sit and laugh, to dance and play and kiss.

But this I know, we’re finding things both good and true About our God,

each other and ourselves.

So after this we’ll know we’ve met our darkest hour And now there’s noth-

ing we will have to face alone.

Return to contents

33

EVANS of jesmond

opticians

William R. McCall BSc Hons

GOC 01-15082

28 Acorn Road, Jesmond

Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 2DJ

Telephone: 0191 281 4145

34

Knitting for Children North East Lock Down 3

On Friday, February 26th,

between 12 noon and 1pm,

nine people brought their

bags of knitting and baby/

children’s items of clothing

and left them in the boot of

my car as before. All the

‘Travelling to Volunteer’

rules were kept, social distancing observed, face coverings

worn and hand gel available. (I had already collected items

from three other people.) Julia, a volunteer driver for CNE collected

everything the following Tuesday.

Knitted Items:

13 blankets

9 cardigans/jumpers

1 pair baby bootees

6 DARE bears

57 baby hats

1 child’s hat

Thank you, as always, to all our regular knitters and shoppers for their continuing

generosity of time and of money which help us to continue to support the work of

Children North East.

A few weeks before the knitting collection, I was approached by someone who want-

ed to help, having seen the email sent out via the Parish Office on my behalf in early

January. What grew out of that conversation was something really wonderful: an in-

formal network of families connected to some schools in Newcastle, who wanted to

donate to CNE, got together under the umbrella of St George’s Knitting for Children

North East - and they organise their own collections. Gifts of knitted baby clothes,

nappies, baby formula, school shoes, children’s clothes, wellies and trainers and

much more have been collected from them by Julia and are now with CNE. We are so

grateful for their involvement and generosity.

35

Now is the time to plan ahead. On March 4th, a report in the Chronicle stated: ‘More

than 200,000 children are growing up in poverty in the region, around 35% of all

children. It means their families are unable to afford basics such as food, school uni-

forms or internet access.’ In the same article, Newcastle East MP, Nick Brown, said:

"Over one third of children in my constituency are now living in poverty, unemploy-

ment is rising, and health inequality is widening.” Many of us live in Nick Brown’s

constituency.

With these facts in mind, in the weeks and months ahead, please will you continue to

offer practical support to Children North East? Imagine a family you would like to

help. How old are the children in ‘your’ family and what do they need? When you are

at the supermarket or ordering online, buy items regularly for the children in ‘your’

family and over the coming weeks, fill a blessing bag with your gifts. Hold on to them

until the Church can open safely again. Perhaps you will talk to your friends and

neighbours and see if they would like to help too? As people of St George’s, this is

something we can all do, in thanksgiving for the blessings of our own lives and, in so

doing, become a blessing to others.

Elizabeth Rhodes

“What you do for the least of my brothers and sisters ....”

St GeorGe’S BooK GroUP Next meeting on ZOOM will take place on Wednesday April 14th at 8pm. We will talk about books we have read in lockdown which we might not have otherwise discovered or read. A ZOOM link will be sent out before the meeting. For any new

members, please contact the Church Office and give your email

address to receive the invitation

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36

The Children’s Russian Quiz

[not all answers are in the text of The Lance but some are…… read on…]

1. Who was the husband of Anna, sister of the emperors of Byzantium, who con-

verted to Orthodox Christianity so he could marry her?

2. What is the head of the Russian Orthodox Church called?

3. On what date do Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas Day each year?

4. What is the name of the stiff, crown-like head covering or hat, worn by an Or-

thodox Bishop?

5. Do the Orthodox Christians believe that their leader is infallible, like the Catho-

lic Pope?

6. Can Orthodox priests marry?

7. What year did the Bolsheviks come to power and begin to destroy the Ortho-

dox Church?

8. Who arranged for Vladimir Putin’s secret baptism?

9. What was the main reason why the Orthodox Church began to recover in Rus-

sia?

10. What is the name of the huge, new Church in Moscow, which was dynamited

in 1931 and recently re-built?

Please email your answers and your name and contact details to Jonathan at of-

fice@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk by 16TH April 2021

The best answers will win a PRIZE!!

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CHILDREN’S SECTION

37

Recipes - Traditional Borscht From The Guardian recipes; Felicity Cloake - Serves 4 300g beetroot, peeled

50g butter

1 small onion, 1 small carrot, 1 stick of celery, 1 small

leek, all peeled where necessary and cut into small dice or

rings

2 grains allspice

½ bay leaf

1.5l gelatinous beef stock

2 medium floury potatoes, eg Maris Piper, peeled and cut into small dice

½ small cabbage, shredded

4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

2 tbsp cider vinegar

1 tsp sugar

½ tsp ground black pepper

Sour cream and fresh dill, to serve (preferably Polish sour cream, which has a richer

flavour)

[Vegetarian or vegan version: to replace animal-based products use olive oil, cream

substitute and stock made with yeast extract].

Method

1. Cut ¾ of the peeled beetroot into small dice (you may want to wear rubber gloves

to do this) and set the rest aside. Melt the butter in a large pan, and then soften the

onion over a gentle heat for 5 minutes.

2. Add the carrot, leek, celery, diced beetroot, allspice and bay leaf and stir well to

coat with butter. Cook for another 10 minutes, adding a little stock if the vegetables

begin to look dry. Meanwhile, grate the remaining beetroot.

3. Pour in the rest of the stock and the potatoes and simmer for 15 minutes, then

add the cabbage, garlic and grated beetroot. Cook until all the vegetables are tender

(about 10 minutes).

4. Add the vinegar, sugar, pepper and a pinch of salt and taste. Add a little more of

any of these if necessary, then serve with a dollop of sour cream, a sprig of dill, and

some Polish bread on the side.

38

Vegan jackfruit Chinese style 'no-duck'

pancakes

This vegan 'duck' pancake recipe uses jackfruit to give similar texture.

Ingredients

1 x 400g tin jackfruit Pieces in Salted Water (I buy mine in Asda or Aldi)

250g sliced mushrooms

1 tsp. sunflower oil

½ tsp. Chinese five spice powder

½ tsp. Szechuan peppercorns, ground (optional)

2 garlic cloves, crushed

2 cm piece fresh root ginger, grated

3 tbsp. hoisin sauce from a bottle

To serve

Ready-made Chinese pancakes

½ cucumber, deseeded and finely sliced

Handful spring onions, shredded

Hoisin sauce.

Directions

Drain and rinse the jackfruit well under cold running water. Using your hands, shred

the fruit pieces on to clean kitchen paper and lightly pat dry. (you may wish to re-

move the seeds but this is not essential.)

Heat oil in a large frying pan. When hot, add the jackfruit and mushrooms and fry for

12-15min until some edges are just beginning to crisp. Reduce heat to medium and

add spices, garlic and ginger for a further 2min, until fragrant. Stir through hoisin

sauce and keep warm

Lightly steam the ready-made pancakes as directions on the pack.

Serve with cucumber, spring onions and some more hoisin sauce

IS COVID AFFECTING YOU? Never in a million years would I have imagined that I would go into a bank with a mask on and ask for money.

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39

Dear Friends

Thank you very much for the very kind donation from the St George’s Charitable Giv-

ing Fund of £250.00 to Children North East. Your support is greatly appreciated dur-

ing this challenging time, and is helping ensure we can provide support to babies,

children and young people in the region where and when it is needed most.

Our range of projects include working with schools to address inequalities children in

poverty face, providing counselling, peer mentoring and group activities for young

people, and support of families facing many challenges including domestic abuse and

breakdown in relationships. We are there through every stage of growing up across

the North East, from pregnancy and early years through to young people entering

adulthood. This vital work is needed more than ever during the pandemic; Covid-19

is having a detrimental impact on so many of the babies, children, young people and

families that we work with, affecting mental health, education, safety and wellbeing,

and more.

In light of Coronavirus our charity has adapted our existing services and introduced

new work including virtual support, computers for kids, food parcel provision and

providing educational, arts and crafts supplies to children. Our fundraising events and

activities have been hugely hindered over this past year, and we are very grateful for

your donation and support of our charity. Your donation means we can continue to

support some of the most disadvantaged children and their families in the region, in

the challenging months to come.

If you would like to keep up to date with how donations like yours are helping

change lives, you can sign up to our monthly e-newsletter by visiting https://children-

ne.us4.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?

u=822192460096340cd9627c86f&id=25272bd875.

Many thanks again and with warmest wishes.

Jaime Wilkie, Digital Fundraising and Communications Officer

40

26th February 2021

Dear Parishioners at St George's Jesmond,

Thank you so much for supporting The Children's Foundation Slow Cooker Food and

Fun Packs initiative. This is part of an ongoing project, which we started shortly after

the first lockdown in March 2020 when we were alerted to weekend hunger in our

community. The Food and Fun Packs we distributed were a lifeline to stressed fami-

lies, locked inside their homes, unable to access their usual avenues of support, and

struggling. We supported 72 families (192 children), providing 325 meals and 192

activity packs. As Summer arrived were formed a crucial part of Newcastle’s ‘Summer

of Change’, being one of very few organisations that took children out of their com-

munity, allowing them to release pent up energy surfing, rock-pooling and in the for-

est . We gave 53 children a Summer Holiday in a Day.

Then came Christmas. Our ‘Christmas All Wrapped Up’ project ensured that 37 fami-

lies (94 children) had a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, a food pack and sup-

plementary presents for their children. This led straight onto our ‘Slow Cooker, Food

and Fun’ project. Often families trying to feed themselves on a limited budget are

advised to buy the 'cheaper cuts of meat'. This is fine if you can afford the fuel to

cook them in a traditional way, but many are also in fuel poverty. A slow cooker is a

game changer for these families. In the last two weeks we delivered our ‘Slow Cook-

er Food and Fun’ packs to 22 families with 50 children. With referrals coming in

weekly. Your generosity and support is enabling us to give a helping hand to those

who need it. We may all be in this pandemic together, but its' effects are not felt

equally. In our community many are suffering disproportionately. Your support is

helping us intervene and bring a little more parity.

From the team at The Children's Foundation, and the children and families you are

helping, thank you.

Yours Sincerely,

Sean Soulsby

CEO

01912820000 nuth.childrensfoundation@nhs.net www.thechildrensfoundation.co.uk

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41

Understanding the Calendar:

‘Principal Feasts’ and other ‘Principal Holy Days’ are printed in Red Bold type.

‘Festivals’ are printed in Roman typeface; Other Sundays & ‘Lesser Festivals’ in ordi-

nary Roman type black

‘Commemorations’ are printed in italics.

Church of England Liturgical Calendar - Year B April 2021

5TH Monday of Easter Week

6th Tuesday of Easter Week

7th Wednesday of Easter Week

8th Thursday of Easter Week

9th Friday of Easter Week

10th Saturday of Easter Week

11th 2nd Sunday of Easter

16th Isabella Gilmore, deaconess, 1923

18th 3rd Sunday of Easter

19th Alphege, archbishop, 1012

21st Anselm, abbot, archbishop, teacher of the faith, 1109

23rd George, martyr, patron of England, c.304

24th Mellitus, bishop, 624 Seven Martyrs of the Melonesian Brotherhood, 2003

25th 4th Sunday of Easter

26th Mark the Evangelist

27th Christina Rossetti, poet, 1894

28th Peter Chanel, missionary, martyr, 1841

29th Catherine of Siena, teacher of the faith, 1380

30th Pandita Mary Ramabai, translator, 1922

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42

The Diocese of Newcastle upon Tyne

Parish of St George, Jesmond

We are a Church of England (Anglican) church in the

Diocese of Newcastle with an inclusive, catholic tradi-

tion of Christian worship. We welcome all in Christ’s

name.

Vicar: Revd Canon Brian Hurst tel: 0191 281 1628

email: brian@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk Curate: Revd Stephanie Keates tel: 0191 281 5018

email: stephanie@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk

Curate: Revd Derek Avery (SSM) tel: 07803 590542 email: Derek@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk Reader and Mrs Joan Grenfell email: grenfelljoan@yahoo.com Anna Chaplain: Safeguarding Officer: Dr Sue Vernon tel: 07411 099690

email: s.j.vernon@ncl.ac.uk Children and Emily Gibson Young People: email: youth@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk Churchwardens: Mrs Louise Chapman

email: louise@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk

Mr Graham Hatt tel: 07739 324717 email: graham@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk

Organist Emeritus: Mr Frederick Peacock BEM tel: 0191 281 4755 email: choir@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk Bell Tower Captain: Mr Geoff White tel: 0191 285 1405

email: bells@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk Parish Secretary: Jonathan Richards tel: 0191 281 1659

07422693727 email: office@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk

PASTORAL CARE - Any Pastoral concerns or commendations should be made to

Joan Grenfell or a member of the clergy.

43

ENQUIRIES CONCERNING BAPTISMS MARRIAGES FUNERALS

Initial enquiries should be directed to the Parish Office, which is open Monday to

Friday, 9.30am to 12.30pm. tel: 0191 281 1659 or 07422693727 or

The Parish Office, St George’s Close, Jesmond NE2 2TF

email: office@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk

_________________________________________________________________ Find out more about St George’s Church:

Website: www.stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk

Facebook: St-Georges-Church-Jesmond

Twitter: @stgeorgejesmond

IS COVID AFFECTING YOU 2?

This morning I saw a neighbour talking to her cat. It was obvious she thought her cat understood her. When I went home, I told my dog. We had a good laugh together.

The Seventh Word Answers

Incredible

Winking

Neapolitan

Harvey

Chicago

Dunedin

Invercargill

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44

Articles, etc for The Lance to be

received no later than the

15th of each month

Send to: mail@mmvane.plus.com

Thank you, Margaret

To arrange a

subscription to THE LANCE, please ring the Parish Office

on 2811659

Welcome to St. George’s

Church Jesmond

We are a Church of England (Anglican)

church, part of Jesmond life since 1888,

with a congregation from the locality, the

city and the region. We aim to be friendly,

diverse and to welcome all in Christ’s name.

Our worship is inclusive and in the catholic

tradition, with high quality music. If you are

new to this area, or would like to find out

more, please get in touch.

Website:

www.stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk

Facebook: St-Georges-Church-Jesmond

Twitter: @stgeorgejesmond

email: office@stgeorgesjesmond.org.uk

SUNDAY SERVICES

08:00 Holy Communion

09:30 PARISH COMMUNION with

Sunday School (age 3-7)

Smarties (age 8-12)

Children’s corner available in church

11:30 Holy Communion

18:00 Taizé (2nd Sunday of month)

18:00 Choral Evensong (3rd Sunday)

WEEKDAY SERVICES

08:45 Daily: Morning Prayer

09:30 Thursday: Holy Communion

08:00 Friday: Holy Communion

Saints’ Days as announced

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Photograph by Ursula Buchan