the open door - croydon unitarians · 2019-01-22 · page 1 of 20 the open door news and views of...

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THE OPEN

DOOR

News and views of

Croydon Unitarians

December & January 2018

Merry

Chr

istm

as!

Our minister Rev Art Lester is pleased to

welcome you to worship every Sunday from

11.00 am and afterwards for fellowship and

refreshments

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The Gift of Won’t Power

A man was beating his donkey in the street. The beast stood still,

head down and eyes tightly shut. A passer-by asked him why he was doing

this.

"Because he's stubborn and refuses to move," replied the man.

"But don't you know that the donkey is the noblest of all creatures?"

asked the passer-by. "Far too noble to be beaten in the street."

"You must be joking," said the man, but he put down his stick and

listened.

"You will remember," said the passer-by, "that Mary was riding on

a donkey the day before the first Christmas."

"Of course," said the man. "But that doesn't make him any nobler

than a horse or a cat, for that matter."

"Well, this donkey was tied in a small alley outside the stable behind

the inn where Joseph and Mary couldn't find a room. It was a cold night,

that first Christmas Eve, and the donkey wouldn't fit in the stable.

"He stood in the alley for days, getting-- like your donkey-- more and

more fed up. The food was meagre, there was no roof over his head, and

what was worse, he had to shift every time somebody wanted to go into

the stable. And there were plenty of visitors. First, a gang of rough-looking

types that smelled of sheep. They came and stayed a long time, and when

they left, they woke the donkey up.

"Then there were three strange-looking men with camels-- which

donkeys, frankly, can't abide. The donkey had by now decided he'd had

enough. He wasn't going to budge to let a single other beast or person past

him. He might have to pass his days in a narrow dark little alleyway, but,

by goodness, from now on, at least, it would be his alleyway. He wasn't

going to shift until he was good and ready."

"And that's noble?" hooted the man. "Why, that's just stubborn, like

this beast here." He raised his stick again. The passer-by continued,

undeterred.

"The next people who came up the alley were two Roman soldiers.

They were looking for firstborns to slaughter, having been given that job

by Herod.

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"When they tried to pass the donkey, he placed his whole body across

the alley, and just stood there, with his eyes shut. The soldiers beat him

and they pushed him. They even poked him with their sharp swords, but

they realised, as many a man before us has, that they wouldn't shift that

donkey without killing him, which would be a trifle rude and very messy

as well.

"And so they went away. This happened because of the donkey's

great gift: though many men and beasts have the quality of will power,

only the donkey-- in all of creation-- has the gift of won't power. If it hadn't

been for that donkey, there'd be no yule logs, no mince pies, and no

Christmas."

--Art Lester

Services

The Sunday-Services Service-Leaders will be: Our Minister, Rev John Carter Rev or Steve Dick

The Musicians will be:

Freda Lodge, Bill Higgins, Gill Stone or Sophie Winter

Events

Our annual Carol Service will be on Sunday 16th Dec at 11am, this will

be followed by a finger buffet lunch. All are welcome.

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Christmas update from Essex 2018

Hello, lovely folk at Croydon Unitarian Church. I bet you don’t realise

that in darkest Essex your newsletters are read with interest enjoyment

and a degree of wistfulness too, as there is nothing similar locally. (Well,

not that I have found yet anyway). Having promised to leave you in

peace, I am back in these pages again after receiving a sweet request to

continue these updates.

The most important news is that we are all well thank goodness, which I

am especially thankful for as people I love prepare to, or have moved

across to the ‘Other Side’. There is something so comforting about

knowing that if there is anything waiting for us, there will be souls dear

to us to show us the way. (I have an image of being met at the pearly

gates with a glass of fizz!). This year has also shown us we are at that

time in life when our friends with grown children re-evaluate their

relationships, and decide to remain together or part company. I am so

pleased that Adam and I continue to find each other interesting as we

approach our 25th wedding anniversary on Christmas Eve. To celebrate,

the four of us are going to have a little break in Brussels between

Christmas and New Year.

The girls are wonderful. Those four words are almost miraculous to me,

and I never take them for granted given the challenges that Colette one

has had to overcome! She is now in her third year of History of Art at

Goldsmiths which she is completely passionate about. I am always

astonished by the breadth of her knowledge when we visit galleries. She

will always notice some detail I would have missed, which will be highly

symbolic, and we have long conversations where she is explaining the

thoughts of some theorist and I can only just keep up. She was a guide at

the painted ceiling in Greenwich and we joined her final tour before the

scaffolding came down. She was brilliant!! To see her now, mentally

healthy, and full of delight in her studies is such a joy, and knowing how

hard won this health is makes me inordinately proud.

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Kezia is now in her second year of Geography in Birmingham. She too is

very engaged in her studies, although disappointed not to be doing more

human geography. She seems to be doing a lot of maths for statistics

which she finds challenging, but I think it’s quite good for her to be

stretched as she is one of those infuriating people for whom things come

easily. She is still in a relashe, and she and Connor meet every other

week and have travelled a lot over the summer to Italy and Barbados!

Adam is working in a company that means he is in Ireland a lot. Luckily,

he loves Ireland. As a consequence, I have been able to visit Dublin and

Belfast this past year. Dublin is buzzing, particularly as a lot of

companies are settling there in the wake of Brexit. There is so much to

do there and I even managed to say a little hello to the bones of St

Valentine on Valentine’s day. Honestly, there is a shrine to St Valentine

in Dublin!! with his actual bones!!

Belfast was a curious experience for me, as my Grandfather came from

Newtonards but my mother never knew him. It was like the Montagues

and the Capulets. He was from a sect called the Christian Brethren. He

knew there could never be a marriage, but yet my mother was born!! Not

very Christian! We know a little about the family but there is no desire

on their part to be in touch, so as I walked around, I wondered if I was

looking at cousins etc. It was a very strange feeling. The Antrim Coast is

stunning, and we were blessed with glorious sunshine at the Giant’s

Causeway. If you are ever tempted to go, I recommend it.

Our family holiday was to Croatia and I was touched that the girls still

want to come with us. I am savouring these days when it is just we four.

Dubrovnik is SOOOOO beautiful, although very busy, and one morning

Colette and I went out to the harbour at 5 am to experience the city in the

quiet. We were not alone!! Quite a few others had the same idea. After a

few days there we went to the island of Korcula. It had everything,

extraordinary beauty, and a rich history. Again, I can recommend!

As for me, I am more or less the same. Still working in a primary school

as an HLTA, (covering classes for teachers when they are out). It is

interesting, but sometimes very challenging. I, and others notice that

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children are increasingly struggling with the reasonable constraints

imposed by school. Things like sitting quietly through a lesson, following

instructions, and restraint are very difficult for some. Luckily, I am

sustained by the other things I do such as yoga, and teaching English to

recently arrived women. I love this as it feels like the world has come to

Chelmsford. I am also now a Stock Parish Councillor and am finding out

about a whole new world of ‘behind the scenes’. There is a lot to learn.

Well, I could go on, but you probably have had enough. All that remains

is to wish you all a happy Christmas and a peaceful and healthy new

year.

With love from Adam and Marge Colette, and Kezia Downing.

--Marge Colette

Combined Harvest Festival and

Christmas greetings

• Happy Christmas to all the congregation Love Irmi Martin.

• Christine and Henry wish all our friends at church a happy peaceful

Christmas and New Year.

• Season’s greetings to all the congregation, also too friends far and

wide. Peace and Love Pauline.

• Have a great Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year, to all at the

Church, from Peter and Jim.

• Have a lovely Christmas and a very happy New Year! Merryn, David,

Cerian, Bryn and John.

Message from John Craske (Chairman)

On behalf of the committee and the congregation, John would

like to thank the organists and pianists for the lovely music

which makes a wonderful contribution to our services.

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Anniversary Service

Our Harvest and Anniversary Services were held on November 4th.

During the Service, Pauline, Lol and two of our asylum seekers, Racheal

and Sylvia, gave their stories of how they came to be members of our

Unitarian Church.

The asylum seekers left their African homes, due to homophobic

persecution, to come to England. Having joined Rainbows Across

Borders, they were introduced to the Unitarian Church. Initially, they

were scarred to go into any church, after the horrific abuse they had

suffered in churches in their homeland. But now they are now keen

members of our Church.

Rainbows Across Borders

Singing at the Anniversary Service

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Once again, our Harvest Festival supported Night Watch in Croydon, by

the congregation providing donations of nonperishable goods, blankets

clothing etc.

The service was be followed by a light buffet lunch provided by our

usual caterers - JACE

Here is a picture of Pauline giving her story and a picture of Lol playing

his guitar.

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Remembrance Sunday Flowers

Here are some pictures of flowers and food donated by members of the

congregation:

Merryn’s flowers at the Service

Remembrance poppies

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Real Remembrance (Remembrance Sunday, 2018)

Here it is again, that day when ministers find ways to take time off,

and the pulpits of the small churches are full of guest preachers -

Remembrance Sunday. It is a day when the easy atmosphere of churches

seems edged with solemnity. It’s no time to make cheerful jokes from the

pulpit. It is a national mood that affects each one of us, whether we have

any consciousness of past wars or not.

This year is particularly significant. When we began our silence, it was

exactly 100 years since the signing of the Armistice that provided an all-

too-brief cessation of killing. And even then, the ugly fact of war continued

to destroy lives. More than 300,000 Germans, men, women and children,

starved to death due to an allied—mainly British—blockade. The war, in

its hot phase had ended, but the roots shouldered underground for another

twenty years before erupting in an even more deadly form.

There is much to regret, and much to take on board. But we as a

nation made a promise. We promised that in the years that passed after the

days of sacrifice that we would not forget what happened, that “At the

going down of the sun and in the morning”, we would remember them. So,

however conflicted we may feel about this day of national mourning,

whether or not it is too militaristic, even too jingoistic, that for this one day

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at least our thoughts would turn back to the bleakness of war and those

who were caught up in it.

Let’s travel mentally a few miles from here to the Mall. The Queen is

placing a wreath against the Cenotaph. So is the Prince of Wales, the

Prime Minister, the leaders of the opposition parties. Somewhere in a little

knot of clerics—thanks to the efforts of our own Roy Smith-- is our GA

president, Joan Cook. All around are the thousands: men in their eighties

and nineties, wearing strange caps and bedecked with medals and wearing

expressions that owe as much to anger as to sorrow. People in wheelchairs,

on crutches. People wearing kilts. WRENs and Coldstream guards, nurses

and railway workers. There is plaintive pipe music and the slow beating

of drums, prayers by splendidly bedecked priests, and that rarest of

things—silence.

It will surprise none of you that I have been known to cause offence on

such Sundays. Not by any intention of my own, but through a lack of

understanding of just how deep and important this day is to many of us.

I was born during the Second World War. My father was a naval officer.

I grew up hearing about the war in the Pacific, about horrible, barely

human people called “Japs” who had attacked us and killed many good

people. Until his death, my father refused to buy a Japanese car.

When I got a bit older, we had our own war to deal with. Vietnam. Like

so many of my contemporaries, I opposed it from the beginning. It seemed

unjust, terrifying and unnecessary. I was against it for good reasons and

bad ones. The politics were hollow and downright wrong. And I didn’t

want to die in a swamp without knowing why. Luckily, I was passed over

by conscription, but some of my friends went, some were injured, one was

killed and more were damaged by the experience afterwards to such an

extent that we couldn’t relate to each other. A few went to jail. I spent the

war worrying about having to go and hearing the nightly body count on

the news. I became a “peacenik”. Not a real pacifist, just someone who

wanted to say “no” to American adventures in SE Asia.

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Because of that, it has been hard for me to understand how people felt

who actually experienced the horrors of war. This is a confession. I

don’t approve of our presence in Afghanistan, and I didn’t approve at all

of the invasion of Iraq. I shudder to think of our part in the slaughter in

Yemen. I worry that our feelings of support and admiration of our

soldiers— though completely justified—confuses the issue and makes us

glorify militarism. But I feel sad when I hear of yet another young life

ended and see the images of coffins being lifted from the bays of aircraft

en route to their all-too-early funerals. I understand that it is hard - very

hard - to separate support for soldiers from love of war, and I cannot find

it in me to blame anyone who confuses them.

One fact comes back to me over and over. Wars are fought in the mud and

sand, and at sea and in the sky, but they always end at tables. The naïve

person might well ask: why can’t we just go straight to the table, and avoid

all the destruction?

But today is about more than just commemoration of the casualties of war.

It seems that Remembrance Sunday has assumed the role that All Souls

Day does in Latin cultures around the world. Both happen in November,

and both involve invoking the memories of those who have passed on. We

are witnessing the birth and development of that thing which has become

increasingly rare in our culture—ritual.

We are never without personal ritual. For example: what do you do in the

morning? If you’re like most of us, you will have evolved a routine—

ritual—that connects you to the day before and the day ahead. It may be

what you have for breakfast, what station your radio is tuned to or when

you have a bath. Whatever it is, if it is disturbed for any reason, a certain

mild unease will creep into your day. That’s a human thing. It helps you

make sense of your life by providing a space in which you pay attention to

the reality of the present, and also by providing as threshold for what is

next.

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If even these apparently trivial rituals are important, how much more

significant are the large shared rituals of a nation? If the small; rituals

provide the quality of paying attention and offer a threshold, how vital it

must surely be that in this watershed century, when the paradigm - as they

say - is shifting so rapidly that many of us are dizzy and confused, that

rituals come along to provide a niche where we can place a sense of

meaning? The new vital rituals of life will emerge from the depths of our

collective lives whether we seek them or not.

I think that this day has grown beyond its container and become much

more like a day to remember the dead - all the dead, whether in war or not.

Remembering the dead is not an easy business. For one thing, grief is not

the only emotion that comes with the act. Sorrow, of course, is the most

evident. But there are others: anger at the reasons for the death, anger at

what wasn’t done that might have been done to prevent it, anger even at

the person who has died and left us behind. Guilt and regret also appear at

the occasion. Things we wish we’d said or done and things we wish we

could now apologise for. And fear, because death is that one thing we can

barely contemplate, and yet so strongly demands our attention.

On this day we have an opportunity to purify our emotions, by focusing

with unblinking eyes at the reality of loss. It is a time when we can put

behind us all the little ruses and ploys, we use to evade the hard fact of

death. The denial which is never far away, which attempts to make

glorious something which is as inglorious as it is possible to be. I wince

when I pass those town monuments which say “to our glorious dead.”

It is a day when the peace of the grave can be used to hasten our own

forgiveness. Forgiveness not only of former enemies, but forgiveness of

those whose political posture toward war is the opposite of our own.

Peaceniks and crippled veterans could embrace in the streets. The defiance

of a dangerous lunatic like Hitler - and those who more recently follow

him-- should not become a defiance of current reality, when today’s

terrorists sometimes become tomorrow’s freedom fighters. The sentiments

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of wartime are comforting ones, but they are deadly when applied to a

world that begs our understanding.

My fantasy has always been that, if it were possible to revive the dead for

a few hours, that they would have some interesting things to tell us. They

might say that the things that so animated them in life now seem

unimportant. That the gulf between combatants, political opponents and

classes and races now seems absurd.

We cannot revive them, but it may be that we can remember them without

lumbering them with our own agenda. That we will not make them wear

different coloured uniforms and march to the band music that still fills our

ears. That in death they are allowed to join with the great ranks of everyone

who has passed this way and now, as the ancient phrase has it, rest in peace.

At this century’s remove, we have a chance to see, open-eyed, what we

must learn from history. See clearly, or - as George Santayana said - be

condemned to repeat it. We are older now, and hopefully bigger, and the

demand of our past is clear.

So, let us remember them rightly. All those who fell in the great reaper of

war: the aunt who died in a cattle car or a camp, the father who died before

we left our mother’s womb, the marine private surprised by a sniper four

days after the surrender, the accidental casualties of friendly fire, the brave

soldiers and the secret cowards, the innocents of Coventry and Dresden,

the builders of the bridge on the Kwai River, the maimed of Hiroshima.

The innocents bombed in their sleep in Palestine and Yemen, the victims

of the suicide bomb in the crowded market, the many, many millions now

in flight from their homes. Let us remember them, and in so doing mark

this time as a threshold and as a source of revival. This is no dusty history

lesson, but a vital lens by which to view our lives. It is there before us to

use, to make changes that will increase our claim to being human.

And so, yes, let us honour the promise we made. Let us remember well.

--Art Lester

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Help for Calais Refugees

by David Williams

I would like to thank everyone who donated clothes, etc for the refugees in Calais. I contacted the local representative and arranged a time to take the bags round. She was very thankful to everyone and wanted me to pass on her appreciation. She visits regularly to help out in Calais and will take our contributions on her next trip. She says it is still very difficult, especially for the men and older boys who are staying in tents and shelters in the woods near Calais as they have no way of keeping their belongings clean and dry, so new items are very welcome. She told me that many locals in Calais are helping with food, clothing etc and also allowing refugees into their homes to wash and get clean, something which is never reported. In her view, ordinary people like us and the locals in Calais are doing more to help than both Governments and, if one person can be helped, that is worth the effort. If you have any old clothes, blankets, etc please bring them in and I will take them over to her. Details of what are needed are on the following link, which also gives details of how you can make cash donations if you prefer. https://helprefugees.org/calais/needs-list/

https://helprefugees.org/calais/needs-list/


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Calais needs list: the most needed items ... - Help

Refugees

Calais needs list: see our up-to-date list of the most

needed items for refugees in Calais and find out how to

donate them now - Help Refugees

helprefugees.org

-- David Williams



http://helprefugees.org/

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A very proud Gran

The Royal Canadian Artillery and band were in the UK recently taking

part in many events, the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace

and Windsor, and The Lord Mayors Parade. My grandson Robert is a

bandsman in the troop.

The following photo was taken by the photographer who travels with

them, which I think is amazing it could have been taken 100 years ago.

Robert is the one with the euphonium,

--Pauline Peet, a very proud Gran

The “Getting to Know You” regular feature does not appear in this

issue, since there were no takers. If anyone is willing to participate

in future newsletters, please let us know.

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Happy Birthday!

We wish

Rev John Carter, Sajid Cheema, Lol Benbow and

Adam Downing

a very happy birthday:

From May 2018 a new law requires us to ask you if you would like

us to continue sending you emails. If you do not wish us to continue

sending you emails, could you please let us know? -- ed.

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BLANK PAGE

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The Croydon Unitarian and Free Christian Church

1 The Croydon Flyover, Croydon, Surrey CR0 1ER, Email [email protected],

www.croydonunitarians.org.uk Tel 020 8667 1681

Contact Information

Minister Rev. Art Lester

Manse: Email:

020 8656 3996 [email protected]

Chairman & President

John Craske Tel: Mobile : Email:

01342 604770 0798 2743333 [email protected]

Secretary Martin White

Tel: Email:


Treasurer David Williams

Tel: Email:


Webmaster Ross Burgess

Tel: Email:

020 8645 0943 [email protected] www.foxearth .net

General information from

Warden Lol Benbow Tel: 01689 841592 Mobile : 07932 154408 E - mail [email protected] For Church bookings, contact Lol Benbow.

The Open-Door Newsletter

Editors Peter & Jim

Email: [email protected]

Tel: 020 8681 6675, Mobile: 07758 943517

Could you please send us any contributions for the

February newsletter by Monday 21st January 2019

mailto:[email protected]






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