Christmas Is Coming…

I know this is true because the children are back at school, and the Churches Advertising Network have just launched this year’s Christmas poster campaign…

They say “The cute brown-eyed boy doll in a blue baby-gro represents the baby Jesus, and plays on the idea of Christmas being a time when everyone is searching for that 'must-have' Christmas gift. It carries the slogan - 'GodBaby - He cries, He wees, He saves the world' “

ChurchAds.net Trustee, Mike Elms, a former advertising executive, said: "Research shows that 84% of people believe that 'Christmas should be called Christmas because we are still a Christian society' and yet society still seems set on airbrushing Christ out of His festivity. So, our campaign places a Christ-focussed message at the heart of the seasonal consumerism: on shopping centre posters; on commercial radio; in the pages of our daily newspapers. This year's poster features the 'Godbaby doll': this year's 'must-have' gift. It's a striking, contemporary and very simple way of communicating the nativity message that Christ, fully divine and fully human, came to us for our salvation.

I know what they are trying to say…but somehow I am not quite comfortable with this one. What do the rest of you think? [whether or not you would call yourself ‘Christian’]

Brave Words

This summer’s cinema outing for us was to see…

Pixar’s latest animation – they spent two years working on getting her hair right, apparently! Plot – without spoilers – Merida is a Scottish princess [voiced by Kelly Macdonald] living with Dad [Billy Connolly – who else!] Mum [Emma Thompson] and three wild triplet younger brothers.

Mum despairs of ever teaching her huntin’, shootin’, fishin’ gal to be a Proper Princess. Merida despairs of the appalling choice of gormless suitors who line up to win her hand in marriage.

The story concerns the tapestry that is family life – how our lives interweave with one another, and what actions can bind, and which can rend our relationships. How ‘pride’ has a good, and a bad side, and what it truly means to be brave.

Yes is is a love story – but not in the conventional Disney sense.

Technically, I thought the film brilliant- the textures, the details, the lighting, the music, the voices, the glorious Scottish scenery…

Plotwise, I thought it was very clever, and thought-provoking. If you are a mother who has experienced an adolescent daughter, you will understand! Bob and I really enjoyed it. I hope the other ten people dotted around the virtually empty cinema with us did too!

[there’s another more comprehensive, well written review here]

Other comments – I loved Pixar’s pre-main-feature offering – La Luna

That was a sweet little piece! Before the two films we had the usual run of trailers and advertisements. I thought this one was brilliant.

116000 launched May 2012

My heart aches for those families where relationships have fallen apart – and I hope this new phone number gets used. Lots.

Circle Of Friends

Today feels a bit strange – it is the first Tuesday in September – and for the past seventeen years, for me that has meant the first meeting of the new session for our Ladies Fellowship at Church. But we had our final meeting in July as numbers had dwindled so low.

It was a hard decision to close the group – but it was the right one. At the last meeting [a Garden Party at Sylvia's- in an appalling rainstorm] I was presented with two lovely gifts – a necklace, reminding me of the circle of friends in the group- and a photograph – taken back in about 2005. Many of these ladies are no longer with us, but I have such happy memories of them all.

This group represented the wisdom and experience of many years of Christian faith – always so interested in the life of the church. They supported all that was going on – and even if they could not participate in some of the more energetic activities of the younger folk, they would certainly be there encouraging them, praying, and giving generously.

This week, I know the ones who are left are getting involved in our Week of Prayer. And this afternoon, I am at another church, giving a talk about Mum’s experiences at Bletchley Park – and taking two ladies with me. But it won’t be the same…

Baby Cakes!

I just had to post these pictures – yesterday at Church we had an infant dedication for Baby Ben – and the family provided a mountain of cakes to go with the after-church coffee. The top picture represents just a sample thereof!

Aren’t the blue and white fairy cakes, decorated with bibs and tiny footprints so cute? Thanks Mick and Gemma [and big sister Charlotte] for sharing your celebration with us all.

God bless your lovely family!

One More Thing…

Which is what Columbo always said as he walked away from the murderer – but it is also the theme for this year’s National Zero Waste Week

And before you think your ‘one more thing‘ can’t really make a difference; if every household in the UK recycled ‘one more thing’, the total amount collected for recycling could increase by more than three quarters of a million tonnes.

So what are you going to do? Could you recycle just one more thing in your daily routine? You can choose anything you like such as:

• Find out what can be recycled at your kerbside and make full use of facilities
• Check your local recycle banks to see what you can recycle locally
• Start a compost heap
• Take home your recyclables instead of using litter bins when out and about
• Check out the helpful website

We are very fortunate here in the village with the recycling available to us via our regular kerbside refuse collections – glass, cans, some plastics, paper, card, textiles, batteries, garden waste – and I was impressed by the food waste recycling collection available to Mags in Belfast and Liz in Southwark.

Our local Council Waste Site [I don’t think we are allowed to call it The Tip anymore] will recycle all these things

 

 

and probably more! and even the non-recyclable hardcore, rubble and flat glass (such as window panes, mirrors, fish tanks) which goes to the Waste Site is sent to landfill sites, where it is used to form a protective cover to prevent landfilled waste blowing away and creating litter.

The Great Loft Sort continues in this house – and I have just found a box of ancient video tapes which can be recycled, rather than just thrown away. I know I have been back from holiday for almost a fortnight, but I am being super diligent about not putting any boxes back up unless I have checked that the contents are worth keeping. There are so many boxes that this is taking rather longer than I had hoped.

1 Thessalonians 5:17

I say a little prayer for you.
At work I just take time
And all through my coffee break-time,
I say a little prayer for you.

RIP Hal David 1921-2012, who clearly understood that talking to God should be a normal part of daily life

Build Your Kingdom Here

Come set Your rule and reign in our hearts again
Increase in us we pray, unveil why we're made
Come set our hearts ablaze with hope
Like wildfire in our very souls
Holy Spirit come invade us now
We are Your Church, we need Your power in us

We seek Your kingdom first, we hunger and we thirst
Refuse to waste our lives, for You're our joy and prize
To see the captive hearts released
The hurt; the sick; the poor at peace
We lay down our lives for Heaven's cause
We are Your church, we pray revive this Earth

Build Your kingdom here, let the darkness fear
Show Your mighty hand, heal our streets and land
Set Your church on fire, win this nation back
Change the atmosphere, build Your kingdom here we pray

Unleash Your kingdom's power reaching the near and far
No force of hell can stop your beauty changing hearts
You made us for much more than this
Awake the kingdom seed in us

Fill us with the strength and love of Christ
We are Your church, we are the hope on Earth

Thanks Rend Friends

Dig This!

A week after the team from Leicester Uni started digging up the Car Park, they have announced significant progress in the hunt for the grave of Richard III. They have found the remains of a thick wall [indicative of an important  building such as a church] and fragments of medieval window tracery and glazed floor fragments. The tiles match similar ones in other church buildings in the City.

They are hoping to arrange Open Days next Saturday and Sunday – the dig has attracted global interest, and Channel 4 is filming a documentary to be shown later this year.

All very exciting stuff. I wonder what happens if/when they do find him? Will he be re-interred in the same spot? or moved into a grave in Leicester Cathedral just across the road? or, as a King of England, does he automatically get a plot in Westminster Abbey or Windsor?

KMFC Week Of Prayer

This autumn is going to be Very Very Busy in the life of our church. So we are beginning with a week of prayer, to help us focus on God, and seek his empowering for the work ahead of us.

Without Him, we can achieve nothing.