Magazine April 2011

 Dear Friends

We are approaching  the time of year when we experience the depth and the height of our life with Jesus – our diary signals this for us though it includes also examples of ordinary church activities which is part of the arena in which we live out that time with Jesus:

April Diary

2nd, Saturday, 10.30 – 12, in school: Coffee Morning by the Ladies of the Church

3rd, Sunday, 10.30: Mothering Sunday, including enrolment of

      Nancy Hulme as a member of the Mothers’ Union

4th and 7th, Monday at 1.15 at the Vestry and Thursday at 7.45 at St

      Paul’s Meeting Room: Lent Session 4, ‘Life calling …’

10th, Sunday, approx 11.15: Annual Church Meeting

11th and 14th, Monday at 1.15 at the Vestry and Thursday at 7.45 at

      St Paul’s Meeting Room: Lent Session 5. ‘Life calling …’

14th, Thursday at 9.30: Hulme Kindergarten Easter Service

17th, 8 am and 10.30: Palm Sunday

21st, Maundy Thursday, 7.30 at St Thomas’: Holy Communion with St Paul’s

22nd, Good Friday: 10.30 at St Thomas’- ‘At the Cross’, a reflexion

             1.30 at the Town Centre, near Burger King –  Open Air Worship, celebrating God's Love for Oldham

23rd, Easter Eve: 12 noon – ‘Bolton Passion’, drama in Bolton centre

24th, Easter Sunday: 8am and 10.30 – Holy Communion including Renewal of Baptismal Promises

30th, Saturday at 2.30 in school: Royal Wedding Afternoon Tea Party (see article elsewhere in this magazine) – part of Coppice Community Fun Day with stalls, rides and activities on the pitch, starting at 12 noon.

Holy Baptism

‘The promise is to you and your children and to all that are afar off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him’ – Acts 2, verse 39

By immersion at Bethel Church on Sunday, 13 March:

Azra Jarrahzadeh, Maryam Jameli, AzamShirazi, and Nadergolabi Salmasi

Men need puddings!

The time has come to reveal the existence of an organisation within our church which is open to all men who are conscious of a wasting deprivation in their lives.

There are many pressures on marriage today, and we take them very seriously.  Very little attention has been paid to pudding deprivation, however.  The constant humiliation of men who night after night are told ‘There’s a yoghourt in the fridge if you want one’ has to be experienced to be understood.  The idea that any full-blooded male can maintain his energy, his dignity, let alone his outgoing love and concern, on a diet of 125 grams of low-fat, insipid, sloppy liquid is self-evidently ludicrous. Yoggot, yoggut, yuccankeypit, as they say in Outer Hallamshire.

Where are those jam roly-polys, those suet puddings, treacle sponges and proper bread puddings that for so many years made Britain what it was?

The new organisation exists to draw attention to this crying need, to put pressure on the authorities (mainly wives), and encourage supermarkets to stock not just frozen imitations but the basic ingredients for those devoted partners who want to do the loving thing and make the proper pudding from scratch.

The NSRPP, National Society for the Restoration of Proper Puddings, began in Mossley Hill and is steadily growing.  Its motto is ‘Give us our just desserts.’

 'It’s God they ought to crucify instead of you and me …’

The earthquake that struck north-east Japan on 11 March was one of the biggest ever at 9.0 on the Richter scale, 8000 times more powerful than the one that struck Christchurch.  The effect was the equivalent to dropping the Isle of Wight into the ocean, causing a massive tsunami 30 feet high sweeping inland for up to 6 miles, flattening every thing in its path.  At the time of writing the death toll is put at over 17,000.

In some earthquake areas of the world, governments and populations are less well prepared either for lack of resources or discipline – but the Japanese are well drilled in emergency measures, and their buildings are built to withstand severe seismic shocks.  In the event, the north eastern city of Sendai little damage was done by the quake itself.  On the waterfront it was a very different story. Throughout the north east coastline the tsunami had devoured houses, ships, trees, factories, roads and trains.  A dam collapsed.

One British journalist has written that he was struck by the calm resilience of the Japanese people, and their genius for co-operation.  Instead of reports of widespread looting, there have been reports of ‘heart-breaking orderliness’, such as the elderly and exhausted survivor who struggled to her feet to bow to her rescuer.

This culture of resilience will continue to be needed as people are beginning to experience food, gas, electricity and water shortages. In addition there is worry about the reactors melting down in the Fukushima power station and releasing high-levels of radioactivity in the surrounding area.

The Church of Japan is part of the Anglican Communion.  Sendai Cathedral has been distributing water and allowing people to charge their mobile phones.

Why does God allow natural disasters such as earthquakes?  Before I attempt to respond to that, I have to raise this hard issue: do people take enough note of the previous history of disasters in any particular area?  The Japanese do in respect of the dry land results of earthquakes (except for particular types of power stations), and it may be argued that there was no previous history of such vast tsunamis.  But there has been more than one earthquake in San Francisco, and its motorways were not built to withstand the latest.

As a layman, I understand earthquakes to be the result of the pressure on each other of tectonic plates in the earth’s crust which is on the surface of molten rock on the earth’s core. Why does God allow natural disasters such as earthquakes?  Think about this song by Sydney Carter:

   It was on a Friday morning that they took me from the cell,

   And I saw they had a carpenter to crucify aswell.

   You can blame it on to Pilate, you can blame it on the Jews,

   You can blame it on the Devil – it’s God I accuse.

 It’s God they ought to crucify instead of you and me

    I said to the carpenter a-hanging on the tree.

Now Barrabas was a killer and they let Barrabas go.

   But you are being crucified for nothing here below.

   But God is up in heaven and he doesn’t do a thing

   With a million angels watching, and they never move a wing.

It’s God they ought to crucify …

   To hell with Jehovah, to the carpenter I said,

   I wish that a carpenter had made the world instead.

   Goodbye and Good Luck to you, our ways will soon divide.

   Remember me in heaven, the man you hung beside –

It’s God they ought to crucify …

Sydney Carter has written about his song: ‘Some call this song blasphemous, which is what it is if you regard it as a simple statement. But what is sung or said is only half the song.  The silent part is where the action really is.  The statement made is a device to spring a question; but the question, and the answer, must come from the listener.’

Paul’s letter to the Christians in Galatia 3, verse 13, may help.

Andrew Dawson