Parish Retreat 2008
On a rather wet Friday afternoon seventeen of us gathered at St. Francis House, Hemingford Grey. This was the first year I had volunteered to lead the retreat, obviously with a guiding hand and practical assistance from Roger. After a very fruitful meeting with Roger in September I decided to use a theme of God's light shining into the dark interior of a church through five stained glass windows representing Art, Nature and the Natural World, our Human Bodies, Science and Technology, and finally through Jesus on the cross. All were illustrated by slides, and to give us something to think about in our silent periods I used phrases from the Lord's Prayer.
For Art - "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” I made no apology for the young child who thought it was "Our Father who does art in heaven.’’ I think, as an amateur artist, this is a lovely imaginary vision!
For Nature - "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" seemed very appropriate, but sadly not always apparent.
After lunch on Saturday we came out of "silent mode" until Evensong at 5 p.m. The sun was now shining and this gave us an opportunity to explore the beautiful surroundings of Hemingford Grey or for the super-fit a 6-mile circular walk to St. Ives. It was also an opportunity to walk round the garden to see how many plants were in flower. Rob Prew counted 24, but that included a daisy in the lawn!
Returning to "silent mode" for Evensong I used for our Human Bodies - "Give us this day our daily bread", (spiritual bread not a slice of Hovis, although in so much of the Third World it would sadly be literally true).
For Science and Technology - "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us". Trespass means, "to offend against". In Science we must not "offend against" God's laws - not as academic censorship but as moral censorship. I used as examples the worries about human cloning and the dangers of nuclear explosions in our stratosphere if we go down the route of "star wars" technology.
Finally for Jesus on the cross - "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Lead us not into temptation could seem to indicate God is leading us into bad ways. This MUST be impossible because a perfect God could not encourage us to be sinful. In the New English Bible these words are translated as "Do not bring us to the time of trial". In other words we are praying for deliverance from the "Time of Trial" that will precede the coming of God's kingdom. Deliverance from evil can only come from Jesus, who died for our sins on the cross.
We finished on Sunday with a midday Communion Service. We had now lit up our church through the five windows and we were able to see the altar table at the front on the church beneath the "Jesus window", a table on which we celebrate communion - that communion with Jesus we call Holy Communion. It is this communion with Jesus, stretching back over 2,000 years, which joins all Christians together across the ages and across the world today.
However the purpose of the retreat is not only to refresh us spiritually, but to renew us in our ministry as Christ's 21st century disciples. To represent this in my final address I opened the church doors to let God's light shine out into the world around us - notably into our parish.
I believe we can do this in four ways:
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Firstly by our pastoral work - caring for our neighbours.
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Secondly in our spiritual lives by making our services uplifting and by making everyone coming into our church feel welcome and special.
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Thirdly by prayer. We can achieve nothing without talking and listening to God to find out what he wants us to do.
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Fourthly in our evangelical work not by knocking on doors but by letting people know we are Christians and have something very special. To do this we need to use the gift of the Holy Spirit in an imaginative and effective way.
Simply put, we have to
let the light of God into our lives so that others will see that light and
want to experience it as well.
Martin Simmonds