I must apologise to those of you who looked for the From The Vicarage column last week and found nothing 🙁 Before I went away I decided that Andy wasn’t ready to address the parish with an uplifting and God-centred message. He has, possibly, settled in a bit more as curate but our Andy does not cope with responsibility well as those of you who saw what happened when he was tasked with firing the starter’s pistol at the beginning of the charity duck race will vividly recall.
Instead, I left behind a cartoon as a gently humorous stand-in. It’s rather a good image sent to me by an old friend from theological college that neatly gets across that we should look beyond extremism and fear of difference and acknowledge that the three great Abrahamic faiths have much in common – Abraham for starters 🙂 – unfortunately something went wrong with the Evening Harold scanner so I shall save the image of Yahweh, Jesus and Muhammad enjoying a pint and a bacon sandwich together for another time.
I was only away from Harold for a few days but I have to say that I was pleased to see the old place when I came home :). Lovely though the convent where I went for my spiritual retreat was it was great to get back and reacquaint myself with all the things the nuns lack like duvets, coffee that doesn’t taste as if at least two other people have drunk it first and a sense of perspective about cats.
While my home maybe very much the ‘new’ vicarage and without the many luxuries and conveniences of the fine ‘old’ vicarage which I doubt many of you are familiar with in its new role as a private home seeing as its owners don’t seem to have integrated well into Harold and won’t allow the church fête to be held on its huge front lawn as it has been for decades. However home, whether it’s a bedsit or a mansion, is a place that most of us treasure. It’s the place where the mask can slip and we can truly be ourselves and for many of us it is a place where we feel loved, safe and valued.
There’s another place like that in the village and it’s open this Sunday for the 10:30am family service. Why not pop along and see for yourself? At St Paul’s everyone is loved, everyone is safe and everyone is valued. Even Andy! 🙂
God Bless,
Tansy
Seeing as there was no catchphrase puzzle last week for ‘a bit of fun’ here’s a joke. Enjoy! 😀
Who is the best financier in the Bible?
Pharaoh’s daughter. She went down to the bank of the Nile and drew out a little prophet.
