| Letters from
3 to 10 November 2013
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The sacredness
of All Hallows and All Souls
Thank
you for your editorial about All Saints' and All Souls'. One
of the two churches of our parish is dedicated "All Hallows".
It is at least an opportunity to explain why the Patronal
Festival is NOT Halloween! Sunday last in our Churces (Coromandel
Valley and Blackwood Anglican South Australia) we conflated
the festivals. I invited people to list those whose names
we could read out on a roll of the dead. We placed that roll
on the corporal with the precious Body and Blood of our Lord.
It was lovely to read the list in a reflective way.
We normally
have Communion in the round and there is often a very great sense
of Real Presence as we administer Communion to each other. Towards
the end of the Communion the presence of my mother and father was
very close and I began to 'tear up' so I was moved in the quiet after
we had all received to remind people to tread carefully with their
own grief and that of others. After the service numbers of people commented
on how important that had been for them.
One man who was a visitor from overseas told me
about how important it had been for him in order to help with grief
for two friends who had died while they had been away. And I am reminded
(for the millionth time in my priestly ministry) that for all the
cleverness and inventiveness I think I bring to caring for the bereaved
.... God got there before me.
In addition
to this a faithful priest parishioner died on All Soul's Day,
and his sons who have distanced themselves from the faith in which
they were nurtured are perhaps a little closer because of the
Last Rites (one of them even Googled what it was all about because
he didn't know, they wondered how long the Absolution might last.
It seemed unlikely that their semiconscious Dad was going to sin
again!). For
the fact that God is gracious, and for the privilege of ministering
to the dying. Thanks be to God!
Stephen
Clark
Coromandel Valley Anglican Parish
Blackwood, Adelaide, SOUTH AUSTRALIA
coro35@tpg.com.au
4 November 2013
Forget
the jack
o' lanterns
With
regard to your front page last week, at
least in this former British colony, New South Wales, Halloween
has been virtually unknown until recently when some shops have
tried to encourage its observance — with a notable lack
of success. (I have seen the difference in the USA.) And it would
certainly not be wise here for children to go from door to door.
I have to say Halloween is disliked by some as American (though
we have adopted Mothers' Day and much else from the USA) — even
though I think the customs originate in Scotland.
What I
think is really worth promoting, on Nov. 2nd itself if possible,
is an All Souls' requiem or at least a service, with a general
invitation to people to come and light a candle in memory not
least of those "loved long since and lost awhile". When a Rector
of a moderate Sydney parish, we had one Holy Communion on All
Saints' Day (Nov. 1st itself) but at least two celebrations for
All Souls' which were far better attended. This is a form of outreach
well worth trying especially in the Churches of England, Australia,
and New Zealand where the vast majority of Anglicans rarely if
ever attend ordinary Sunday services.
p.s. It
would be nice if more Anglicans from various countries wrote letters
— I for one enjoy reading them though have sent too many myself.
John Bunyan
St John's, Canberra, Pitt Street Uniting, King's Chapel, Boston
Campbelltown, NSW, AUSTRALIA
bunyanj@tpg.com.au
4 November 2013
Ed: There
can never be too many letters from Paul Bunyan of Campbelltown!
Crozier
chronicle corrections
In the
News Centre last week, there was an entry: "Cathedral
searching for missing crozier" My
apologies for pedantry, but the statement that the bishop’s
crozier was “presented shortly after the founding of the
Diocese of Qu’Appelle in 1874” is out by a decade.
It was founded in 1884: there was no European settlement in the
North-West Territories till the ‘80s; the new Canadian Pacific
Railway arrived in Qu’Appelle in 1885.
The first
bishop engendered a certain amount of missed feelings among the
locals where he briefly lived before going home to England in
1892. He was heard at a meeting in Qu’Appelle indicating
vast pleasure at the fact that a fair amount of settlers were
from England, not from eastern Canada. The Primate of the Church
of England in Canada then-famously reacted, “Typical arrogant
Englishman! No money or manpower for him!”
I relatively
recently visited Qu’Appelle and the parish church which
was the Diocese’s pro-cathedral till 1974 was about to begin
its Sunday service and a friend and I nipped in to take a quick
look where we’d never previously been, though my grandparents
and father lived next door in the 1930s. Personnel welcomed us
and urged us to remain for the service. I pointed down-street
at Knox United Church and told them that my grandparents and great-grandparents
had been among the substantial minority of the congregation who
indignantly withdrew on Church Union in June, 1925 to form the
non-concurring St. Andrew’s Presbyterian on Main Street.
I was once the organist in the church’s successor as pro-cathedral
in the city which had become the capital of the North-West Territories
in 1882 instead of Qu’Appelle but I really couldn’t
even entire Knox United much less St. Peter’s Anglican.
They laughed and remarked that they didn’t hear that much
history from many!
Mac Robb
St. Paul's, Ashgrove
Brisbane QLD AUSTRALIA
mac.robb@gmail.com
6 November 2013
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