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THE OPEN
DOOR
News and views of
Croydon Unitarians
December & January 2018
Merry
Chr
istm
as!
Our minister Rev Art Lester is pleased to
welcome you to worship every Sunday from
11.00 am and afterwards for fellowship and
refreshments
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The Gift of Won’t Power
A man was beating his donkey in the street. The beast stood still,
head down and eyes tightly shut. A passer-by asked him why he was doing
this.
"Because he's stubborn and refuses to move," replied the man.
"But don't you know that the donkey is the noblest of all creatures?"
asked the passer-by. "Far too noble to be beaten in the street."
"You must be joking," said the man, but he put down his stick and
listened.
"You will remember," said the passer-by, "that Mary was riding on
a donkey the day before the first Christmas."
"Of course," said the man. "But that doesn't make him any nobler
than a horse or a cat, for that matter."
"Well, this donkey was tied in a small alley outside the stable behind
the inn where Joseph and Mary couldn't find a room. It was a cold night,
that first Christmas Eve, and the donkey wouldn't fit in the stable.
"He stood in the alley for days, getting-- like your donkey-- more and
more fed up. The food was meagre, there was no roof over his head, and
what was worse, he had to shift every time somebody wanted to go into
the stable. And there were plenty of visitors. First, a gang of rough-looking
types that smelled of sheep. They came and stayed a long time, and when
they left, they woke the donkey up.
"Then there were three strange-looking men with camels-- which
donkeys, frankly, can't abide. The donkey had by now decided he'd had
enough. He wasn't going to budge to let a single other beast or person past
him. He might have to pass his days in a narrow dark little alleyway, but,
by goodness, from now on, at least, it would be his alleyway. He wasn't
going to shift until he was good and ready."
"And that's noble?" hooted the man. "Why, that's just stubborn, like
this beast here." He raised his stick again. The passer-by continued,
undeterred.
"The next people who came up the alley were two Roman soldiers.
They were looking for firstborns to slaughter, having been given that job
by Herod.
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"When they tried to pass the donkey, he placed his whole body across
the alley, and just stood there, with his eyes shut. The soldiers beat him
and they pushed him. They even poked him with their sharp swords, but
they realised, as many a man before us has, that they wouldn't shift that
donkey without killing him, which would be a trifle rude and very messy
as well.
"And so they went away. This happened because of the donkey's
great gift: though many men and beasts have the quality of will power,
only the donkey-- in all of creation-- has the gift of won't power. If it hadn't
been for that donkey, there'd be no yule logs, no mince pies, and no
Christmas."
--Art Lester
Services
The Sunday-Services Service-Leaders will be: Our Minister, Rev John Carter Rev or Steve Dick
The Musicians will be:
Freda Lodge, Bill Higgins, Gill Stone or Sophie Winter
Events
Our annual Carol Service will be on Sunday 16th Dec at 11am, this will
be followed by a finger buffet lunch. All are welcome.
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Christmas update from Essex 2018
Hello, lovely folk at Croydon Unitarian Church. I bet you don’t realise
that in darkest Essex your newsletters are read with interest enjoyment
and a degree of wistfulness too, as there is nothing similar locally. (Well,
not that I have found yet anyway). Having promised to leave you in
peace, I am back in these pages again after receiving a sweet request to
continue these updates.
The most important news is that we are all well thank goodness, which I
am especially thankful for as people I love prepare to, or have moved
across to the ‘Other Side’. There is something so comforting about
knowing that if there is anything waiting for us, there will be souls dear
to us to show us the way. (I have an image of being met at the pearly
gates with a glass of fizz!). This year has also shown us we are at that
time in life when our friends with grown children re-evaluate their
relationships, and decide to remain together or part company. I am so
pleased that Adam and I continue to find each other interesting as we
approach our 25th wedding anniversary on Christmas Eve. To celebrate,
the four of us are going to have a little break in Brussels between
Christmas and New Year.
The girls are wonderful. Those four words are almost miraculous to me,
and I never take them for granted given the challenges that Colette one
has had to overcome! She is now in her third year of History of Art at
Goldsmiths which she is completely passionate about. I am always
astonished by the breadth of her knowledge when we visit galleries. She
will always notice some detail I would have missed, which will be highly
symbolic, and we have long conversations where she is explaining the
thoughts of some theorist and I can only just keep up. She was a guide at
the painted ceiling in Greenwich and we joined her final tour before the
scaffolding came down. She was brilliant!! To see her now, mentally
healthy, and full of delight in her studies is such a joy, and knowing how
hard won this health is makes me inordinately proud.
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Kezia is now in her second year of Geography in Birmingham. She too is
very engaged in her studies, although disappointed not to be doing more
human geography. She seems to be doing a lot of maths for statistics
which she finds challenging, but I think it’s quite good for her to be
stretched as she is one of those infuriating people for whom things come
easily. She is still in a relashe, and she and Connor meet every other
week and have travelled a lot over the summer to Italy and Barbados!
Adam is working in a company that means he is in Ireland a lot. Luckily,
he loves Ireland. As a consequence, I have been able to visit Dublin and
Belfast this past year. Dublin is buzzing, particularly as a lot of
companies are settling there in the wake of Brexit. There is so much to
do there and I even managed to say a little hello to the bones of St
Valentine on Valentine’s day. Honestly, there is a shrine to St Valentine
in Dublin!! with his actual bones!!
Belfast was a curious experience for me, as my Grandfather came from
Newtonards but my mother never knew him. It was like the Montagues
and the Capulets. He was from a sect called the Christian Brethren. He
knew there could never be a marriage, but yet my mother was born!! Not
very Christian! We know a little about the family but there is no desire
on their part to be in touch, so as I walked around, I wondered if I was
looking at cousins etc. It was a very strange feeling. The Antrim Coast is
stunning, and we were blessed with glorious sunshine at the Giant’s
Causeway. If you are ever tempted to go, I recommend it.
Our family holiday was to Croatia and I was touched that the girls still
want to come with us. I am savouring these days when it is just we four.
Dubrovnik is SOOOOO beautiful, although very busy, and one morning
Colette and I went out to the harbour at 5 am to experience the city in the
quiet. We were not alone!! Quite a few others had the same idea. After a
few days there we went to the island of Korcula. It had everything,
extraordinary beauty, and a rich history. Again, I can recommend!
As for me, I am more or less the same. Still working in a primary school
as an HLTA, (covering classes for teachers when they are out). It is
interesting, but sometimes very challenging. I, and others notice that
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children are increasingly struggling with the reasonable constraints
imposed by school. Things like sitting quietly through a lesson, following
instructions, and restraint are very difficult for some. Luckily, I am
sustained by the other things I do such as yoga, and teaching English to
recently arrived women. I love this as it feels like the world has come to
Chelmsford. I am also now a Stock Parish Councillor and am finding out
about a whole new world of ‘behind the scenes’. There is a lot to learn.
Well, I could go on, but you probably have had enough. All that remains
is to wish you all a happy Christmas and a peaceful and healthy new
year.
With love from Adam and Marge Colette, and Kezia Downing.
--Marge Colette
Combined Harvest Festival and
Christmas greetings
• Happy Christmas to all the congregation Love Irmi Martin.
• Christine and Henry wish all our friends at church a happy peaceful
Christmas and New Year.
• Season’s greetings to all the congregation, also too friends far and
wide. Peace and Love Pauline.
• Have a great Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year, to all at the
Church, from Peter and Jim.
• Have a lovely Christmas and a very happy New Year! Merryn, David,
Cerian, Bryn and John.
Message from John Craske (Chairman)
On behalf of the committee and the congregation, John would
like to thank the organists and pianists for the lovely music
which makes a wonderful contribution to our services.
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Anniversary Service
Our Harvest and Anniversary Services were held on November 4th.
During the Service, Pauline, Lol and two of our asylum seekers, Racheal
and Sylvia, gave their stories of how they came to be members of our
Unitarian Church.
The asylum seekers left their African homes, due to homophobic
persecution, to come to England. Having joined Rainbows Across
Borders, they were introduced to the Unitarian Church. Initially, they
were scarred to go into any church, after the horrific abuse they had
suffered in churches in their homeland. But now they are now keen
members of our Church.
Rainbows Across Borders
Singing at the Anniversary Service
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Once again, our Harvest Festival supported Night Watch in Croydon, by
the congregation providing donations of nonperishable goods, blankets
clothing etc.
The service was be followed by a light buffet lunch provided by our
usual caterers - JACE
Here is a picture of Pauline giving her story and a picture of Lol playing
his guitar.
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Remembrance Sunday Flowers
Here are some pictures of flowers and food donated by members of the
congregation:
Merryn’s flowers at the Service
Remembrance poppies
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Real Remembrance (Remembrance Sunday, 2018)
Here it is again, that day when ministers find ways to take time off,
and the pulpits of the small churches are full of guest preachers -
Remembrance Sunday. It is a day when the easy atmosphere of churches
seems edged with solemnity. It’s no time to make cheerful jokes from the
pulpit. It is a national mood that affects each one of us, whether we have
any consciousness of past wars or not.
This year is particularly significant. When we began our silence, it was
exactly 100 years since the signing of the Armistice that provided an all-
too-brief cessation of killing. And even then, the ugly fact of war continued
to destroy lives. More than 300,000 Germans, men, women and children,
starved to death due to an allied—mainly British—blockade. The war, in
its hot phase had ended, but the roots shouldered underground for another
twenty years before erupting in an even more deadly form.
There is much to regret, and much to take on board. But we as a
nation made a promise. We promised that in the years that passed after the
days of sacrifice that we would not forget what happened, that “At the
going down of the sun and in the morning”, we would remember them. So,
however conflicted we may feel about this day of national mourning,
whether or not it is too militaristic, even too jingoistic, that for this one day
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at least our thoughts would turn back to the bleakness of war and those
who were caught up in it.
Let’s travel mentally a few miles from here to the Mall. The Queen is
placing a wreath against the Cenotaph. So is the Prince of Wales, the
Prime Minister, the leaders of the opposition parties. Somewhere in a little
knot of clerics—thanks to the efforts of our own Roy Smith-- is our GA
president, Joan Cook. All around are the thousands: men in their eighties
and nineties, wearing strange caps and bedecked with medals and wearing
expressions that owe as much to anger as to sorrow. People in wheelchairs,
on crutches. People wearing kilts. WRENs and Coldstream guards, nurses
and railway workers. There is plaintive pipe music and the slow beating
of drums, prayers by splendidly bedecked priests, and that rarest of
things—silence.
It will surprise none of you that I have been known to cause offence on
such Sundays. Not by any intention of my own, but through a lack of
understanding of just how deep and important this day is to many of us.
I was born during the Second World War. My father was a naval officer.
I grew up hearing about the war in the Pacific, about horrible, barely
human people called “Japs” who had attacked us and killed many good
people. Until his death, my father refused to buy a Japanese car.
When I got a bit older, we had our own war to deal with. Vietnam. Like
so many of my contemporaries, I opposed it from the beginning. It seemed
unjust, terrifying and unnecessary. I was against it for good reasons and
bad ones. The politics were hollow and downright wrong. And I didn’t
want to die in a swamp without knowing why. Luckily, I was passed over
by conscription, but some of my friends went, some were injured, one was
killed and more were damaged by the experience afterwards to such an
extent that we couldn’t relate to each other. A few went to jail. I spent the
war worrying about having to go and hearing the nightly body count on
the news. I became a “peacenik”. Not a real pacifist, just someone who
wanted to say “no” to American adventures in SE Asia.
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Because of that, it has been hard for me to understand how people felt
who actually experienced the horrors of war. This is a confession. I
don’t approve of our presence in Afghanistan, and I didn’t approve at all
of the invasion of Iraq. I shudder to think of our part in the slaughter in
Yemen. I worry that our feelings of support and admiration of our
soldiers— though completely justified—confuses the issue and makes us
glorify militarism. But I feel sad when I hear of yet another young life
ended and see the images of coffins being lifted from the bays of aircraft
en route to their all-too-early funerals. I understand that it is hard - very
hard - to separate support for soldiers from love of war, and I cannot find
it in me to blame anyone who confuses them.
One fact comes back to me over and over. Wars are fought in the mud and
sand, and at sea and in the sky, but they always end at tables. The naïve
person might well ask: why can’t we just go straight to the table, and avoid
all the destruction?
But today is about more than just commemoration of the casualties of war.
It seems that Remembrance Sunday has assumed the role that All Souls
Day does in Latin cultures around the world. Both happen in November,
and both involve invoking the memories of those who have passed on. We
are witnessing the birth and development of that thing which has become
increasingly rare in our culture—ritual.
We are never without personal ritual. For example: what do you do in the
morning? If you’re like most of us, you will have evolved a routine—
ritual—that connects you to the day before and the day ahead. It may be
what you have for breakfast, what station your radio is tuned to or when
you have a bath. Whatever it is, if it is disturbed for any reason, a certain
mild unease will creep into your day. That’s a human thing. It helps you
make sense of your life by providing a space in which you pay attention to
the reality of the present, and also by providing as threshold for what is
next.
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If even these apparently trivial rituals are important, how much more
significant are the large shared rituals of a nation? If the small; rituals
provide the quality of paying attention and offer a threshold, how vital it
must surely be that in this watershed century, when the paradigm - as they
say - is shifting so rapidly that many of us are dizzy and confused, that
rituals come along to provide a niche where we can place a sense of
meaning? The new vital rituals of life will emerge from the depths of our
collective lives whether we seek them or not.
I think that this day has grown beyond its container and become much
more like a day to remember the dead - all the dead, whether in war or not.
Remembering the dead is not an easy business. For one thing, grief is not
the only emotion that comes with the act. Sorrow, of course, is the most
evident. But there are others: anger at the reasons for the death, anger at
what wasn’t done that might have been done to prevent it, anger even at
the person who has died and left us behind. Guilt and regret also appear at
the occasion. Things we wish we’d said or done and things we wish we
could now apologise for. And fear, because death is that one thing we can
barely contemplate, and yet so strongly demands our attention.
On this day we have an opportunity to purify our emotions, by focusing
with unblinking eyes at the reality of loss. It is a time when we can put
behind us all the little ruses and ploys, we use to evade the hard fact of
death. The denial which is never far away, which attempts to make
glorious something which is as inglorious as it is possible to be. I wince
when I pass those town monuments which say “to our glorious dead.”
It is a day when the peace of the grave can be used to hasten our own
forgiveness. Forgiveness not only of former enemies, but forgiveness of
those whose political posture toward war is the opposite of our own.
Peaceniks and crippled veterans could embrace in the streets. The defiance
of a dangerous lunatic like Hitler - and those who more recently follow
him-- should not become a defiance of current reality, when today’s
terrorists sometimes become tomorrow’s freedom fighters. The sentiments
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of wartime are comforting ones, but they are deadly when applied to a
world that begs our understanding.
My fantasy has always been that, if it were possible to revive the dead for
a few hours, that they would have some interesting things to tell us. They
might say that the things that so animated them in life now seem
unimportant. That the gulf between combatants, political opponents and
classes and races now seems absurd.
We cannot revive them, but it may be that we can remember them without
lumbering them with our own agenda. That we will not make them wear
different coloured uniforms and march to the band music that still fills our
ears. That in death they are allowed to join with the great ranks of everyone
who has passed this way and now, as the ancient phrase has it, rest in peace.
At this century’s remove, we have a chance to see, open-eyed, what we
must learn from history. See clearly, or - as George Santayana said - be
condemned to repeat it. We are older now, and hopefully bigger, and the
demand of our past is clear.
So, let us remember them rightly. All those who fell in the great reaper of
war: the aunt who died in a cattle car or a camp, the father who died before
we left our mother’s womb, the marine private surprised by a sniper four
days after the surrender, the accidental casualties of friendly fire, the brave
soldiers and the secret cowards, the innocents of Coventry and Dresden,
the builders of the bridge on the Kwai River, the maimed of Hiroshima.
The innocents bombed in their sleep in Palestine and Yemen, the victims
of the suicide bomb in the crowded market, the many, many millions now
in flight from their homes. Let us remember them, and in so doing mark
this time as a threshold and as a source of revival. This is no dusty history
lesson, but a vital lens by which to view our lives. It is there before us to
use, to make changes that will increase our claim to being human.
And so, yes, let us honour the promise we made. Let us remember well.
--Art Lester
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Help for Calais Refugees
by David Williams
I would like to thank everyone who donated clothes, etc for the refugees in Calais. I contacted the local representative and arranged a time to take the bags round. She was very thankful to everyone and wanted me to pass on her appreciation. She visits regularly to help out in Calais and will take our contributions on her next trip. She says it is still very difficult, especially for the men and older boys who are staying in tents and shelters in the woods near Calais as they have no way of keeping their belongings clean and dry, so new items are very welcome. She told me that many locals in Calais are helping with food, clothing etc and also allowing refugees into their homes to wash and get clean, something which is never reported. In her view, ordinary people like us and the locals in Calais are doing more to help than both Governments and, if one person can be helped, that is worth the effort. If you have any old clothes, blankets, etc please bring them in and I will take them over to her. Details of what are needed are on the following link, which also gives details of how you can make cash donations if you prefer. https://helprefugees.org/calais/needs-list/
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Calais needs list: the most needed items ... - Help
Refugees
Calais needs list: see our up-to-date list of the most
needed items for refugees in Calais and find out how to
donate them now - Help Refugees
helprefugees.org
-- David Williams
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A very proud Gran
The Royal Canadian Artillery and band were in the UK recently taking
part in many events, the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace
and Windsor, and The Lord Mayors Parade. My grandson Robert is a
bandsman in the troop.
The following photo was taken by the photographer who travels with
them, which I think is amazing it could have been taken 100 years ago.
Robert is the one with the euphonium,
--Pauline Peet, a very proud Gran
The “Getting to Know You” regular feature does not appear in this
issue, since there were no takers. If anyone is willing to participate
in future newsletters, please let us know.
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Happy Birthday!
We wish
Rev John Carter, Sajid Cheema, Lol Benbow and
Adam Downing
a very happy birthday:
From May 2018 a new law requires us to ask you if you would like
us to continue sending you emails. If you do not wish us to continue
sending you emails, could you please let us know? -- ed.
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BLANK PAGE
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The Croydon Unitarian and Free Christian Church
1 The Croydon Flyover, Croydon, Surrey CR0 1ER, Email [email protected],
www.croydonunitarians.org.uk Tel 020 8667 1681
Contact Information
Minister Rev. Art Lester
Manse: Email:
020 8656 3996 [email protected]
Chairman & President
John Craske Tel: Mobile : Email:
01342 604770 0798 2743333 [email protected]
Secretary Martin White
Tel: Email:
020 8715 6859 [email protected]
Treasurer David Williams
Tel: Email:
020 8661 2489 [email protected]
Webmaster Ross Burgess
Tel: Email:
020 8645 0943 [email protected] www.foxearth .net
General information from
Warden Lol Benbow Tel: 01689 841592 Mobile : 07932 154408 E - mail [email protected] For Church bookings, contact Lol Benbow.
The Open-Door Newsletter
Editors Peter & Jim
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 020 8681 6675, Mobile: 07758 943517
Could you please send us any contributions for the
February newsletter by Monday 21st January 2019