From the Registers

Weddings

Saturday 28th June: St Felix. Jonathan Bowes, farmer, son ofMr and Mrs John Bowes of Thirlby, to Cathy Goddard, veterinary nurse, daughter of Mr and Mrs Raymond Goddard. They will live at Primrose Hill, Kirby Knowle.

Saturday 5th July: St Mary Leake. Dr Michael Morley, son of Mr and Mrs Alan Morley, and Caroline Cowton, nurse, daughter of Mr and Mrs Frank Cowton of Thwaites Farm, Nether Silton.

Funerals. There were packed churches on

Friday 27th June. St Felix. Thanksgiving Service for the life of David Price, 59, of Woodcock, husband of Di and father of Simon and Toby, following a burial service at Harrogate Crematorium.

Monday 7th July. St Wilfrid, Kirby Knowle. David Winterschladen, 58, of Borrowby, husband of Geraldine, after a lengthy creeping illness. Our best wishes to all his family and future grandchild.

August 2003

The Great Yorkshire Show (July 8th-10th) - a Diary

Tuesday

7.30 a.m. beat the traffic. and it's Morning Prayer followed by breakfast. Although the programme this year has missed off the announcement, the commentator from the Main Ring box still announces Prayers and rings the bell. This - for many who attend and many more who cannot because of animals to feed and stewarding to be done - sets the tone ofthe Show by rooting it in an aura of thankfulness to God, the Creator and Provider.

The rest of the Chaplain's day then devolves from this. A pastoral beginning is easy because I know some of my own parishioners are showing Jersey or Shorthorn cattle and others from the parish have stands. Today it was more of a family approach with my wife Liz helping with morning prayers - and Felix our son asleep in the buggy! We therefore had to take in the tractor rows and call at the bank to pay in the collection. As a result many friends and familiar faces, encountered over the years, are met. I even discovered a picture of great-grandfather on one stand something to show Felix!

Because it is an agricultural show the wider rural scene is explored and so helps to bring me up to date. Over the years I have ended up with diverse sermon material but also food for thought about the agribusiness and the countryside. Two of those sermons came from the oriental carpet stand: one a story based on the design of the birds of paradise and other symbols, and, on another occasion, a story about a lad finding his Christian feet after prompting from his Muslim landlord.

During the day many people want to discuss the state of the local church - their church still remains important in their home locality. I decided to record the number of hits - as on a website - from those who asked about the sometime likely future Bishop of Reading. Discussion was lively and concerned. Personally I feel the Church of England bottled out and should have gone ahead with a man who was honest about his circumstances. Instead, the issue has been ducked and pushed under the carpet. Where is the real, forgiving and honest Church? Yet these sentiments which I encountered reflect a real concern for the Church and a deep love for it - and this in turn, I feel, is what The Great Yorkshire Show expresses about Thanks to God for all He provides and how the rural community realise that dependence.

Wednesday.

Prayers again at 7.30 - farmed out today to the Church Tent team. It is good to start the morning at prayer with others, for, living nowhere near a church, it is something I cannot do in our parish. Furthermore the congregation is larger than any single Sunday service that I take, so it is great encouragement for all who come. Police and their sniffer dogs are invited but are too busy to search their souls!

The Church Tent had done an interesting theme on water. Very simple, low cost with good illustrations. This prompted some, who remarked on it to me, to remember other places or visits to places they recognised. Perhaps a theme another year could be memories, culminating in eating bread and wine in memory of me.............

Hits on the church website today had hunting outnumbering Dr John and Reading. It is ironic that Oscar Wilde was incarcerated in Reading gaol where he contracted his terminal illness. Hunting is on the agenda today because I started in the hound show. Outlawing citizens who make a freewill choice to join a natural function within nature's cycle does not make for good government or good legislation. One question I raised for the Burns report was - how will it be policed if banned? Our Chief Constable is the 3rd to say it will be impossible - and if the lads from the station arrest the M.F.H. where will they put his horse and will the hounds fit in their cells until the case comes to Court? Shades of a Brian Rix farce!

I met up with an old friend at the forestry and we toured some of the other events after he'd received his award for Managed Woodland. It was a day of record attendance and it was almost more difficult stepping over sunbathing bodies than threading a path through crowds of shoppers. Yes, it is a day out and I meet plenty of people and saw new things.

Thursday

It was good to stop and hear the bell this morning to herald Morning Prayers. I hoped it did not anticipate too many eliminations in the Cock of the North. The whole service was recorded for Radio York on the 13th July. I felt, on this day, that the best help I could give the Society was to encourage people to share the journey another time, so to reduce the 21,600 cars that clogged the roads around Harrogate.

I saw the poultry. I saw the shire horses being shod. I saw the fashion display! Meals were spent in good company with lots of laughter. There was a slight easing in tension, being the third day - but it was good to go home with a smile and a thankful heart

(1 On the Thursday I met a farmer (retired) at Thirsk Station, 8 a.m., who, on the previous day, had abandoned his journey at the Al/A64 roundabout. Ed.)

LEAKE CHURCH FETE - 4th July

Many thanks to all those who worked so hard to make it a success, on a wonderful evening of sunshine! Special thanks to Maureen Todd and the Footloose Dancers. The sum of £775 was raised. Rosemary Dinwiddie.
PS Anybody missing a Blue-tit nesting box, please contact Rosemary.

A SPECIAL THANK YOU!

If belated, to Dorothy Reveley for her Lent collection for Leake Church via the shop in Thirsk. The noble and most useful sum of £98-36 was raised - a most imaginative display, legs and all!

A THOUGHT

Should you go to Bolton Priory there are stepping stones across the river to the N.E. Prayer is rather like stepping stones. It is a way across a difficulty. Sometimes the stones are uncovered and safe, sometimes wet and slippery, sometimes sufficiently under water to be still passable. Sometimes, again, they are flooded and cannot be used. Prayers encounter the same conditions, which we have to assess and adjust to. We may have to wait until we can cross TH.

BOOK REVIEW First Light, by Geoffiey Wellum (Penguin, 2003). My son gave me this, for my 68th birthday. You may know of this book, and many books have been written on those aching, agonising moments, in a "dogfight", that were encountered by many a fighter pilot in WW2. Somehow Geoffiey, a Spitfire pilot then in his late 'teens, wrote down his thoughts after each sortie - and, many years later, set them down in print. And, throughout that book, we also read of the power of Prayer - and references to the Almighty, who saw him safely home, every time. Ed.