December 2000 - the children!

"Is not this the carpenter's son?" (Matthew 13v33, Mark 6v3). Note the difference of emphasis: Mark makes plain that Jesus was a carpenter like his father. The Christ child was destined from the beginning to break out of the mould and change our lives. His parents were well-established - his father, as a carpenter, had a good skilled job that he would learn from an early age. However, strange visitors at his unusual birthplace gave him the opportunity for a wider and deeper education. Not all the gold can have been spent in Egypt! Yet in Christ we find a person who not only, obviously, followed his earthly father literally but in time came to follow his heavenly father as obediently and robustly. It is perhaps here that we have a meeting of the human and the divine in the one person. He grew from one into the other.

The whole mystery of Christmas should be an excellent time to fire up the imagination of children. Sadly we often burden them down with material gifts and the unreality of a Father Christmas hijacked from the actions of St.Nicholas, who restored children, destitute women and sailors to a normal life mindful of the redeeming power of God. Do we, in fact, spoil our children at Christmas with the material world while failing to draw them into the embrace of dependence on God? Here there should be appropriate thanks to God, and an awareness of accountability to God, for all their actions.

Children at play set their own rules and parameters, so does God for our moral and spiritual lives. We may survive without them but we are better off if we develop our spiritual side. A child will survive the rigours and confines of their own play. However, too much television, too much organisation, too many computer games, puts it all on a plate and the child develops very little. Few children today seem aware of much beyond themselves. Perhaps lessons were better learned when the summer holidays were harvest time, when half-term in the winter term was the potato harvest. Then children were involved in the everyday necessity of getting the food home - and drawn into the harvest thanksgiving in church too - because they had played a part in it. As a result they imbibed a spirituality and a language by doing, being, and learning by heart. All these experiences set them up for life, for they had something on which to draw.

Now entertainment comes first. Plenty of games, plenty of TV, which often makes the make-believe too possible - perhaps even too real. Maybe to be all dressed up in dressing gowns and tea-towels for the church nativity play, at the behest of and under the direction of adults, is not beneficial for them - they have probably done it at school anyway! How I hated it when I was six!

Do they have time to be? Do they have time to read and dream and make their own pictures rather than be pushed into those imposed from other sources? The children may be made to entertain the adults but is all the play acting and carol singing, very much part of school life as well, theirs? Have they expressed themselves other than with clean hands and smiling faces, and begun to lay their own spiritual foundations and involvement?

The Church of England is always digging a hole for itself, not least by having a discipline and then totally ignoring it! One aspect of this is infant baptism, which is so easily confused with a thanksgiving for the birth of a child. In baptism no way can the child be a full communicant and active member of the Church of England, yet at baptism the child has all the rights of full membership and can demand, when adult, marriage and burial without ever going to church again. What is lost is the opportunity to lay a foundation, to find their own feet, to experience a bit of meaning, and, above all, a bit of the cost and sacrifice that is a part of being Christian.

We seem to be giving children - today's church not tomorrow's - too much of the wrong things on a plate. We cannot give them experience: that has to come of its own accord when they are receptive enough. Some children, as a result of domestic situations, do end up with old heads on young shoulders - whilst others never seem to grow up at all! At the end of the day, it is a private and personal journey, when the child become adult is ready. We can only hope to lay the same foundation, as the Christ child who found and developed his spiritual feet ("Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business?" when 12: Luke 2v49) alongside his working training until he was ready to plough his own furrow. We must give our own children the same room and space to develop their own life and spiritual life. However, they need our encouragement and example, otherwise their future spiritual life is as remote as a Christmas present left unopened on a high shelf; too often a lack of follow-up by the parents and godparents leaves the child high and dry. Use Christmas to fire up their imaginations with the mystery of it all ......... give them the space they need!

"Vestry Hour" If you want to contact me, or to sign something, Monday mornings is best, but please ring first. Between 7.30 a.m. and 8.45 a.m. is a good time! Please let the 'phone ring a while too! Toddy (537277).

FROM THE REGISTERS

Holy Baptism
5th November. Leake St.Mary. Ben Ross Muirhead, infant son of Ian Muirhead and Melinda Garton of Nab Farm, Kepwick.

Holy Matrimony
25th November. Holy Trinity, Boltby. Gina Halstead and Keith Jackson of Thirlby. He is a mechanical engineer and she is a doctor.

IMPORTANT!
1. House communions, over the Christmas/New Year, please let me know .......
2. Those for confirmation in 2001 - July 24th - please also let me know, asap.

It is with great regret that, having suffered chronic bronchitis since early September, I have been unable to visit as widely as I would have liked. I have not enjoyed the condition and the wet weather has not helped. However I would not wish it on anybody else as much as I would like to be rid of it. Some improvement as I write is noticeable! Toddy.

N.S.P.C.C. Space here for a word of thanks to all those who helped with the Christmas Coffee Morning in Knayton Village Hall on 15th November. Over £700 was raised ................................ thank you all!!

MOVING TOWARDS A CULTURE OF PEACE

The United Nations has proclaimed this millenium year as The Year of the Culture of Peace. Thirsk Meeting of the Society of Friends wholeheartedly supports this campaign and, with the backing of Churches Together in Thirsk, has been holding public discussion group meetings at The Friends Meeting House in Kirkgate.
On Sunday 10th December, 2.00 to 3.30 p.m., the final meeting will be at St Mary's Church, Thirsk. The input in this last meeting must come from you. You will have heard the experts, now we will ask you to put forward your solutions and ideas for how best to spread a culture of peace in our own country and every country.
John Simpson, Assistant Clerk to Thirsk Quakers (01845 597465)

Language in Worship

"Thou", denoting a person or thing, and its cases "thee, thine and thy" were in common use in Old English together with their plurals "ye, you, your and yours". In Middle English the plural forms, only, began to be used when addressing individuals of superior status, and later in Modern English when addressing equals, but not when addressing inferiors. Though the Quakers persisted in using all Old English forms of address into modern times. In Modern English "thou, thee, thine and thy" are generally used only in addressing God or Christ.
Because there is only one of them?
Because they don't need to be flattered?
Wouldn't this be an interesting story to tell the children?
Yours sincerely, Geoff Robson.

COUNCIL for the PROTECTION of RURAL ENGLAND 

The CPRE Hambleton District Branch AGM was held at Borrowby on Friday 10th November.

The President, Lord Crathorne, explained that the "Countryside and Rights of Way Bill" would soon be on the Statute books. Several issues were being addressed:
- the control of dogs especially in the breeding season for ground nesting birds.
- the right to roam during the hours of darkness.
- the possibility of landowners being sued if people injured themselves.

Jude Courtier then told the meeting about the role of Yorkshire Forward, the Regional Development Agency covering Yorkshire and Humberside, in improving the region's competitiveness. An integrated transport strat-egy for the region was important - there were six priorities.

The next event planned for the branch will be an evening visit to the newly refurbished Kiplin Hall in early summer 2001.
Secretary - Miles Garnett, e-mail: miles@knipes.freeserve.co.uk

Into the Year 2001

"If in this life only ..........." 1 Cor 15.10

I am writing this at the time when the widows of Russian submariners have at last some relief from their fear that the sunken ship Kursk would be their husband's last resting place. This event brought to my mind the story of a much earlier shipwreck off the Kent coast in 1875. A sailing vessel, the Deutschland, with a full complement of crew and passengers bound for America, foundered on the Goodwin Sands. The attention of the poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins, then living away in Wales, was drawn to the story primarily because among the passengers were five German nuns (refugees from persecution in in their home state), who had embarked at Bremen. As the inevitable loss of the ship came closer these women proved to be a focus of courage and hope:
'Hope had grown grey hairs
Hope had mourning on ..........'
and then from the youngest sister came a cry of faith in Christ that was remembered by those who survived the shipwreck In this, many lives were lost, including all five sisters .................
Paul's reflection on his own chequered experience of journeys in ministry are relevant here (Romans 5.3-5):
"We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."
Recently (late October 2000) we have seen the return home from Burmah of a young man who for love of God's people has followed in the steps of Jesus and drawn hostility toward himself as his way of bringing hope to the oppressed - a living discipleship such as Paul describes.
Hope is very distinct from optimism or wishful thinking, for it looks at the present and foreseeable future with eyes wide open. It arises from facing reality to the best of one's understanding. I am sure that when the secrets of all hearts are known, there will appear a glorious company of men and women who at the moment are bearing witness to God's purpose of love to all, and thereby opening new windows of hope and freedom in Christ. Let another poet lead us into Year 2001:
"All my hope on God is founded
he doth still my trust renew
Me through change and chance he guideth
only good and only true
God unkown
he alone
Calls my heart to be his own." (Robert Bridges)

MIRIAM HANSON