From the Vicarage - March

I have always loved losing myself in a good book. It began with being read to both at home and at school. I still have some of those childhood books tucked away on one particular bookshelf. What childhood books do you still treasure? What words or phrases remain with you, because of having those books read to you?

This year marks the 100^th Anniversary of the first ‘Winnie the Pooh’ book, the lovable character who originally appeared in one simple story published in the London Evening News on Christmas Eve, 1925. Since then, Pooh has become a character on countless bookshelves, and in many cases the little bear’s antics and vocabulary have accompanied us into adulthood. Who doesn’t walk through a certain kind of woodland and call it the ‘100 Aker Wood’, or has never stopped at a footbridge to play ‘Pooh Sticks’? In my family, we still on occasions recite and laugh at the words of the puzzled bear who on hearing mention of what Owl called ‘customary procedures’ asked, “What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean…I am a bear of Very Little Brain and long words bother me?”

Long or short, words and stories like that often work best when read out loud. But after a certain age, how often do we read out loud? In the Church we do. Every week, all year round – we tell and hear and share our faith story in a way which encourages us to carry it with us, not just from childhood to adulthood, but f

rom church-life into daily-life. 

The season of Lent too is for encouraging a more focused habit of reading scripture. Reading scripture together, and out loud, still helps us to grow our understanding of how to read and understand it, and perhaps most importantly allows us to say, ‘Just a minute….’, when long or unfamiliar words or concepts bother us! There are some real ‘Crustimoney Proseedcake’ moments in scripture! 

Then, as we reach the high point of Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week (this year 29^th March) we read out loud the story of Jesus’ life from the eve of Maundy Thursday (his Last Supper) and then through Good Friday (his Trial, Sentencing and Crucifixion), before pausing and waiting with baited breath, for the finale of Resurrection!

Strangely enough, for those of us who value this reading out loud tradition, it is about so much more than losing ourselves in a good book – it is in fact, about Finding Ourselves in the Good Book. Jesus’ Life and Death, followed by Resurrection, is a story in which countless people have found themselves – their true selves, their better selves, their whole selves, their living selves!

Read it for yourself – out loud! (try Matthew, Chapter 26 verse 14 – end of the Gospel).  Better still, hear it read out loud – (try our All-Age Eucharist on Palm Sunday @ 10am, or Good Friday @ 2pm.)

Please know you are welcome to all which the Church offers

over this holy, story-telling season.

~ Rev’d Carolyn