Little Gidding Pilgrimage 2020
Each year the Friends of Little Gidding, of which I am the Chair, organizes a Pilgrimage to Little Gidding. For the last few years this has taken the form of a walk from Leighton Bromswold to Little Gidding, with stops (or ‘stations’) for short reflections along the way. The day begins with a celebration of the Eucharist at Leighton Bromswold, and ends with Evensong at Little Gidding followed by Tea.
The events of 2020 made this format impossible, and instead we held an online event with a number of pre-recorded segments and some ‘live’ readings and prayers, as well as a little interaction between those taking part. Follow me as I walk from Leighton Bromswold to Little Gidding, introducing the various stopping points, and talking about the Ferrars’ experience of the devastating plague that hit London in 1625, and that forced them to leave the City and move to Little Gidding, while Fiona Brampton, Chaplain at Little Gidding, reflects on the impact of COVID-19 on us today.
Footage of me and video editing by Alexander Kershaw. Footage of Fiona filmed on my iPhone, and edited into the video by me, along with ‘live’ readings and prayers recorded via Zoom.
0 Comments2020-21 Almanac for Common Worship and BCP
Now available for the year beginning Advent Sunday 2020: Almanac, the calendar, lectionary and collects according to the calendar of the Church of England, for Common Worship and for the Book of Common Prayer. Download to your calendar or use the web app.
Download is free, donations are invited.
What's new?
The Almanac web page has been comprehensively updated since last year to make it easier and more useful. Updates include
- the download page and the daily view have been integrated into a single tabbed page
- the oremus Bible Browser (which includes the full NRSV, the AV, and the psalters from the prayer book and Common Worship) is added on another tab
- a resources tab provides direct links to all the official Common Worship texts, hymn suggestions (with links through to HymnQuest) and some other liturgical resources
- the Almanac daily view includes sunrise and sunset times, which can be customized to your location
- on phones and tablets you can add an Almanac icon or tile to your screen so that it is accessible like an app (details in the Help tab), and you can swipe forwards and backwards through the days, and through bible passages in the Bible tab
As usual, the Almanac is available in a number of formats for adding to Microsoft Outlook, Apple Calendar, iPhone or iPad, Google Calendar and other calendar applications. It can be synced from a desktop calendar to a tablet or smartphone (including Apple iPads and iPhones, Android phones and tablets, and Windows Surface tablets). There is also a csv format, which can be opened in a spreadsheet for further manipulation.
Naturally I hope that the Almanac is free of errors, but I disclaim responsibility for the effects of any errors. My liability is limited to providing a corrected file for import, at my own convenience. Please help by notifying me of possible errors.
Donations
This Almanac is offered free of charge, and without warranty, but as you might imagine it takes some effort to compile. If you would like to make a contribution to my costs then donations may be made via PayPal at paypal.me/simonkershaw. Alternatively, Amazon gift vouchers can be purchased online at Amazon (amazon.co.uk) for delivery by email to simon@kershaw.org.uk .
The Almanac web page carries the date 8 September 2000, so, as the Beatles sang, “it was twenty years ago” that I first provided a digital liturgical calendar, which in a couple of years evolved into a fully worked-out lectionary. There is not and has never been any charge for downloading and using the Almanac — this is just an opportunity to make a donation, if you so wish. Many thanks to those of you who have donated in the past or will do so this year, particularly those who regularly make a donation: your generosity is appreciated and makes the Almanac possible.
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Are individual cups legal for communion?
Since March, the Church of England guidance issued by the bishops has stipulated that communion should be received “in one kind” only, and that the chalice, the common cup, should be withheld from all except the priest taking the service. This has been backed by legal advice that a single cup must be used, and if it is impossible to share a common cup, then the cup should be withheld.
Now a group of barristers has challenged this legal advice that it is unlawful to use separate individual cups, issuing a contrary legal opinion that the overriding priority is that communion should be administered in both kinds, and that this should allow individual cups to be used.
The Church Times reports on this story here.
0 CommentsHeraldic Glass at Little Gidding
Little Gidding is a place with which I have a long association. It gave its name to TS Eliot’s last great poem and before that in the early 17th century Nicholas Ferrar and his extended family lived there in a household of prayer and work. Eliot famously described the tiny church at Little Gidding as a place where prayer has been valid, and hundreds of visitors and pilgrims come each year to experience the beauty and holiness of this quiet and peaceful place. Karen and I first visited Little Gidding when we moved to the area in 1986 and I’ve been Chair of the Friends of Little Gidding for the last decade. Another of my long-term interests is heraldry, which first drew my attention as a child at the end of the 1960s, and I have belonged to the Heraldry Society since 1974.
These two long-term interests come together in the windows of Little Gidding Church, which display the heraldry of Nicholas Ferrar, King Charles I, John Williams Bishop of Lincoln, and William Hopkinson, the 19th century landlord who restored the church. In an article on the website of the Friends of Little Gidding I describe the four windows and also investigate the coat of arms granted to Nicholas Ferrar’s father, Nicholas senior, and how this differs from the arms depicted in the window.
0 CommentsWhat happens next?
At around 2pm on Tuesday 30 January 1649, following a show trial and conviction, King Charles I was executed. It is said that a great moan “as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again” arose from the crowd assembled in Whitehall, and the event sent shockwaves around the country and across Europe. It was the most disruptive event seen in the country, certainly since Henry Tudor had defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth to bring a final end to the Wars of the Roses. King Charles had not perhaps been a great king, and his record as ruler is not unblemished: his misfortunes at least partly he had brought upon himself by his stubborness, and by his view of his role as king by divine right.
And today, 31 January 2020, we see another disruptive event. At 11pm this country will formally leave the European Union, bringing to an end the legal relationship that began nearly 50 years ago on 1 January 1973. It is an event that over the last few years has divided the country, divided families and friends in a way rarely seen. It would have been hard to predict, even five years ago, what would come to pass, and what a bitter turn our political system and political dialogue would take. But whatever misgivings many of us will feel, the legislation is in place, and the deed will happen later today. For many this is a sad and bitter day: the European project in which we have participated for half a century was forged in the aftermath of the Second World War. It originated in treaties that tied the former warring countries, led by France and Germany, into trade deals that made them more and more dependent on each other, and therefore so much less likely to go to war again. In the previous 100 years, France and Germany had been at war three times, Paris had twice been occupied by Germany, and Alsace-Lorraine had changed country four times. Alsace-Lorraine and its city of Strasbourg were a key coal and steel producing region, and the EU began as a “coal and steel community”. For 60 years or more the EU and its predecessors have played an important part in ensuring that there was not another war in western Europe – whilst the trans-Atlantic NATO alliance helped prevent war with the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellite states. The EU has also played its part in ensuring that our ideals of democracy and equality before the law, of freedom from state oppression and so on have prospered within its member countries. Greece, Portugal and Spain, all formerly under the rule of right-wing or military dictatorships, were the first to benefit from this, their fledgling democracies joining the Community in the 1980s. And after the fall of the Soviet Union the countries of eastern Europe queued up to join the Union, keen for both the economic benefits and the support for democracy and rule of law. These benefits have not come for free. The EU and its predecessors have funded the development of poorer parts of Europe, helping to remove the social problems that led to political problems. That has meant that the richer, more stable countries, such as our own, as well as France and Germany and the richer north-western fringe have seen a net outflow of money, of tax revenue. That is perhaps the price of peace, and is considerably cheaper both financially and in terms of human lives than war would have been. But overall there has been a longer period of peace between these countries than at any time in the past, and a greater and prolonged period of economic prosperity, despite various hiccups along the way.
So what happens next?
We know what happened after the execution of Charles I.
In the immediate aftermath, Parliament, led by Cromwell, refused to allow the proclamation of the Prince of Wales as King Charles II, and instead declared the abolition of the monarchy. A republican form of government, the “Commonwealth”, was put in place, the House of Lords abolished, and bishops removed. The rump of the Long Parliament (which had engineered the king’s trial and execution) continued to sit. That Parliament had been elected in 1640, before the Civil War, though at the end of 1648 the Army, led by Colonel Pride, had expelled those members that did not support the Army. In 1653, Cromwell ejected this Rump Parliament and the country essentially became a kind of military dictatorship, with Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the Army, as the strongman.
In 1659, after Oliver Cromwell had died, there was finally a reaction. The Long Parliament was restored, and it called for a return to monarchy. After a period of negotiation, in May 1660 the eldest son of Charles I returned to England from exile in the Netherlands, and was proclaimed and crowned as King Charles II. The restored monarchy was not quite the same as that which had been abolished in 1649, and Charles II understood the limits within which he ruled. It had taken 11 years from the execution of his father until the Restoration, and many of those years must have been dark and difficult for the exiled prince, and dark and difficult for his supporters back in Britain. But eventually they prevailed, and the republican Commonwealth was consigned to history, a mere footnote in the list of Kings and Queens.
Will something similar happen? Will there be a period in which this country gradually comes to see that it has made an enormous mistake, leading eventually to a reassessment of our position, and finally a significant majority to want to rejoin the European Union? That is my hope and expectation. Maybe it will take a decade or more, just as it took a decade or so for the monarchy to be restored in 1660. It does take time to make such a major change in political direction, and right now we are moving on the opposite course.
But the dark day of 30 January 1649 held the promise of restoration. And this dark day too, 31 January 2020, holds that promise also.
Remember!
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