NEWSLETTER 2020 No. 1
Upcoming services
All are welcome to attend. Contact us on 0427 115 468 for details of the venue.
Sunday 29 March, Passion Sunday (5th Sunday of Lent)
Colour: Violet
Intent: Humility
Sunday 5 April, Palm Sunday (Sunday next before Easter)
Colour: Violet
Intent: The triumphal entry to Jerusalem
Thursday 9 April, Maundy Thursday
Colour: White
Eucharist before the exposed Host
Friday 10 April, Good Friday
Colour: Violet
Sunday12 April, 1st Sunday of Easter
Colour: White
Sunday 19 April, 2nd Sunday of Easter
Colour: White
Sunday 26 April, 3rd Sunday of Easter
Colour: White
Lent and Easter
Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere,
“Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the true old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.”
These words of Sir Bedivere from Tennyson’s “Morte d’Arthur” perhaps capture something of the times we find ourselves in, here in March 2020. For elderly members of our community, the memories of polio and the drastic measures taken to maintain life are still vivid. We can remember taking the vaccine which protected us “baby-boomers” from that terrible affliction. We thought little of it then but we all know what a global game-changer that polio vaccine was.
More recently we have travelled through SARS and “swine flu” (H1N1) which affected us living in Australasia than our Asian neighbours. As reported in December 2009, Australia had 37,537 confirmed cases of H1N1 and 191 deaths India reported 1833 deaths. The virus was not easily transmitted to humans and between humans. Our current visitor, Covid-19, on the other hand, is easily transmitted between humans and is not symptomatically detected for many days. This aspect of Covid-19, in particular, raises a good deal of uncertainty and worry, and as a community we are faced with a large natural force which we cannot control.
We are used to go where we wish to, attend whatever gathering interests us, travel anywhere in the planet that takes our fancy. We have become busy travelers, our lives filled with many activities, pastimes and enjoyable experiences. So now when our personal “train” stops, unexpectedly, we are thrown about, psychologically, and like Sir Bedivere, we can’t see what to do and how to manage.
As I write this newsletter, we are travelling through Lent with its special Intents which were formulated by our founding Bishops: Self-examination, Control of Speech, Understanding, Spiritual Refreshment and Humility. Lent is a period of reflection and preparation for the Easter festival. The degree of intensity of our preparation will have a significant bearing on our understanding and appreciation of the Easter message and our level of participation in the services offered by the Church leading up to and including Easter Day.
What do we mean by spiritual growth in the context of Lent and the period leading up to Easter? One concept is that spiritual growth is the process of gaining a deepening awareness of the interconnectedness of God’s laws. In our Act of Faith, we say “…. that perfect justice rules the world ….”. We hear people commenting on the news in the popular press, the injustices in their lives or how unfair life can be. We should always deepen our understanding by probing behind superficial news, using the full extent of the LCC teachings and principles that reach back to the time of Jesus and before. These teachings rest on the very deep roots of learning that we call the Ancient Wisdom and they help us to realize fully what God’s laws actually mean in our daily lives, here and now. During this pandemic that we are all involved in, social media, endless news and local gossip are all cultivating fear and agitation around us.
Using the example of recent events and looking at them through a lens of God’s Laws, can we contemplate the following and find our way to a better understanding of “perfect justice”?:
- Evolution continues on all levels of God’s kingdom, which means that there is constant change in Mankind, the Angel realms and beyond. This involves periods of time when there is accelerated change in all domains – comfortable or distinctly uncomfortable!
- All physical life forms experience returning lives following death.
- There is a balancing of all past actions as we return to earth for new life experiences.
Returning now to where our forlorn and despondent Sir Bedivere could see no way forward that was worth following, his mental state could be compared with feelings in our general community where we all try to make sense of it all and find our way forward. We can take guidance form the conclusion of this particular story and take time to ponder the deep wisdom of the poem expressed towards its conclusion:
And slowly answered Arthur from the barge,
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfills himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world”
Let us all take the wider view of life and Christ’s active influence in every facet of our activities, while at the same time seeking opportunities for service to our friends, neighbours and community in these difficult and unusual times.
With God’s blessing
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