Dear Friends,

"SAY ONE FOR ME .......

Some of you will be aware that clergy are required to say Morning and Evening Prayer daily (sometimes called, the Daily Office (officium duty) When you work on your own as I do (i.e. no curates), this is often most easily achieved in one's own time at home, in a quiet moment. The discipline of this gives rise to the term 'Vicar', for prayer is offered vicariously, meaning 'on behalf of others'; such is the privilege of the ministry, to pray for the whole parish and it’s needs.

It is now 2 years since I began saying Evening Prayer on Wednesdays at Reach @ 5.00 pm, and there have been precious few occasions when I have been alone. I will remember joining the clergy in Ludlow Parish Church for Evening Prayer some days on my way home from the office in our time (1983-98). Thus it occurs to me that the discipline of saying my prayers could be more public, in each village of the benefice; the proposal, backed by the -PCCs, is therefore-as follows:

Evening Prayer will be said as follows: -

Swaffham Bulbeck Tuesdays 5.30 pm

Reach Wednesdays 5.30 pm

Swaffham Prior Thursdays 5.30 pm

Might you find this short 'space for God' a helpful discipline in the midst of a busy week? You should hear the bell tolling to remind you that prayers are about to be said.

The value of other people being there, is that self-evidently I cannot always be there for reasons of meetings, funerals, etc-(on such days I say my office when time permits), but at Reach it has been particularly valuable for a core of regulars to be able to 'say the office', to maintain the framework of prayer, in any absence, thereby facilitating others who might have come for the first time, or at a particular moment of crisis. The service is in contemporary, accessible, language, moving through Greeting, Confession, Absolution, Psalm, Reading, Canticle, Prayers and Dismissal, and lasting no more than 20 minutes.

This pattern begins in September, and is linked to the 'laying down' of 3 of the 4 services of Holy Communion on Thursdays @ 10 am in Swaffham Bulbeck. This will become monthly on 1st Thursdays @ 10. 00 am, which, quarterly, is the Mothers Union Corporate Communion. On 1st Thursdays I will be taking the sacrament to the housebound, as I do now to two people; anyone wishing to receive similarly need only ask, and I will schedule the end of the morning accordingly.

Sundays, sadly not now what they once were, remain, though, the cornerstone of commitment

..... church-going folk being together on the Lord’s Day. (Last month's letter spelt out the basic pattern of 4 services each Sunday in the 3 villages)

I hope you have a -really good summer, and return refreshed , able to find your niche amongst the 'fine-tuning' of the pattern of worship as we enter the autumn. Your comments on any of these proposals will be welcome.