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Clocks go
back on Sunday 29 October!
Welcome to
our website
We hope that
you will enjoy looking around, and will come back often, as
the site is updated every week. Our aim is to capture the spirit
of St. Andrew's Church online - our faith, our worship, our people, and
our community.
Our church is
first of all a spiritual centre, a place where people can find God, be
nourished in their spiritual journey, and grow in their life of faith.
If you could come along to one of our services your presence would be a
joy to us and to God.
If you have any
questions or suggestions please do contact us using the 'Get in Touch' button.
You will find all of our contact details there, including access to a
location map. We also love to know a little more about our web guests,
and would really appreciate it if you could take a moment to sign our
Visitors' Book.
Again,
welcome and thanks for visiting our site.
Featured on our website this
week:
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"A sublime piece full of gentle,
uplifting hope for mankind". |
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Amici to sing the
Fauré
Requiem
at St. Andrew's - 2/11/06
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Colour
Supplement -
Leaving
Church:
a book
review
by Gordon
Atkinson |
Colour Supplement -
Beyond the veil -
by Nick Spencer
of LICC |
Colour Supplement -
Living the Word:
The Rt Revd Peter Price, Bishop of Bath
and Wells
on next Sunday's readings |
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See previous weeks' editions of our
Colour Supplement |
At school and love to sing?
Join
Voices Raised! |
See previous weeks'
editions of our
Homepage |
Behind the veil (continued)
When I
began writing this weekly column a short while ago I had no clear idea
of how it might be received. So it has been great to learn that
some people are not only reading it, but that they enjoy it, or find
things of interest within it. So thanks to those of you within St.
Andrew's who have encouraged me to continue with this.
My piece
about the Muslim veil
last week had
its roots in my own wish to know more about the background to recent
events in the news. I am delighted to learn that I am not alone in
this, having today received an e-mail from Vanessa, who lives in
Hampshire, and found my article as a result of a web-search.
Vanessa writes:
"I am a Christian who
has Asperger's Syndrome and is hard of hearing. I came to your site
because of a link about the Muslim veil (which I am exploring in order
to help me understand the recent controversy). Something that is
forgotten is that for hard of hearing/deaf people who lip-read a
non-see-through veil like the one Muslim women wear is bound to to be a
barrier to communication."
Vanessa makes a very valid and thoughtful point, and I suspect she is
right that this will not occur to many people.
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I have spent a while trying to find something helpful on the
internet about how Muslims might respond to this very practical
challenge of communicating with the deaf or hard of hearing
person who lip-reads. Would the need to communicate with the
hard of hearing person over-ride the need to be veiled? |
Unfortunately I have not been able to find anything
authoritative on the web about this. If anyone reading this knows
the answer please feel free to e-mail me using the link below. I
also wonder about the practicalities of eating out in public for a woman who
wears the veil. Can she eat only in the company of women?
It is encouraging that
there are Christians who are taking the time to research some of these
questions and try to understand the answers. It is easy to read the
headlines and hear the sound bites and think that we already know it
all.
For another thoughtful view
on all of this please read
Nick Spencer's piece in this week's Colour Supplement.
Henri Nouwen wrote
eloquently and with passion about how it is to live in a world of
"strangers". And in conclusion, this week, I would like to quote
from his extraordinary book "Reaching Out", in which he wrote:
"In our world full of
strangers, estranged from their own past, culture and country, from
their neighbours, friends and families, from their deepest self
and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place
where life can be lived without fear and where community can be
found. Although many, we might even say most, strangers in
this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is
possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an
open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their
strangeness and become our fellow human beings. The movement
from hostility to hospitality is hard and full of difficulties.
Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive,
aggressive people anxiously clinging to their property and inclined
to look at their surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting
an enemy to suddenly appear and do harm. But still - that is
our vocation: to convert the hostility into hospitality, the enemy
into a guest and to create the free and fearless space where
brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced."
Henri Nouwen writes as a
Christian, but it seems to me that the spirit of his words could be
embraced by men and women of all religions and none.
With blessings from your
friends at St. Andrew's.
Adrian
Webmaster
NOTE: I am the webmaster of
St. Andrew's Church, not clergy or a reader. I write as 'a man in
a pew' and so you should not assume that I necessarily know what I'm
talking about, or that what I say reflects the views of other people in
our church.
To read previous weeks' FWIWs please click
here.
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