Page 3 - br-march-2020
P. 3

March 2020                            March 2020


 DATES FOR    BISHOP’S LETTER

    YOUR DIARY    Dynamo Light

       Perhaps it was growing up in the power-cuts of the early seventies, but I tend to
 2020
       collect lamps and torches of all kinds - and am always ready to be persuaded of
       the  need  to  buy  another. The  least  satisfactory I’ve  ever  owned,  however,  was
 Key: FG-Floral Group, AL-Autumn Leaves, TA– Twinning, WI-Women’s   the dynamo light fitted to my bicycle as a boy. The basic problem was that this
 Institute, PiP-Pop in Place, GC-Gardening Club   depended on you to keep pedalling – so along a flat road, the light would shine
       nicely, but grew dimmer climbing a hill and became a sad glow by the time you
       reached the top. Its crucial flaw, however, became evident as soon as you had
 18th  Salt and Pepper Club
       to stop at a junction. Then, at the very point when you most needed to be seen
       by other road users, the light would desert you.
 23rd  Communibus  -  Ottery Nursery, Exeter
       For those serving the local church, it can be all too easy to think that, if we just
 25th  PiP Summer Show   6.00pm   pedal a bit harder, the light will shine a bit brighter. The trouble is that, when the
       road gets rough and steep, or a crossroads is reached, our energies and hope
       can fade, like the beam of the dynamo.
 26th  PiP Summer Show   7.00pm
       John’s Gospel reassures us that the light of life is generated by God’s work, not
 27th  PiP Summer Show   2.00pm   ours – and powered by his glory. Glory is our one inexhaustible energy supply: an
       eternal current that anyone must connect to if they really want to live. It shines
    July      from the relationship between Jesus and his heavenly father, empowered by the
       Holy  Spirit.  This  divine  dynamo,  we  learn,  charges  most  powerfully  at  the  points
 7th   Communibus  -  Portland Bill      where human resources give out - when the wine runs dry at the wedding, or the
       well  is  deep  and  you  don’t  have  a  bucket.  And  where  this  glory  shines  most
       brightly,  we  find,  is  the  cross  of  Christ,  that  fatal  junction  where  all  else  turns  to
 7th   FG: Irene Hickson: Chelsea Gold
       darkness.
 8th   AL: A speaker from Natural England      None of us is especially luminous on our own: we are the light of the world only
       with Christ shining through us. May he renew our strength and our hope as we turn
 16th  Salt and Pepper Club      to him.
                                                                  Bishop Andrew
 22nd  Communibus  -  New Forest Lavender

    August


 11th  Communibus  -  Groves Nursery and West Bay
 12th  AL: Home Grown Entertainments, bring a pencil and a poem

 20th  Salt and Pepper Club

 25th  Communibus  -  Sidmouth

 82                                          3
   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8