Rev. Mindy’s Meanderings

We have much to celebrate and you are invited to join us. On Sunday the 18th of May, members of Stony Stratford, Hanslope, and Deanshanger Methodist Churches are gathering together with others to celebrate. These are some of the things we will be celebrating:

• the planting of a “new” Wesley tree* on the Market Square in Stony Stratford
• the visit of the Vice-President of Methodist Conference (the elected lay leader of British Methodists for the year 2008), Mrs. Ruby Beech, to dedicate the “new” Wesley tree
• Rev. John Wesley’s leadership of our Sunday service (John Wesley, 1703-1791, was the founder of the Methodist movement and will be portrayed by actor Mark Topping.)
• Hanslope Methodist Church’s 180th Anniversary
• Stony Stratford’s Methodist Church’s Anniversary
• the long and faithful history of the people called Methodist in the life of our communities.

The above picture was taken on the occasion of the planting of the “new” Wesley tree. It is this tree that will be dedicated on the 18th of May. The following is the list and location of festivities on the 18th of May. We are pleased that the mayor-elect and members of the Stony Stratford town council will be joining us. You are welcome to join us for any or all of the festivities no matter if your interest is local history, Methodism, trees, Christian worship or any other reason.

10:00 am Worship Service @ Russell Street School

11:00 am Procession to the Wesley Tree, Market Square

11:15-ish Dedication of the Wesley tree & unveiling of the plaque by Mrs. Ruby Beech

11:45 am Tea, Coffee, & Cake in the Stony Stratford Methodist Church Hall, Silver Street

12:15 pm Address by Mrs. Ruby Beech in Stony Stratford Methodist Church Sanctuary, Silver Street

The parking nearest to Russell Street School is in the two public lots on Vicarage Road (which can be accessed from either Russell Street or Ostlers Lane). From those parking lots it is just a short walk to the school, the square, and the church.

* It is called the Wesley Tree because Rev. John Wesley preached from under this tree at least once on his travels through Stony Stratford. He didn’t have access to churches to preach in so he preached in ordinary places where people were gathered, to share with them the message of God’s love and forgiveness. The old tree which J. Wesley preached under died as a result of Dutch Elm Disease.

Additional Opportunity:

Saturday, May 17th at 7pm Hanslope Methodist Church will celebrate it’s 180th Chapel Anniversary with Mark Topping portraying John Wesley. John Wesley will be arriving by horse and will then tell us about his life and work. I have seen the show before; I can report it is a fascinating show and transports one back in time. The program for this evening will be entirely different than that in the following morning, so feel free to come to both events. Tickets are £5 each and available at the door. Hanslope Methodist Church is on High Street in the village of Hanslope next to the Chinese take away.

I wrote this for the May edition of The Link, Hanslope & Castlethorpe’s monthly church magazine. As it is seasonally appropriate, I thought I would share it with all of you now.

Happy Birthday to us!

Happy Birthday to us!

Happy Birthday, dear church!

Happy Birthday to us!

Pentecost is the Birthday of the church and we will celebrate it in church on the 11^th of May. Pentecost is one of my favorite days of the church year; after all I always like a good Birthday party. Pentecost marks the end of the Easter season, the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church.

The story of Pentecost is told in the book of Acts. It tells of the disciples being sad together because Jesus had gone and they missed their friend. They knew they wouldn’t see him again on this side of heaven.

These friends of Jesus gathered to pray together to God when they were surprised by the extraordinary. Suddenly the room filled with the sound of a great rushing wind. It was bright and everywhere they looked they could see what looked like flames of light resting on each other’s heads.

They were then even more surprised that they were speaking and praising God in different languages; languages that they had never spoken before. They were no longer afraid or sad; they were filled with joy and happiness. They rushed out into the street praising God in the different languages they were speaking.

The gift of the God’s Holy Spirit made this miracle possible. That same gift of God’s Holy Sprit assures us that God is with us, through the Holy Spirit, here and now. The miracle of Pentecost began in one small back room but it gave birth to the church, which today still speaks a myriad of languages in praise of God.

On Pentecost you might think of sticking a candle in a piece of cake, singing Happy Birthday to the church, and remembering the gift of the Holy Spirit’s presence with us, which came as wind and light, as you blow out the candle. Happy Birthday, dear church!

At the Meeting of Methodists last week Michael, a circuit lay worker, reminded those of us gathered that the challenges we face are really opportunities. I needed to hear that; it was good for my soul! I needed to be reminded that challenges can be more than just overwhelming difficulties. This can be true if we take another perspective. We can encourage this new perspective by giving the challenges more space and thought so that something new, something more authentic, something better suited to its environment, and something more loving might be born. As I said I needed the reminder, but as I sat there I realized that there is something authentically Christian about this notion. After all, we believe that from the “challenge” of the cross came the “opportunity” for new life. Now that is a definite change in perspective, one which we celebrate at Easter. Thanks, Michael, for prompting me to re-consider my perspective!

During pauses and other quiet moments in the rest of the meeting I sat contemplating how much our perspective matters. I was contemplating these matters of perspective in the back of my head as I gazed around the interior of their lovely church. This is what my view of Queensway Methodist Church in Fenny Stratford looked like.

Queensway Methodist has a simple beauty and when I am there my eye always is caught by the cheery painted ceiling over the chancel (the front of the church where the choir pews and communion table are).

I like the design of the painted ceiling but as I gazed at it a thought wriggled out from the back of my mind and entered my consciousness. I realized I wasn’t sure what the symbol was that I was gazing upon. What is it I was looking at? From my American perspective it seemed a bit too similar to the dollar sign ($), but I was sure that it couldn’t be that. After all, such an crass expression of commercialism would be just plain weird in any church, but it would be over the top weird here in the UK where the monetary unit is pounds (£). I decided that there was some other meaning there that I couldn’t see, try as I might, because I was blinded by my American familiarity with the $ sign.

At the end of the meeting I asked a church steward, who shared with me how the painting it is understood by the congregation. It turns out it is a stylized Christogram, a representation of the name Jesus Christ. It is IHS, the first three letters of the Greek name for Jesus. In this particular instance it the letters are painted on top of each other, like a fancy monogram.

Formed in one perspective I saw what was familiar and needed help to see it from this new (to me) perspective. Likewise, this steward was amused by my perspective and had never seen dollars in their church’s ceiling before, despite having looked at it regularly for many years. We each looked at the same exact thing and saw it very differently.

I write to share with you this lesson I learned at this Meeting of Methodists; your perspective does matter, so be attentive to it. I was fortunate to have this lesson clearly stated and then reinforced by the my reflections on the space. In both ways, I was reminded how our perspective shapes what we do or don’t see. From your perspective, what do you see?

I wanted to take this opportunity to wish you Happy Easter one last time this year. This week churches celebrate the last Sunday of the Easter Season. Let this picture of the Easter Garden at St. James Church, New Bradwell remind you of the mystery and love of the Easter season. Happy Easter!

As Easter season ends, churches prepare for Pentecost on the 11th of May. At Pentecost we celebrate the birthday of the church in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Despite the Easter season ending this Sunday, every Sunday we gather together as Christians to praise and worship God we always remember the joy and promise of Easter. For one last time this year, Happy Easter!

St. George, Patron Saint of England, was a soldier in the Roman Army and is best known for the legends regarding his slaying of a dragon. For most of the world April 23rd is the day he is remembered, because it is the traditionally accepted date of his death in 303 AD. In response to these commemorations, Google.co.uk ran this as their picture today and I thought it was so cute I had to share it.

Happy St. George’s Day!

I feel like this picture presents a teaching moment, something about words going up in smoke, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. So I will go with the obvious and say we should learn from the dragon to not play with fire, because you can attract the wrong kind of attention! I am sure there are more pithy lessons to be had, but they escape me now. Any suggestions?

Tesco is the Britain’s largest retailer and mostly known in the UK for it’s supermarkets. It is a huge corporation and I have heard it stated numerous times that over £1 in every £7 spent at retailers in the UK is spent at Tesco. The scale of that is hard for me to comprehend! They have an international presence but haven’t tried to break into the US market till this past autumn when Tesco opened a small number of Fresh & Easy stores in California and the Southwest United States. ( I haven’t heard any recent reports about how these stores are doing, though I do know that their refrigerated pizza dough is a big hit with my sister-in-love.)

At the time of their US launch I listened with interest to several news stories. One interview on Radio 4 (for you Americans, this is BBC talk radio similar to NPR) was with an American business expert who lives in London working as a consultant for businesses trying to bridge the cultural divide between the UK and the US. Apparently, the business practices between the two countries are not as similar as one might assume. One thing this expert said was that Tesco, and any other business trying to make that leap, would have to work hard to meet Americans much higher customer service expectations. For example, in the US in the grocery sector the expectation would generally be that someone else bags your groceries for you, and that would be an exceptional occurrence here in the UK.

Hearing this analysis of customer service from an “expert” gave legitimacy to my vague and unformed impressions that customer service here wasn’t what I was used to. I had been here over 2 years by that point so it obviously wasn’t something I gave much thought, or was terribly bothered by. However with the confirmation of an expert, I now knew my generally poor impression of customer service in the UK wasn’t just me or random chance. Up until that point I was willing to generously give the benefit of doubt to most situations. After all, being flexible is a requirement for those living abroad. Instead of getting bent out of shape by different expectations, it is something I choose to live with and try to learn a few skills along the way. I am trying to learn patience from my interactions, but have been more successful in perfecting my grocery bag packing skills.

I adjusted my expectations and thought this was just one fact of life I would just live with while being outside the US. Really, I was OK with it (it is a rather small thing, in the giant scheme of things) until today when the humorous potential reached ridiculous proportions at Ikea.

I stopped by Ikea today for a meal and on my way out of the store decided to stop by the dented, damaged and dinged corner. I am a fan of Ikea’s dented, damaged and dinged corner, or whatever they really call it. I like a bargain and sometimes you find really interesting stuff there. Today I found a bag there which I liked but had no price on it. I (patiently?!?) waited for an employee to appear so I could ask about a price.

When an employee appeared, he told me that they were out of price tags and thus I couldn’t buy the item. WHAT!!!! I inquired how such a large enterprise could be out of price tags. He explained that they were out of the little yellow sticky price tags that fit their pricing gun. When I asked about the computer printed price tags and he explained if he printed a price tag out on the computer he could only mark this bag down a limited amount from its original price and since this bag was missing all it’s innards (which I didn’t want anyways) it should be sold for less that the lowest price he could print on the computer. He stuck with his original claim that I couldn’t buy the item and seriously advised me to come back and purchase the item on the weekend after they had gotten price tags back in. This was ridiculous advice as someone else would buy the bag first, Ikea is a madhouse I try to avoid on the weekends, and it is environmentally unfriendly make an extra and unnecessary car trip to the other side of the city.

At this point all I could hear was the voice of business consultant interviewed on Radio 4 repeating through my head, “American customer service expectations are higher.” I was stumped because I was there, happy to pay for an item and leave the store, but they didn’t seem willing to make any effort or expend any creative thought in order to make that happen. At that point I probably became a pushy American (remember I am still learning patience) when I insisted that I was sure there was something, anything, they could do to figure out this impasse.

In the end the employee did take my advice of cannibalizing a tag from another already marked item so that I could pay for the item I had selected. With this much sought after tag now attached I then walked to the checkout. On this short journey I had the curious experience of attending to the price tags, rather than the items themselves. Several of the items had bumpy surfaces which did not allow the sticky tags to adhere well and I was determined not to loose these precious price tags when victory seemed so close at hand.

I did manage to buy the items in the end, but I am still a bit surprised by my success in the face of such inflexible customer no-service. It is so ridiculous as to be funny that I almost couldn’t buy an item because they ran out of price tags. That they couldn’t come up with a solution to the problem mystifies me, after all it is in their self-interest to sell things. Needless to say, I was surprised to find out that the most precious thing they had in the dented, damaged and dinged corner today was the yellow sticky price tags. So in the above picture the most valuable things are not the items or the £.50 pence the store will collect from the buyer, but the tags themselves. This makes me reevaluate my fortunes for having managed to make it out of the store with 6 of these little yellow sticky tags. I am a rich woman, indeed.

One can only laugh! Hope you too enjoyed the humor of this.

PS I am not sure how Ikea being a Swedish company nuances this cross-cultural encounter.

The church is still celebrating Easter… are you? The idea of new life emerging from what was thought to be dead is so amazing that it takes us all a while to wrap our heads around it. For that reason this upcoming Sunday (April 27th) is the 6th of 7 weeks the church sets aside to celebrate Easter. I encourage you to take a moment and ponder the precious wonder of new life, in any of its myriad of forms, as part of your celebrations this Easter season.

I took the above photo at the garden tomb in Jerusalem, one of the reputed burial sites of Jesus. The photo is a bit dark, making the sign it difficult to read, but the sign on the door says, “He is not here - for he has risen” I wouldn’t have noticed the sign on the door, but we were there at closing time and they were locking up. I was immensely touched by this sign because the group I was with had just been hearing about the disputes over where the actual tomb of Jesus was. Hearing about the disputes brought me no clarity as to what the actual spot was and for that reason I appreciated the sign. It reminded me that the most important thing was not the burial but the risen life which followed. Happy Easter!

Zimbabweans are going to the polls today. Let those of us who live so far away join our prayers with those in the country who are voting. My prayer for the troubled country of Zimbabwe is for peace, justice, and a stable economy.

I hope a free and fair election happens, but I have serious doubts. Last week when talking about the elections to a Zimbabwean, his reply was we already know what the result of the election will be. The exclusion of the media and international election observers, along with irregularities in the 2002 and 2005 elections, does nothing to foster confidence in the process.

And now, how to NOT do Biblical interpretation, brought to you by the Zimbabwean ambassador to South Africa. As the ambassador was briefing members of South African Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs on the 2008 elections in Zimbabwe, he indicated that there were many requests for accreditation to cover the elections. He then went on to say that many are called, but few are chosen. He was using this Bible reference to suggest that limited numbers would be granted permission to cover the country’s election.

I am for unfettered access by election observers. However, if the Zimbabwean government isn’t going to allow this, please don’t hide behind misquoted Biblical references in a lame attempt to lend your side credibility. In the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 22, Verse 14, Jesus does say, “For many are called, but few are chosen.” Jesus said this in response to a story about a wedding banquet to which the invited guests didn’t turn up. This passage is not a justification to exclude, rather it reminds us that God’s judgment comes upon all. Jesus keeps us from sitting around self-satisfied because he invites us to reflect upon how our lives will be judged. To me the signs don’t look good, but it is God who judges and when God judges those involved in the Zimbabwean elections I pray that all may be found righteous.

Happy Easter! Easter is too big a celebration to be contained to one day, so the church year gives it an entire season lasting seven weeks. I find this extended Easter season helpful because sometimes it takes quite a while for the miracle of new life and abundant joy to sink deeply into our heads and hearts. So please don’t think Easter is finished as you put your Easter dress back in the closet, pack up your Easter bonnet, or finish the last of the chocolate eggs. You can go to church in the coming weeks and still appropriately greet people with a cheery “Happy Easter!”

This photo of a first century Jewish tomb in Israel was taken in the summer of 2004. The tomb is now just by the side of the road. I took the picture while traveling in the Middle East with a group of seminary students on the Middle East Travel Seminar.

It did snow on Easter!

I left the house at 5:45 am for a sunrise service and there were just a few snowflakes casually drifting down. Thus I then concluded that the forecasters were wrong and the snow had missed us. Needless to say, I was very surprised when I emerged from church following the service and a lovely breakfast.

Perhaps the outdoor part of the service, where the congregation gathered around a small fire, should have alerted me to how cold it was (not mentioning the thermometer on my car said it was -1 C on the way to church). This outdoor bit of the service included putting the wounds (gold-colored, nail-like things) into the Christ candle. This was attempted, but it was cold enough that the wax was brittle and after the service the candle had to be mended with tape!

This was the scene that greeted me upon leaving the church. In the parking lot my car was covered (similar to these) despite having been clear of snow upon being parked less than two hours before.

I drove to the village of Hanslope so intent on driving safely I was unable to appreciate the beautiful countryside shrouded in white. Upon entering the village I was able to relax a bit and appreciate the picturesque scenes which greeted me. I thought this thatched roof cottage looked magical under its dusting of snow.

As you can see, the weather didn’t prevent people from coming to church to celebrate Easter!

The above is the front entrance to Hanslope Methodist Church at the 9am Easter service. By the time I left Stony Stratford Methodist Church after the 10:30am service most traces of snow were gone.

Now, you may be calling me a “weather wimp” but please be kind in your judgment. After all, for a woman who grew up in warmer climes, snow at Easter is unheard of and very memorable. I am glad to say that the snowflakes didn’t dampen spirits and the congregations were still able to gather and celebrate together saying, “He is risen, indeed. Alleluia!”