If you are struggling with isolation you may find these two links helpful: https://www.alonetogether.org.uk/
All posts by Administrator
We’re on YouTube!
The parish now has its own YouTube channel where we are posting services, sermons, music and other videos. Please sign up to it by clicking here and then clicking on ‘Subscribe’. Then you can browse our videos to your heart’s content.
We’d like to add videos of our church members doing things – singing, poetry, drama etc. If you have anything you would like to share, contact Alan, revd.alan@badshotleaandhale.org
Where is God in the suffering?
Where is God in this coronavirus pandemic? Where is God in any suffering?
These are reasonable questions. Here are two people who have been thinking about this.
In an article for unherd.com, Giles Fraser doesn’t give an answer but says that Christianity allows us to sit with the question, to weep with the question. Church, he says, “remains one of the few spaces in our culture in which we are allowed to acknowledge the existence of futile suffering without someone feeling so uncomfortable about it that they need to reassure us all that everything is going to be OK”.
And yet, that reassurance is still there in “a story that speaks of love as being ultimately greater that death, and as a triumph over even the most purposeless of human pain”.
Read the whole piece here.
For Richard Rohr, suffering may be inevitable but it is also a time when God can be trusted. On Tuesday this week (April 14), in his daily meditation published on the Centre for Action and Contemplation website, he reflected that: “Our knowledge of God is participatory. God refuses to be intellectually ‘thought’, and is only known in the passion and pain of it all, when the issues become soul-sized and worthy of us.”
Read the whole piece here.
Image by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash.
Anxious? Need help? Citizens Advice is here
Coronavirus is causing massive challenges to many of us, including financial and those involving domestic abuse. Among those there to help is Citizens Advice Waverley.
Advisers can provide advice about a range of issues:
- Employment
- Claiming benefits
- Paying your bills
- Housing problems
- Relationship breakdowns.
Contact Citizens Advice Waverley
There is a team of more than 60 home-based advisers ready to give free, independent advice. The best ways to contact them are:
- Email – for a fast response, please complete our online form at: Citizens Advice Waverley email form
- Phone – if you need to speak with an Adviser, call the Adviceline: 0344 848 7969.
Domestic Abuse
South West Surrey Domestic Abuse Outreach Team is continuing to help during this period. Domestic abuse is any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality.
The team includes qualified independent Domestic Violence Advisers who provide practical advice and emotional support. They will always listen, support and believe. Call them on 01483 898884 (Mon-Fri 9-4pm) or email swr@swsda.org.uk
On-line support
There is also plenty of on-line self-help material:
- Citizens Advice Waverley website
- Facebook and Twitter
- National Citizens Advice information site: Coronavirus: What it Means for You
- Advice on the most popular topics relating to the impact of Coronavirus:
Helping the Foodbank
Farnham Foodbank is still busy and is distributing food direct to clients, thanks to furloughed drivers from a local engineering firm. If you need help, see details below.
Donations are also needed, both food and money, and you can drop donations off at Church House (the Vineyard Centre), Union Road, Farnham (opposite Gostrey Meadow) between 10am and noon on Thursdays.
Particularly needed at the moment tinned tomatoes, tinned potatoes, individual sponge puddings, sachets of powdered desserts (like Angel Delight), instant mash, tinned rice puddings, laundry detergent tablets, tinned meat (ham, spam, corned beef etc.), and they would love sun cream.
If you need help and have a paper voucher, take a photo of the paper voucher and text it to the Foodbank on 079015 81539 or email it to info@farnham.foodbank.org.uk
They will deliver a food supply to your doorstep.
If you don’t yet have a voucher, contact a Referral Agency who will discuss your situation and supply you with a Foodbank voucher, or contact the Foodbank with the details directly.
Farnham Foodbank: https://farnham.foodbank.org.uk/
Taking the magazine online
The Coronavirus has put a stop to a lot of things, among them the magazine which we usually distribute thanks to the hard work of a lot of people who deliver them through letterboxes across the area. Obviously that isn’t possible so we have experimented with an online magazine and you can find the results here.
If this goes well, when we are through the pandemic we may well produce a printed one and an online one, perhaps with a paywall and maybe even adverts.
Let us know what you think and if you want to write a piece, email editor@badshotleaandhale.org
Easter videos for children of all ages
Thanks to the Bible Society for these videos about Jesus, his life, death and resurrection.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndtnZV-5QTo&w=560&h=315
Easter scrapbook
Our thanks to those who have sent images and thoughts for this Easter weekend. Please keep them coming.
We would usually have an Easter Garden at the churches but as we can’t visit them at the moment, people have been creating them in their own gardens.. Here are ones by Sorrel, Maxine and Kris. We also have embroidery from Margaret Emberson, poetry from Richard Myers, photos from Wendy-Rae Mitchell, Kris Lawrence and Alison Ridgeon, a reminder of how much we love our churches in some art from St Mark’s, and of course Emily Tarrant’s poem which you can read here.
There’s also music every Sunday from Margaret Emberson which you can find here.
Outside the World, by Richard Myers
Easter thoughts
Eleven-year-old Emily Tarrant has been thinking about Easter during this lockdown and has put her thoughts into a poem here.
Mental health support in the lockdown
The current lockdown has the potential to cause many of us mental health problems. If you can, try to talk to someone about it. The Samaritans are available 24 hours a day on 116 123. You can also visit www.samaritans.org/
The NHS has a helpful page here and there is also advice for those in need of urgent support here.
The Church of England has some useful resources here.
The Parish of Badshot Lea and Hale 