Kingsland News
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November 2015 Dear Parishioners, To those who received a letter from the church last month, thank you to those who reviewed their giving to the church. Thank you to all who give so generously and in many different ways – yes in terms of money, yes in terms of time and skill, yes in terms of participating in the cycle of fundraising, yes in helping others and making this community strong in care, yes in giving to those across the world who are in need of love, shelter and peace. Thank you for your deep commitment. We have had a good harvest rejoicing this year and hearts were lifted in unison to give thanks to the God who gives us everything and gives us the freedom to use, abuse or ignore, the gift and the giver. Praise the Lord and let everything that has breath Praise his holy name – says the psalmist and so do we when we sing and say the psalms. We are looking at the work of the psalmist in our Matins services over the next months. The psalmist is the most honest of all the writers in the Bible and expresses the heights and depths of life in ecstasy and in deep despair. November is the month of peace, or remembering past hurts and loved-
ones departed. Blessed are the peacemakers says Jesus in the “sermon on the mount”. Yes but how do you make peace. I was privileged to go with my husband, Nick, to the place where his grandad was held prisoner of war in Nagasaki in Japan. The prison camp is now a school and there are no outward signs of anything untoward happening there - in fact it is a place of learning and hope. But the memories of past hurts hang in the memories of those who know, or by extension by those related. It was the right time to make peace it seemed to me. I can’t say much more than that – there was emotion and ceremony as memorial stones were unveiled to the memory of those who lost their lives whilst in the camp. There was a piecing together of the jigsaw of reality as a 91 year old Dutch man Mr Klein joined us on the playground of the school and showed us where the British prisoners had stood, and where the Dutch, American and Australians had lined up. He was just 17 at the time and was the only one still alive who had been in the camp with the relatives we had gathered together to remember. There was the son of the first commandant, a man who had been kindly and Christian and had