Category Archives: Prayer

News, Past Events, Prayer, Reflection, Services

An Hour of Quiet Prayer for Ukraine

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Icon of Our Lady of Kyiv

You are invited to join us at
St Nicholas’ Church, Chadlington
tomorrow, Sunday 27 February, at 6 pm
for an hour’s silent vigil
for the people of Ukraine, for peace and for justice.

During the service, we will listen to the ‘Liturgy of Peace’ by Archbishop Ionafan, sung by the Kyiv Chamber Choir.  You are welcome to come when you can, and stay for as little or as long as you like during the vigil – to pray, light a candle or just be with others in this dark time.

If you are unable to join us, you might like to light a candle in your own home and listen to the words of the Jesus Prayer ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us’, sung in Ukrainian here.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Meditation, News, Prayer, Reflection

WAYS OF ATTENDING: pilgrimage & meditation

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lit candle image

Meditation, some would say, is the way to wisdom.  Or, as Fr Richard Rohr recently put it in a Lenten Daily Meditation, in wanting ‘to grow towards love, union, salvation, or enlightenment (I use the words almost interchangeably)’ we hope to move ‘from naïveté to wisdom’ (https://cac.org/from-naivete-to-wisdom-2019-03-24/).  John Main, one of the pioneers of a renewed focus on Christian meditation in the twentieth century, compared the ‘path of meditation’ to a pilgrimage, something not unknown to us in our deanery: Continue reading WAYS OF ATTENDING: pilgrimage & meditation →

Comment, Prayer

Pray for the Climate and COP23

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image for COP23

It is nearly two years since the highly significant Paris Agreement on climate change, signed by 195 countries*, and so far ratified by 169 governments, making their commitments legally binding.  This month, from Nov 6th to 17th, the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will meet in Bonn under the presidency of Fiji for the annual ‘Conference of the Parties’.  COP23, as the shorthand has it, will focus on developing guidelines for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, essentially how to keep rising temperatures globally below 1.5 degrees. Continue reading Pray for the Climate and COP23 →

Meditation, Prayer, Reflection

The Sacrament of the Present Moment

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‘The sacrament of the present moment is the doorway to the eternal and universal’, says Sally Welch, vicar of St Mary’s Charlbury, in her recent book How to be a mindful Christian (Canterbury Press, 2016).  It is an experience that we try to cultivate at our regular Mid-Month Meditation in the Chase Benefice (3rd Tuesday, 6.15pm). The joy of a midsummer meditation at Holy Trinity Ascott is that we can have the door wide open and tune in and out of the sounds of the village and the valley of the Evenlode. Continue reading The Sacrament of the Present Moment →