St Peter’s Day 2020
Dear Friends,
The sun always shines on St Peter’s Day – or so we always remember our patronal festival on the last Sunday in June, celebrated with a bring-and-share lunch and barbecue in the vicarage garden. Last year we all enjoyed being in the café in the crypt, listening to the Events Team’s jazz playlist, followed by afternoon tea and a free classical concert in church. The garden was designated the ‘football field’.
This Petertide, we are blessed to have been sent been sent contributions from 10 artists associated with St Peter’s for a ‘virtual exhibition’ Stations of Creation. This collection of images expresses different ways of looking at creation – natural and elemental forces, the consoling beauty of the natural world, human struggles with nature, destruction of delicate eco-systems and the ever-creative spirit of humanity.
Scroll down for a beautiful recording of St Peter’s all-time favourite hymn, Amazing Grace from Naomi Sutherland on our Home Worship page (with a photo montage by Sarah). Please sing along at home! We also offer a special recording of Bach, played by local cellist Alexandra Fletcher.
As we start to slowly unlock the church and crypt, we need to explore the changed landscape of the world around us and to consider how St Peter’s can best serve the neighbourhood and contribute to urgent global concerns.
Amongst the many casualties of this epidemic, artists and the arts are in dire need of support. We need artists, musicians, performers, poets to console, inspire, challenge and amuse us. Arts education has been heavily cut in most schools in past decades. Children and young people, deprived of schooling for so many months, urgently need creative spaces to help process their experiences. In the months and years ahead, I hope St Peter’s will be able to find ways to support artists and to offer creative opportunities for people of all ages. Watch out for more information about how you can help.
Please send a ‘postcard’ by email or post to share something of how you and your loved ones have been surviving during lockdown to make a St Peter’s Quarantine Scrapbook for the parish archives.
Home Worship, now in its 15th week, is here. We are grateful for everyone’s audio and written offerings, which so enhance this weekly experience.
All being well, St Peter’s will reopen for private prayer from 1 July on Wednesdays 9-11am & Sundays 3-5pm.
With blessings,
Julia
Rev’d Julia Porter-Pryce
Home Worship for Sunday June 28th
Music and Images for Petertide:
https://vimeo.com/432881751
https://vimeo.com/432921568
