October 2010 Letter
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Dear friends Do you remember Corn Dollies? Maybe some of you are experts at making them? It was only recently that I discovered that the word ‘dolly’ actually comes from the word ‘idol’. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the very pagan roots of corn dollies, but I hadn’t appreciated that the word, too, tells us that the original dollies were made in the shape of a goddess of grain who was worshipped in the hope that she would make the crops grow. People believed that they had to worship and appease the goddess to make her produce crops each year. If there was a bad harvest, people thought that they had made the goddess angry. This basic life view implies that we are constantly at the mercy of divine beings that have little or no desire for our well-being: and that persuasion and appeasement is needed in order for good to come to us - that the Powers That Be are indifferent to our fate. But if we remember the story of Noah, we know that God has promised the world seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, day and night, summer and winter. Unlike the monkeys who thought they had to keep eating bananas or the sun wouldn’t come up the next day, we have a promise from God, symbolised in the rainbow, that around the world as a whole there will be sufficient food to feed us all if we share it fairly. Yes, there will be occasions when the rains will fail to come at the right time, or will be too severe in some part of the world. This should be our opportunity to show our generous hearts. And people themselves ill-treat the land: vital trees are cut down and the soil gets washed away so that the land fails to produce harvest. This should be our opportunity to learn from our mistakes. Our Harvest Festivals are no longer, of course, filled with sheaves of wheat or fresh produce from the land. The people who are in need of our generosity now need toothpaste and soap almost as much as tins of tomatoes, packets of pasta and boxes of biscuits. The goods and collection from our Harvest Festival on 3rd October will go to supporting those who do not have a secure roof over their heads, and our goods will be joined with those collected by the Beach School and Pebbles Nursery. On 10th October we will be blessing the Shoeboxes for Rumania in which a small toy for a child nestles alongside a warm winter hat, disposable razors and some pencils: small things that give pleasure and meet basic needs. Next month at our Christingle Service we will collect as usual for the Children’s Society, to meet the needs of runaways, abused children and those in the greatest poverty in our society, and at other collections through the year we will hope to make a difference to those less fortunate than ourselves. We have received God’s bounty. Our part to play is first, of course, to give thanks; then to see with whom we should share this; finally to give up not only what we do not need, but perhaps some of what we wanted. This way, we ensure that everyone on this earth has enough of God’s bounty. God has done his share – our harvest is rich here in the South of England because of the vagaries of this year’s weather. Now it’s our turn to play our Harvest part. Good luck with that!
With love – Gail
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