Page 40 - Phonebox Magazine June 2024

Churches Together in Olney and Newport Pagnell
Are you up for an argument?
address each other’s views using historical research, experience and logic to try to prove our points.
If I fail to persuade you of my views then I hope we will still care for each other and keep up the healthy debate. You’ll still be on my Facebook page!
If we keep doing this then we may eventually stumble upon and share something that God is revealing to both of us.
Rev Nick Evans, Rector of Newport Pagnell
No Mow May
Have any of you been letting the grass grow a bit longer this past month? The ‘No Mow May’ campaign has certainly gathered a lot of momentum (or should that be mowmentum?) since it was started five years ago. Now, I will readily admit that I tend to support ‘No Mow May’ by accident: my lofty ambitions to spend more time in the garden at this time of year are usually frustrated, and vital gardening work all too easily gets left undone. But as the plants ran rampant in my lawn, I can at least be reassured by some of the benefits of this: leaving grasses and wildflowers to grow that bit more can support vital pollinators such as bees and butterflies, provide more food and shelter for other wildlife, and promote healthier soil.
Before this turns into a gardening column, which I am ill-equipped to write, let me suggest that there is something powerful, not to mention biblical, in being able to pause and take a step back along the lines that ‘No Mow May’ encourages. In the Book of Genesis, God is said to have rested after he created the world, and in Ancient Israel this was thought to give a pattern for how human beings too should rest: hence the concept of the ‘Sabbath Day’ each week, when no work was to be done. And this pattern extended even to the land, which also needed ‘rest’: so every seventh year was set aside as a year in which fields and vineyards would not be sown or harvested, so that the land could recover. A lot of recent Christian thought on the environment has drawn on this biblical vision of good stewardship: for if the land and the natural world is as much God’s creation as we are, then we are called to exercise restraint and care in how we inhabit it: and in its own way, ‘No Mow May’ can help remind us of the importance, and also the fragility, of the ecological systems we are part of, and how much we are bound up with the rest of creation. Though each garden is only one of millions across the world, let’s also keep in mind another profoundly biblical truth: that just as you and I are each loved by God, and nothing about us is too insignificant not to matter to him, so what we do to care for each other and for God’s creation can never be too small or insubstantial. And however we tend our gardens, I hope we can also find the time just to sit and wonder at the miracles of God-given life and growth that we can see in them day by day. Hugh Reid, Curate, St Peter & St Paul, Olney
The philosopher Voltaire said that ‘opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes’. There are many strongly held opinions about Israel, the Ukraine, human sexuality, refugee status and so on. Sometimes we fear giving a different opinion to the prevailing one in case we are swatted away, told that we are very wrong and then left feeling very unloved as we are deleted from another Facebook page and treated as if we don’t exist. Oversimplification of complex issues is a human problem. There is frequently a refusal to enter into a proper debate about anything. Whether or not we agree with each other, there is usually something we can learn from those who we disagree with. Sometimes the issue is not about whether I am right or wrong but more about the manner of how I disagree with another person or group – people who are all as equally loved by God as I am.
Often, the fewer the facts there are, the stronger the opinion, and less listening occurs. This is the road to dictatorship, prison camps and the misery of warfare and everything that is opposed to God. Even on TV debates, there is often a gross lack of courtesy between those holding opposing opinions.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with disagreeing with each other. However, the poor quality of debate about sensitive issues can easily descend into personal insults. Reasoned discussion and the willingness to see that we are not right all of the time is important for our personal and national spiritual health. God also gave us a brain to reason with and a heart to care for those we debate with. We have to commit to digging deeper to discover more facts about an issue, or we become enslaved to our own dogmatic view of the world. Mark Twain wrote that ‘Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.’ Another writer, Harlan Ellison, said that ‘you are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. Nobody is entitled to be ignorant.’ The ‘truth’ behind many current political and social issues requires careful thorough research before we add our dangerous knee jerk reactions to the mix. We may discover that the truth doesn’t always lie bang in the middle of two opposing views, since on some issues the true ‘truth’ may lie more at one end of a spectrum than another.
Jesus taught that we must love our enemies and those we disagree with and that we are all loved by God and have fallen short of his glory. Nobody possesses a monopoly of ‘truth’ and wisdom so be wary of the growth of the extremism that oversimplifies complex issues and results in a lot of heartache. Yes, some issues may require firm handling from governments, the Church and social organisations – but commit to doing the fact finding first and no knee jerks. Jesus himself was firm about some things but still died for those who disagreed with him.
We have all gone astray like lost sheep and need to be saved by God who came into this world to seek us out and redeem us – and all before we even gave him a thought!
You may strongly disagree with me about God coming to save us, but I’m willing to have a good, honest debate about it to persuade you of this long-held Christian belief. We can listen to each other and courteously and passionately
700 years of St Peter and St Paul. Tell us: How do we celebrate?
The 700th anniversary of St Peter and St Paul church in Olney will be celebrated next year. Committee chairman David Phillipson explains what’s being planned for 2025 and how he needs your help.
The church of St Peter and St Paul was founded in 1325. The anniversary of this is seen as an opportunity for the church and the town to celebrate this important milestone in the history of Olney.
But what proof is there for the foundation taking place in 1325? I spoke with historian Liz Knight about this subject before she died, and she provided me with some archive material. One item was the programme for the celebrations that took place in 1925 for the 600th anniversary.
Liz thought there was no evidence that the building was started before 1325, and while there is no proof of this, no foundation stone bearing a date, and no documentary evidence proving that building started in 1325, we do have the important precedent of the 600th anniversary being celebrated in 1925. In that year, the week of celebrations started with the Patronal Festival of
St Peter and St Paul on 29th June and finished on the following Sunday, 5th
40 Phonebox Magazine | June 2024
July. Between those dates there were a
wide variety of other celebrations.
In 2025 the dates are similar. So it
is currently proposed that there is a
week of celebrations starting on Saturday 28th June, with a service for the Patronal Festival the next day, followed by the Cherry Fair. The week would end on Sunday 6th July with a Civic Service in church in the morning at which the Bishop of Oxford has been invited to speak. This would be followed by RiverFest in the afternoon.
The rest of the week is open for any other types of celebration, so we would like the people, societies and businesses of Olney to come forward with their ideas as to how we should best do this.
Please forward any suggestions, comments, or ideas to David Phillipson: david.philllipson@olney.church, 07912 059491.