The Priory Church, St. Bees

 This last Sunday we began to learn a new communion setting.  Frank and the choir gathered all interested people at a special rehearsal 20 mins before the main service started.  It was catchy and easy to sing.  Also, we introduced a new communion booklet.  The old booklet had served us well, but it was time to update it.  All in all, the congregation was kept on their toes.  Everyone seemed to enjoy both the new music and the booklets.

On the eve of Lent the Friends of the Priory put on a wonderful Shrove Tuesday event.  Everyone was divided by age group and had to run a circuit around the Priory stopping at several stations where judges watched as they tried to flip pancakes 3 times before proceeding.  Afterwards, of course, there were pancakes to eat.

Many thanks to John and Bridget who made the wonderful pancakes!

 We are going to begin another Alpha course after Easter.  There will be an introductory evening on the 11th of March, 7 pm, at the Manor House, St. Bees. If you are interested please contact the Vicar, or follow this link to the Alpha page. 

 We held our annual Education Sunday on the 3rd of February.  Apart from involving local kids in the service, we also highlight general issues of education for the poor and the marginalized.  The photo is of some of the parish children running the rest of the congregation through a quiz on Bible characters.  Before that they dramatized Daniel and the lions’ den.  The three little ones who played the lions were a textbook example of method acting (which I’m sure their parents appreciated for the rest of the day).  Also, after the service we had our roughly monthly Fair Trade stall for people to stock up on Muesli and other various Fairly Traded snacks and drinks.

I was having a hard time sleeping last night, so I switched on the BBC World Service and listened to a programme on the rising debt crisis.  Not surprisingly, it didn’t particularly help sooth my racing mind, and I awoke this morning thoroughly exhausted.  I went into school for the first time after Christmas and read in one of the national papers that the Church of England is providing training so that clergy can give financial planning and debt advice.  That got a sardonic chuckle out of me.

The debt crisis is news in every paper and website.  Banks in the USA have practised what is termed “financial alchemy” to remove liability from their books.  They have devised methods of moving this liability around (called Special Investment Vehicles).  I was not so bewildered at 3 am to miss the absurdity and complexity of how the banks have messed about for quick profit.  And now our economic future is uncertain.  Some of you, I know, have already been hit by all of this via the Northern Rock debacle.  How is it that the banks (of all institutions) could think they could perform such alchemy? Eventually the books need to balance.  We all know this.  If we don’t live within our means we are merely holding off reality for a time.  Eventually we’ll have to face facts.

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