The Parish Magazine February 2023

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28 The Parish Magazine - February 2023 Please mention The Parish Magazine when responding to advertisements The 50 plus Home Repairs Handy and Property Services for domestic & commercial customers Call us or visit our website for full details of our broad range of services, helpful advice & pricing studio dfp complete graphic and web design service on your doorstep Since 1984 · 0118 969 3633 david@designforprint.org • Book a timed appointment • Free estimates • Friendly advice 0118 207 1387 www.the50plus.co.uk Serving customers for over 20 years www.etsheppard.co.uk 01491 574 644 36 Reading Road, Henley-on-Thames RG9 1AG Established in 1858 A.F. Jones Stonemasons Limited www.afjones.co.uk 0118 9573 537 33 Bedford Road, Reading, RG1 7EX 57732 AF Jones Parish Magazine Advert.indd 1 19/11/2014 10:43
THE ARTS — 1 By Rev Canon Michael Burgess At the end of this month we enter the season of Lent: those 40 days when we follow Jesus into the wilderness and prepare ourselves to celebrate his Easter victory. In the last century an artist called Stanley Spencer planned to create a series of 40 paintings, each depicting a day in the wilderness. In the end he completed nine, one of which is this month’s painting: ‘Christ in the Wilderness – Scorpions.’ Painted in 1939, it is held in a private collection. Stanley Spencer lived and worked in the village of Cookham in Berkshire where the village and the local countryside were the setting for many of his paintings, and the local inhabitants were his models. Through their everyday life he was trying to glimpse and convey the transcendent. ‘Angels and dirt’ he called it: the divine seen in the ordinary. So, in a painting of Christ carrying his cross, Jesus has the face of the local grocer. LIFE IN HEFTY REALITY Another villager modelled for Jesus in the wilderness. — the strong, hefty, broad figure in our picture. This is a great contrast to the Christ of stained-glass windows who often seems too good to be part of our world. Here is real life: a large man filling the canvas with his head, his hands and his feet. This figure of Jesus comes as a shock: a very human model, ordinary with nothing handsome or special about him, apart from his tunic which seems to sprawl and undulate like the hills around. Here is a Jesus born into this world and one with this world. There are two focal points in the painting — the neat, little scorpion and the massive, unkempt head contemplating each other. One is life in all its hefty reality; the other a tiny creature able to squeeze that life out by one swift flick of its tail. Jesus is shown in the wilderness pondering the life and ministry called of him by God — a life and ministry that will take him from the countryside into the towns and villages and take him also to the death of Good Friday. Will he find the strength and renewal to embrace that ministry during his time in the desert? Poetry Corner The Parish Magazine - February 2023 29 40 Days and 40 Nights — and 40 Paintings! https://www.wikiart.org/en/stanley-spencer/christin-the-wilderness-the-scorpion During Lent as we follow Jesus, we seek to live for God. That may mean dying to all that separates us from God. He has a ministry, a calling for each of us. As we contemplate that calling in this season of Lent, we may find it is a calling that leads us through these 40 days to life and Easter life — we may find it a journey that calls us to die to ourself to find our God. Majestic Musings by Steven Rolling – Psalm 93 Tune: Southwell (‘Lord Jesus, think on me’) The Lord reigns, He is clothed With majesty bestowed He is clothed with strength, wherewith He Has girded self, so be The world also is set Established, not moved yet Your throne, Lord, is established too From old, e’erlasting you The floods have raised their voice Though we do here rejoice That you the Lord are mightier Than them, e’en though they stir Your testimonies sure Lord are, and evermore Holiness does your house adorn Evening, night, day, and morn Cookham's 13th Century Church Patrick Rowney, dreamstime.com Wirestock, dreamstime.com
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