A review by Canon John Twisleton

‘God never came from an oxygen cylinder. God for Geoffrey was the air he breathed always and everywhere. Whether the air was cloudy with incense smoke or tobacco smoke, it made no difference. Everywhere was the house of God and the gate of heaven’. So wrote Harry Williams of his fellow Community of the Resurrection (CR) monk Geoffrey Beaumont (d1970) in one of 31 short obituaries capturing the character and depth of ‘the long and the short and the tall’ in that community. Musician Fr Beaumont made fame through his popular hymns. People think monks escape life but I found reading these obituaries life affirming. Awakening to God in all things seems a subtheme of this book as is the genius of CR to combine catholic and evangelical within Anglican obedience.

Published by Mirfield Publications and available from Mirfield Bookshop for £5.

On Tuesday 25 February an exciting project got underway in the Community’s grounds. CR’s estates team welcomed a group from Open Country’s ‘Wild about Wakefield’ project.

Open Country is a Harrogate-based charity with almost 30 years of experience in enabling people with disabilities to access the countryside. They achieve this through a variety of countryside activities and the provision of information, training and advice. Their newest project aims to help people with disabilities in the Wakefield district access the countryside.

The group got off to a great start planting trees and putting up nest boxes, there was even time for hot drinks with the estates team! Plans are in place for further visits.

If you would like any information about Open Country please visit; www.opencountry.org.uk/wakefield-project or email Wakefield@opencountry.org.uk

We have received an interesting donation for the auction, which may be of particular interest to any friends of the Community who knew Fr Simon Holden CR, who passed away in 2019.
A limited edition etching drawn for Fr Simon by Barry Fantoni is going under the hammer at CR’s auction on Saturday 5 September 2020.
Barry Ernest Fantoni is a British author, cartoonist and jazz musician, most famous for his work with the magazine Private Eye, as a cartoonist and columnist. He wrote scripts for the BBC’s satirical show That Was the Week That Was, and has also achieved success as a poet, playwright and jazz musician.
The etching comes with a written explanation revealing the connection between Fr Simon, the drawing and the artist. 

Another interesting piece going into the auction is a 78 vinyl record called  ‘Beaumont meets Reflection’. Geoffrey Beaumont was a member of the Community (he changed his name to Gerrard on joining CR) who died in 1970. He was a composer of popular songs and hymns, and he edited several new collections, many of which can still be found in various hymnals and are still sung today. Reflection was an internationally known music group in the 60s and 70s.

For the latest updates and information please click here to visit the Auction 2020 page

To view some of the items available please click here to view our Auction Album

Last week, students of the MA in Liturgy at the College of the Resurrection were treated to a week of teaching on Liturgical Space delivered by Canon Christopher Irvine.  Canon Christopher (former principal of the College and former Canon Librarian at Canterbury Cathedral) is the author of several books on art, space and worship including ‘The Cross and Creation in Christian Liturgy and Art’.  During the week, the students discussed topics such as baptismal fonts, the art of Ceri Richards and the role of the altar.  A recorded lecture by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Willams and specialist tours of the Upper and Lower Churches at the Community of the Resurrection with Fr George Guiver and of Wakefield Cathedral with Canon Leah Vasey-Saunders (Precentor) were among highlights of the week.   This was one of several block teaching weeks covered by the MA in Liturgy with students, lay or ordained, being drawn from across the country. For further information, please contact knaylor@mirfield.org.uk.

Holy Week at the Community and College of the Resurrection is a powerful and moving celebration of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Beginning our journey on the eve of Palm Sunday, we live together through the experience of Holy Week. From Maundy Thursday we enter into silence until the great vigil of Easter and the celebration on Easter day. As we celebrate these ancient liturgies we are all drawn into the heart of the Christian faith. You are invited to join us in this experience.

Stay The Week
Saturday 4 April – Sunday 12 April
OR

Join Us For The Triduum
(Maundy Thursday until Easter day)
Thursday 9 April – Sunday 12 April

To book or for more information, please contact: guests@mirfield.org.uk  01924 483346

It’s a while since our last sponsored bicycle ride, so you may be glad to know another is now in the offing on an unusual theme. It is planned for 21 – 24 May 2020, travelling between Ford End near Chelmsford and Tunbridge Wells, aiming to raise money for the Tariro charity. (Tariro UK raises money to support orphans or young people whose one parent can’t look after them any more. It funds between 45 and 50 such young people in four centres in Zimbabwe, through models which suit the individuals; supporting them through school and then with further education or practical projects until they are able to stand on their own two feet.) More on the fantastic work of Tariro in a minute. Before that, you will be wanting to know the reasons for the route. The ride is in memory of Arthur Shearley Cripps (1869 – 1952). He was born in Tunbridge Wells, was influenced by Charles Gore, became vicar of Ford End, and then a missionary, stirrer for social justice and poet in what is now Zimbabwe. You can find out more about him on: http://www.christiancourier.ca/columns-op-ed/entry/arthur-cripps-maverick-missionary-and-activist-for-african-rights. His grave in Zimbabwe is regarded as a shrine, and miracles have been attributed to this very unlikely character.

Our route starts at Ford End on the morning of Ascension Day, and takes us down to the Gravesend ferry. Having crossed the Thames estuary, we make for Lullingstone and the remains of a famous Roman Villa which includes one of the oldest places of Christian worship in Britain: the foundations of a chapel whose Roman frescoes and mosaics are now on display in the British Museum. On the site of this chapel we hope to sing the midday office. We then make for West Malling Abbey, expectant of another office and a cup of tea, before finally heading to Tunbridge Wells, to take part in the Sunday Mass at St Barnabas’, where Cripps grew up in the faith. This 90-mile journey will be spread over 3 days, and we have yet to arrange the intermediate overnight stays. I say ‘we’, but at the moment only myself is signed up. If you would like to join the ride for a part of it, or even the whole, please let me know on gguiver@mirfield.org.uk

Elizabeth Wilson (chair of Tariro trustees) recently visited Zimbabwe and writes: When I visited in September I was really impressed with the work being carried out by the stellar people in the organizations we support.  The young people at the Tariro for Young People project in Harare are really wonderful and it is clear that they are being provided with more than just a roof over their heads and food. Tariro House is home to a real family, the members provide support to each other, and those who have left come back to support and encourage the new members. As Kundai (a Tariro House young resident now studying medicine) told me, Tariro House “transforms young lives”, and I saw for myself how young people looking frightened and hunted in old photographs were now full of life and confidence and warmth. What was so lovely was to see how each individual was being enabled to meet their potential: from conducting the amazing singing at the Tariro commemoration day service to studying at university or raising pigs (and the odd lemon tree!) at the Tariro smallholding I visited at Goromonzi outside Harare, built with funds from the Cowley Fathers.

In the rural areas I was impressed by the work of Mr Stan Runyowa (retired head teacher of  St Anne’s Anglican school) and his board (including Mirfield trained priest and Dean of  Mutare Cathedral, Fr Luke Chigwanda) in setting up and running the Tariro project, meeting the needs of 33 children and young people in rural eastern Zimbabwe (around the area of the old CR mission at Penhalonga). It was so impressive to see how each young person’s needs are considered individually with each one having an individual plan and being kept under constant review. Wonderful too to see Edwin Komayi (a former Tariro House Harare young resident) working so hard for their benefit, our support enabling him to travel huge distances to see them.  When I met some of the young people supported by TFYP it was clear they felt part of a wider Tariro family. They were proud to be supported by Tariro and at a recent meeting of all the young people even came up with their own ideas about the standard to be expected of them!  Mr Runyowa hopes one day to be able to buy a plot of land near Rusape to give the TFYP young people a place to grow some extra food, but more importantly to spend time together on a common project. I saw the land. Like so many places in Zimbabwe it is beautiful and full of potential. I so hope we can raise the money to make the dream a reality.

So – something worth cycling for!

Fr George CR

To sponsor Fr George please visit https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Unexpected-holy-places

Sitting in choir at St Matthias Abbey on my first night I felt  “I am at home. I belong here with my German Catholic brothers.” It was 46 years since my first visit as a student and the friendship between our two communities has grown deep and strong. During my few days there I talked with Athanasius (who was Abbot when I first came), Ignatius, the present Abbot, Gregor, Simeon and Hubert about our relationship and where it might go from here. Both of our communities need to attend to matters of renewal, of finding a new way to live out our particular charisms. Yet we also have a gift to offer the Church and the society around us. As the hard won relationships across Europe threaten to break up, we in the Church need to hold them together to try and create peace – that same peace which the Prince of Peace brings us at Christmas.

From Trier I went to the Christusbruderschaft, Selbitz, near Nuremburg. They are Lutheran sisters of a Franciscan spirituality, and thriving. There are about 100 sisters and they do a lot of retreat work, teaching and various kinds of social and pastoral work. Sr Mirjam and I have worked together ecumenically for the past 24 years. The Community began just after the Second World War and has grown into a traditional religious community with an impressive level of spiritual and theological life and a lovely community atmosphere.

Quite near to them is the former concentration camp of Flossenburg. This is where Dietrich Bonhoeffer died. Sr Mirjam took me there and I was overwhelemd by the brutality of it. The Germans all credit to them, have not flinched from facing up to the evil of their Nazi past. They have created a deeply moving museum describing the life, brutality and often death of inmates of that camp. About 100,000 men, and some women and children, were imprisoned there and about 30,000 died. In the Catholic chapel of Christ in the Dungeon, overlooking the place where so many were executed there is a bust of the Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ecumenism in suffering.

Flossenburg reminds us of the need to hold together – Anglicans, Catholics and Lutherans, English and Germans against the darkness of a resurgent popularism which threatens to divide Europe again.

Fr Nicolas CR