Dear Friends

We are approaching an incredibly busy period in the life of this parish. On Saturday Utsav Lal, a young Steinway artist, will be giving a free concert in Church at 7.30 pm. It should be an amazing fusion of classical and Indian classical music. Ustav will be accompanied on the Tabla by Saleel Tambe a tabla maestro. Then it’s full throttle towards our weekend of flowers and music. Can we all keep a presence on social media, if that’s not your scene please tell as many people as you can. If you have not bought tickets for the private view of flowers on Friday evening, or our inaugural organ recital on Saturday please see Hayley in church on Sunday or send an email to office@stnicholaschiswick.org. Obviously you can purchase tickets on the night, but it would be really useful, for catering purposes, to know roughly how many people will be attending these events.

Although we will be celebrating Ascension Day on Sunday, from tomorrow evening I will be in church praying compline. It is a short service lasting no more than 15 minutes and we will being at 7pm. If you can’t join me in church please pray at home for the success of this festival and for the growth of the church.

blessings

Simon

Dear Friends

I hope you have been able to enjoy the wonderful weather we have had this week, although I know for some the temperature has been a little too hot! It was a great pleasure for me to sit in our garden and admire the plants which looked so fresh, and displayed such a wide variety of bright colours. I was reminded of a poem entitled ‘Pied Beauty’ by the English Victorian poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889) which I have printed below. His manipulation of prosody established him as an innovative writer of verse. I was encouraged to recite this poem in church as part of my training for ordination –  it’s great way to learn to enunciate all those consonants! I hope you enjoy reading it.

Glory be to God for dappled things​ –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.

​With every blessing
Mother Eileen​