St Neots Parish Church

As we knelt at prayer this lady came into church. She was from London, though originally from Africa. She had had a dream about St. Neots. She believed she had to come here. She dreamt something too about St. Peter, but came to the conclusion that this meant Peterborough, the terminus of the train. So she took the train and found her way to the Church which, fortunately for her, was open for prayer.

We seem to have reverted to more normal weather after the heat wave. Now everyone is talking about global warming. So one of our congregation raised the question as to what we could do. One solution, having air conditioning in church, apart from being impractical, would make the problem worse. How about solar panels?

As I was saying last week…I rarely keep a topic going for more than one week, but, having been accused of copping out last week, I wearily (warily?) return to the question of homosexuality.

Civil partnerships are often described as ‘gay marriage’. Whatever the law may say, they are something different. One of the purposes of marriage is the bearing and upbringing of children and for that reason it is fundamental to our society. Their care and nurture is vital to the running of a decent society. Marriage also contains our natural instincts so that we don’t behave like ‘brute beasts that have no understanding’ as the old prayer book said, which is another thing in its favour. Whether civil partnerships will achieve the same objective only time will tell. Shall we have gay divorce on the grounds that the relationship has broken down because of infidelity? Probably.

I can write about anything in this column. The editor has never rejected anything I have written, which is kind of him. Some things are, however, very difficult to write about, especially in so few words. For instance, I can’t write about people’s personal lives. Other things are highly controversial. Like homosexuality, for instance, over which Christians disagree, though which the law, by and large, takes for granted.

Dear Everyone,

There is a story of a village which relied for its water supply on a single well. The well was found to be poisoned. The effect of the poison was to send those who drank the water very slowly mad. As the villagers saw the gradual effects of the water upon them, and realising that they were so far from any other source of water that they had no alternative but to drink it, one of the elders of the village came to the priest and asked a favour of him. They asked of him, though the effects of thirst were great as upon all human beings who must drink, that he would drink as little of the water as he could so that he at least might retain enough sanity to see them through, hoping that one day the waters might run clean and all be able to drink safely.

People often ask me when the church tower is open so that they can climb it and get a good view of the town. The answer is, from this Saturday onwards every Saturday morning till mid-September. But apart from what you can see from the church there are things to be seen inside it.

There is a story of a wealthy farmer who was so successful that he had to knock down his barns, and build bigger ones to store his grain, thinking to himself that he could retire and live off the proceeds of his wealth. These days wealth is not stored in barns but in banks or investments and many of us think that retirement in some sunny place would be ideal.

One thing in my life that makes me ask whether there is a God is going to the dentist. There I am, lying back in the chair, totally vulnerable to someone who is about to inflict pain on me. I hope that the dentist is both competent and concerned. I think what pain could be inflicted by the medical fraternity . We need a service which is not just technically skilled but also cares about us.

I was walking across the road from the church when I saw a man outside the south door, writing something down. As the south porch no longer gives access to the church (because it is filled with the heating plant) and being nosy, I went across to him. He was copying the details of our Ascensiontide Music Festival which is at the end of this month. He told me he came from Bedford. He said he thought St. Neots was a marvellous town. We always seemed to have things sorted out, he said. Look at this festival, he said: it happens every year; it involves schools; there is some classical music and some popular music; there are local groups; there are regional if not national performers. ‘I’m sure it takes some organising’, he said.

I see that the da Vinci code film is about to be released. Both the film and the book have generated a huge furore, some defensive, and some more relaxed. So much has been written about it that you may feel confused about what is actually being said. The story is fiction, as the book says, but a number of claims are made by some of the characters which have been taken as claims of fact.