MandJ French sojourn

We have been home for a week. The journey back was smooth, and the weather favourable (until we crossed the Channel.) We spent more time, with a 24 hour stop in Troyes (a delightful city, with many medieval buildings and a cathedral which had some of the best displays about the life of the church we have ever seen.) But it was quite tiring, and difficult for Jo with her worsening arthritis and stiffness. Our time in Grenoble was enjoyable and rewarding (as all of our periods of locum ministry have been.) The congregation (around 50/60 adults most week) seem committed and regular in attendance (even if punctuality was not a distinctive feature!) As ever, most of the work is done by a small core group. But there was enthusiasm in the worship, and a strong and evident desire to come together and to learn. There is clearly a great deal of need among many of the African members. The absurdity and injustice of many of the regulations concerning asylum-seekers was obvious; there see...

WE’RE more than half-way through our locum stay here. Sunday services seem to have gone well. Last Sunday’s Communion had a good turn-out, and people seem to enjoy the variety of liturgy we are sharing – Jo led the first part of the service, having written her own prayers. It’s the practice here for even very young children to receive communion, especially among the Nigerian families; new for me, it seems to make sense in this context – especially if ‘belonging’ is as important as ‘believing’. I didn’t say very much about the church last time. The building was one of the first fully ecumenical centres in France, and is – we gather – the only one that has survived. Within the centre are various ‘salles’ and a ‘grand espace’ ; the latter is used most weeks for an RC Mass, and the Anglicans meet in the mid-size Cana salle. There are offices and meeting rooms, and the building is often used for secular meetings and concerts. I mentioned last time that the focus at the moment is on d...

We are spending six weeks in Grenoble, to care for the Anglican congregation at St Marc’s Ecumenical Centre. We started with an easy journey from Axminster. We reached the Eurotunnel an hour early, which meant a comfortable arrival at our overnight hotel in Calais. Our long drive the next day, from Calais to Dijon, was in clear sunshine, with no problems on the roads. We had a break in Troyes – an attractive town, which we would like to revisit. And so to Grenoble the next day. Grenoble is a very pleasant city, surrounded by snow-capped mountains. It is spacious, with wide roads and many open area with trees and greenery. Much of this is the result of hosting the 1968 Winter Olympics! The Anglican church meets in St Marc’s Ecumenical Centre, which was built on the edge of the Olympic village and houses a larger Roman Catholic congregation, and a small Reformed Church (now United Protestant) one. The chaplain’s apartment is a 5 minute walk from the church, on the sixth floor of a ...

We’ve returned to our Devon home after five weeks in France. The grass has grown, but nothing else has changed. Our departure from the church went well; our journey from Versailles to the Channel was enjoyable and straightforward. We visited Monet’s garden at Giverny again – different seeing it at the beginning of autumn (our previous visit had been in mid-summer two years ago) but still enjoyable and visually stimulating. After spending the night in a small hotel beside the Seine, we drove through rural Normandie to the Abbey of Le Bec-Hellouin, a Benedictine abbey from which St Anselm had come. There are still strong links to the Anglican Communion. The village in which it is set is delightful, but we both felt the abbey itself was a bit ‘empty’. Perhaps there are too many visitors. Then we drove up to Caen, to see the Memorial, a museum devoted to the events leading up the Second World War, the Battle of Normandy which followed D-Day, and the continuing tensions of the Cold War...

There’s not as much to report on our time in Versailles as there was during our time in Izmir. (One of the joys of social media and the internet, is that we are kept in touch with the news from St John’s Church, and able to share in the joys of a birth to a refugee couple, and sadness at the death of a faithful retired minister, who had kept the worship going for some time.) However, we continue to be blessed by our time here at St Mark’s. There have not been any big events. The return from holidays has begun; the congregation on Sunday was much larger than in previous weeks, and we look forward to quite a few more on our final Sunday. We’re working on planning that service, which is going to be full – the resumption of the children’s work, an adult baptism, farewells to some young people setting off for university, praying for the church members as the new year begins – and our own leave-taking! The last year or so have been quite difficult for the church here, with financial pro...

Another week has passed since we arrived. It’s been busy in different ways. We had the pleasure of entertaining Nathanael for a few days. We went to Paris, and walked him into the ground; it’s a great city to wander round, but there is such a lot to see. It’s been more than 50 years since my previous visit to Les Invalides, and Napoleon’s tomb. It’s still a shock to realise that he was, and in many ways remains, a great hero to the French. But so much of the nation’s legal system, transport and education derives from his energetic transformation of post-Revolutionary France. We also visited the Chateau at Versailles; the interior is splendid– the Hall of Mirrors is stunning – and we enjoyed seeing many of the fountains gushing forth, with musical accompaniment; this only happens on certain days. We’ve just passed the ‘First 100 Days’ of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency. They’ve been much less tumultuous and controversial than President Trump’s were; but neither man has a high populari...

We are a week into our time in Versailles, taking care of St Mark’s International Church. This is a shorter locum period than usual – just five weeks, as we have been quite busy already this year. So we are particularly aware of our status as ‘sojourners’ – just passing through. Though for the time we are here we shall be engaged with the worshipping community and its needs, as well as enjoying being part of that community for a short time. I suppose that is a kind of parable of our life as Christians. As the writer to Hebrews puts it, “Here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Heb 13:14) We are always something of a stranger in a foreign land, for “our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil 3:20). Which is not to say that we are to be otherworldly. Christians have to be firmly rooted in the world, concerned to affirm signs of God’s presence and to point to signs of his kingdom – and at the same time, not to allow ourselves to be absorbed by ...