Welcome to St Laurence Church, Appleton with Besselsleigh
A welcoming and inclusive church serving the whole community
St Laurence church is in the middle of Appleton village, down at the bottom of Church Lane, past the school.
Church Lane turns off Eaton Rd, on the right on the way in from the A420, after the road bends round the Manor.
[This post should have appeared on Monday 4 May. Apologies, but the author had technical issues …]
If you go down to the woods today the bluebells will be past their best, looking as tired as a workforce longing for May Day and the extra bank-holiday it brings. They still look magnificent of course, spreading out round the trunks of the trees like a purpley sort of lake, with the flies buzzing above the surface and the birds warbling the perfect soundtrack as I sit on one of the felled trees and think of sermons, and the dog sniffs round in the foliage, seeking what she may devour. All around, the branches of the trees cross each other in my line of vision, creating characters of their own and spelling out the sheer inexpressible beauty of all we’ve been given. ‘The earth is the Lord’s!’ pipes up the psalmist. ‘Thou visitest the earth and blessest it; thou makest it very plenteous.’
We gave some thought to all this in church last Sunday, not least as Rogationtide will soon be here, when we will ask God to bless the work of the farmers and give us all an abundant harvest. It’s true that the transition from field to plate is rather more complicated than in former times, but the fundamental relationship between God and humanity, Creator and creature, is one that it’s important to remember. Like many churches. we will be walking round some of the perimeter of the parish in a four or five-mile ‘beating of the bounds’. This is one practical and enjoyable way of saying ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ to the God who loves us.
And because today is May Day, or the nearest Monday to it, we thought also about the dignity of human work, not as mere toil and relentless drudgery, such as poor old Adam experienced as a consequence of his disobedience; but rather as an act of human collaboration with the divine Creator. If we really are made to be only ‘a little lower than the angels’ then our participation in the building of a society that’s truer and better and more beautiful than our current arrangements is something well worth fostering. Asking the children of the church to think about what they might like to be when they grow up was one way of beginning that no doubt lifelong reflection.
Two particular ways of joining in with God’s creativity were brought to our attention recently. In one, local artists displayed their work in the village hall and in Appleton Barn, South Lawn. My eye predictably was drawn by paintings of churches and historic Oxford buildings; but there were wonderful landscapes and seascapes, jewellery and ceramics, collage and carving; a real collaboration of people and place and human ingenuity. These artefacts were not simply pretty things to put on a wall, but icons that urge and invite us to consider what, in ‘God’s Grandeur’, Hopkins calls ‘the dearest freshness deep down things’; that centre of reality where ‘the Holy Ghost over the bent/World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.’
In a very different key we heard a very different story of creativity in one small town in KwaZulu Natal where, under the leadership of Pastor Leonard Gcabashe, the church community of Embo, supported by the Banbury-based charity Medic Assist International, has built its own clinic and teams of educators and caregivers to serve those so-easily ostracised people with HIV/Aids, and other serious conditions in the extensive surrounding area. As the medical work grows, so does their church, whose practical expression of the love of God is the most powerful expression of the Gospel of Christ.
Saint Laurence, Appleton has been supporting this work for many years and yesterday Leonard visited us (with the director of the charity) to renew old friendships and make new ones. It was an immense and strangely daunting joy to be in the presence of someone burning and beaming quite so brightly with the creative Spirit of God, and to hear how, through human and divine co-operation, God’s Kingdom of justice and peace has been brought ever closer not just for the people of Embo, but for all the world.
As we try to digest all these things this week, when May brings us April showers, and I take the dog out for damp walks among the bluebells that continue to bloom, we shall do our best to join in with the endless creativity of God in as many ways as we can imagine.
