Mothers’ Union E-news – April 2022

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The Rev Bonnie Evans-Hills has been honoured in the 2022 Lambeth Awards for her long-standing dedication to building interfaith relationships.

The Priest-in-Charge at St Margaret of Scotland in Leven, Fife, is one of 37 recipients from across four continents. The awards, announced on Tuesday by the Most Rev Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, are given to people within the Church of England, the wider Anglican Communion, other Christian churches, as well as to those of other faiths and none.

Musicians, activists, clergy, peacemakers and educators are included, alongside people whose quiet dedication to their work hasn’t drawn the public eye.

Ms Evans-Hill was at Lambeth Palace to collect The Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation from the Archbishop. The award was made for “her decades-long passionate dedication to building interfaith relationships at local, national and international level for the sake of a better world”.

Commenting after the ceremony, Rev Bonnie said: “It is a huge honour to receive this, but really the honour belongs to all who have shared their journeys, and stories of courage and love.”

Announcing the awards, the Archbishop said: “The world around us is not as it should be. There is grave injustice and we currently face war in Europe, while Covid-19 continues to cause much grief. But we do not despair. Our faith in Jesus teaches us that we are justified in maintaining hope. One thing which feeds that hope is the work and service of the people we recognise today.”

The Most Rev Mark Strange, Bishop of Moray, Ross & Caithness and Primus, said: “We in the Scottish Episcopal Church are absolutely delighted that the Rev Bonnie Evans-Hills has received this award which recognises her long commitment to interfaith relationships. We are also delighted that she is putting all her talents to work on behalf of our Church as Convener of the Provincial Interfaith Relations Committee.”

The current Lambeth Awards began in 2016. Recipients are recognised for contributions to community service, worship, evangelism, interfaith cooperation, ecumenism and education.

(Picture shows the Most Rev Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rev Bonnie Evans-Hills, the Rev Fiona Souter, chaplain at University of Hertfordshire, and the Rev Canon Jane Richards from the Diocese of Chelmsford)

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Congratulations to St Luke, Glenrothes for becoming regional winner for Scotland – earning £1,500 to support their work in the community. The award recognised work to provide computers and tablets to children for online learning during lockdown last year.

St Luke’s now joins four other churches in the UK final, hoping to win £6,000. You can support St Luke’s by going to the Good News website and clicking ‘show your support’, at www.ecclesiastical.com/church/competition/winners/scotland/

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Ordination – Sunday 2nd October 2022, 3pm at the Cathedral

We currently have three ordinands from this Diocese in training for ordained ministry: Rachael Wright (Highland Perthshire), Ross Stirling-Young (Central Fife), and Stuart Thomson (Glenalmond).

Rachael will serve as curate at St Mary, Dunblane, and is due to be Ordained to the Diaconate on Sunday 2nd October, 2022, at 3.00pm in the Cathedral. All clergy and lay readers are invited to robe, and all members of the Diocese are welcome to attend. Please pray for Rachael as she prepares.

And many congratulations to Ross for being selected to attend the Ordinands’ Course at St George’s College, Jerusalem, in July, the first SEI ordinand to be chosen for this course

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The RSCM truly is the heart and home of church music, providing support, resources, and guidance for congregations of any denomination.

Over recent months the RSCM has gone through a period of change in terms of the structure and operation of its voluntary areas, as well as launching a new education plan designed to support and nurture congregations, choirs, clergy, and organists/directors of music more effectively. The RSCM believes in the need to support, nurture and train all those who are involved in the world of church music.

Effective music in worship, performed to a high standard, does not simply happen spontaneously: it requires effort and input. The RSCM is uniquely placed to guide and to provide the education required to meet these standards. We work with every age and stage, from children to experienced clergy and music leaders. We celebrate and uphold the traditions of choral and organ music, but we also engage with and support music of all styles and in all settings, from cathedrals to small parish churches.

The Scotland Area Team consists of volunteers, led by Matthew Beetschen (Master of the Music at Dunfermline Abbey) and includes a provincial representative from the SEC (The Revd Christoph Wutscher, Rector of Holy Trinity Stirling in the Diocese of St Andrews, Dunkeld & Dunblane). An ambitious programme of activity is planned for this year which will see the team bring the RSCM’s mission across Scotland. Please visit https://www.rscm.org.uk/areas/scotland-area-team/ for more details and to subscribe to our local newsletter.

The new RSCM Education Plan is an exciting programme developed by the RSCM which outlines their vision for the future and how they can support you specifically in your work (which includes helpful opportunities for further ministerial development). The RSCM is a Christian charity founded in 1927 on a bedrock of education who believes in the need to support, nurture and train all those who are involved in the world of church music. The RSCM is uniquely placed to guide and to provide the education required to meet these standards.

For more information about the work of the RSCM please contact the RSCM’s Scottish Regional Manager, Ian Munro, at imunro@rscm.com or on 07821 125548 or the SEC Provincial Representative Christoph Wutscher on rector@holytrinitystirling.org.  They would be delighted to have a chat.

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Mothers Union members of the Diocese of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane with Brechin Diocese held their first Silent Vigil on Saturday 27th November, a day that was bright and sunny, yet with an amber weather warning for fierce winds for Perth, courtesy of named storm ‘Arwen’.

Several of our members, especially those living in areas for which there was a red weather warning (signifying a risk to life), had reluctantly accepted that it was much too dangerous to be outdoors and that, instead, they would support us from home in prayer.

Accordingly, only a small group of Mothers’ Union (MU) members and supporters, including our Bishop, The Right Revd Ian Paton, were able to gather at St John’s Episcopal Church, Perth for the Silent Vigil.  In our Christian tradition, worship is normally carried out indoors, but well fortified by tea/coffee and biscuits, we moved outdoors to the courtyard garden of St John’s Church to deliver our witness in public view.

We were led in prayer by Revd Kim E Lafferty, Rector of ABC Saints and an MU member, who had created this service for our event.  As our campaign was focussed on the fact that 1 in 3 women globally are victims of violence or domestic abuse, we wore the MU purple scarves and badges carrying the logo ‘no more 1 in 3’ and had MU leaflets to hand out to passers-by giving details of the annual United Nations campaign ‘16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence’.  We opened with a welcome and call to worship, moved through opening prayers and confession, to a bible reading.  Next, came very moving intercessions where Revd Kim led us in naming and praying for an end to the domestic and sexual abuses that our society traditionally hides or ignores.  Revd Kim then removed her MU scarf from around her neck, refastening it over her mouth, powerfully symbolising that abused women often have no voice, before leading us into silence from 1.03 pm – 1.06 pm.  Our worship ended with closing prayers and a blessing.

I found it enormously refreshing and empowering to worship outdoors with like-minded individuals, bearing witness to my faith and publicly naming and shaming the various forms of abuse that have been a scourge to our society for generations.

Isabelle Pottinger

MU Diocesan Trustee (Social Concern)

Diocese of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane with Brechin Diocese

December 2021

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Appletree Community

 

Getting to know more about Louis

Many will have heard or read about Louis Sainsbury from Comrie, his profound support needs, and the tireless and valiant efforts of his mum, Kate in striving to give him a better quality of life in the development of Appletree Community.  Louie is looking forward to being able to live permanently at Appletree as soon as staff are recruited and sufficiently trained.

His mother, Kate, provides the following insights into Louis’ situation and the transition to Appletree:

Louis’ experience in hospital

What a terrible existence for Louis to have to live in a locked ward, where staff must work in pairs because of the danger from other patients; the sound pollution he endures in the tormented shouts of fellow patients, emergency alarms activated by staff out of fear, raised staff voices;  living with adrenalin-filled fear and uncertainty of when he is going to leave hospital ‘bye bye hospital’; the lack of purpose in his hospital existence; the crushing contrast between relaxed time spent in his own house ‘Louis’ house’, with mum and trusted care team, the fear that overshadows these visits from the prospect of returning to hospital.

What a brave man to endure this.  His resilience goes back to my mother’s lifelong example of loving constancy, laid down in Louis as habits of expression of love for family and friends, .  the meaning and purpose, I have tried to give him, through holding out a future towards which he surely makes his way: ‘macaroni cheese and coleslaw; here,, ‘the beach’ there, a telephone call with Uncle Nick there.  Focused in this way towards the future, with the addition of activities in his house in which he has agency, cooking, trampolining, stacking cushions off sofas, he makes sense one day at a time.  Even if the horribleness overwhelms him and he falls back into OCD behaviours, seeking to destroy a specific item of equipment, trauma-response behaviour, shouting, even if there is an incident when staff pull an alarm on him and lead him with his arms behind his back and sedate him, he knows that he can ‘put it behind him’ and with the encouragement of his wonderful Key Worker, his staff team and myself, he can move on to a fresh day.

‘You are an amazing man, Louis!’ I say.  ‘You are a star .. a hero … you’re like Nelson Mandela!’

Other times, we simply sit alongside him as he sobs.  We put cream on the finger he digs his nail into, making a mark, expressing the pain of his incarceration.  And then his natural optimism returns and he looks up with a grin.  ‘No way, José’ he says.  And we grab at that moment of wellbeing and build on it.

His care team note and speak about the terrible difference they see in Louis, not only between his being at home and being at hospital, but also the difference between being indoors in hospital, when he is most at his fearful, and outdoors, in the gardens. They too want Louis out as soon as can safely be achieved.

How heartbreaking it is as a mother to be helpless, to have to stand alongside, unable to solve the dilemma that there are not enough staff to let him leave hospital.

The house is ready, the small nucleus of a care team is in place, has been in place for months, is learning about Louis all the time, but still we need five or six more.  I am powerless: this is the remit of the care agency, in a national post-Covid, post-Brexit context where there are too few candidates for jobs across all sectors.  Meanwhile, he must go on living this agonising existence.

It is draining as well as heartbreaking.  In the last three years I have driven 70,000 miles: in the first instance backwards and forwards to Hartlepool where he went for 8 months in 2018; since then, the 100 mile trip to Dundee, where he has been locked up since January 2019.

I have no days off, just a couple of hours here and there in a less-busy day: and the pleasure of time with Louis, with his care team, the support of a prayer group, seeing the project develop, extending our pray to care for others, noticing planets in the sky, being thankful for everything that is… even the hardship, for what it teaches, for the bedrock of trusting God, for the development of Louis as a person, and the love that is all around us.

Louis’ transition to Appletree

It’s currently a busy, turbulent, transition time. Louis is living in hospital still, with all its constraints and unhappiness for him, but regularly spending nights at Appletree and moving on to multiple nights, some with me, and some with staff.  Simultaneously we are recruiting new staff, some are going through training, we are laying down systems in the house – for example, cooking, shopping, planning activities, cleaning, mutual support for each other: staff, myself, Louis.

I think of the disciples in the boat in the storm-tossed sea, fearing they were drowning – and Jesus calming the seas, rebuking them for their lack of faith!!  Yet even in this time of uncertainty, I completely trust that this is God’s call and vision and that as we live each day at a time, we are supported.  We are surrounded by wonderful people sent to support us and we are making progress!

~ Kate Sainsbury

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