Music - Gustav Holst, ‘Jupiter’
This should make you happy: David Rubenstein playing a transcription for piano of Holst’s Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity. We listened to this at breakfast time for our weekly piece of music and it is truly very joyful and uplifting. Look out for (of course) the “hymn” section which was later set to the words of Cecil Spring-Rhodes’ ‘The Two Fatherlands’ and given the title ‘Thaxted’ together becoming ‘I Vow to Thee My Country’.
Life is full and soon to get fuller. But some great things have been happening albeit accompanied with a sense of melancholy. I’ve been covering my training incumbent’s sabbatical for just over a month now meaning I’m taking responsibility for the church while he’s away. I’m really enjoying it and feel much at home taking lots of services and preaching very regularly. At the weekend I did three sermons on three consecutive days for the jubilee, a joint wedding and baptism and Pentecost respectively. It is also very exciting that our Sunday congregation is growing seemingly every week. We are having people show up because of occasional offices and coming back and we are having people drop in out of the blue. I’d say the congregation (which is normally around 40-45 on a Sunday) has grown by maybe 25% over the last month. The place is feeling fuller and vibrant.
At the weekend I met a lady who told me that she is retired and has been “moved” by her daughter to Nottingham from somewhere else. It was after the service and she told me that she hadn’t ever been to an Anglo-Catholic church before but she believed she had been led by the Holy Spirit to attend and she felt it was the right place for her. She was very complementary of me and the church more generally. It was an encounter that left me feeling immensely encouraged.
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