From the Vicar
Dear friends,
A Word from St Anne’s
The coming of October tells us that summer is past and we are well and truly into autumn! But what a summer! One of the warmest, sunniest and driest on record, to the enjoyment of many, although not necessarily to all farmers and gardeners… Nevertheless, here at St Anne’s in Over Haddon we will be celebrating our Harvest Festival on the 12th, giving us an opportunity to decorate the church with the rich colours of autumn, sing harvest hymns and share refreshments (and a chat) after the service. Later in the month, on the 26th, we will welcome our friends from Bakewell Parish Church to a Communion Service.
This October, on the 7th, also marks the second anniversary of that dreadful massacre of 1,200 innocent Israelis, and the kidnap of 250 hostages, by the terrorists of Hamas, which led, of course, to prolonged reprisals by the government of Israel against the population of Gaza, with the aim of rescuing all the hostages and crushing Hamas permanently. This has not yet been achieved, but nearly 70,000 Palestinians living in Gaza have been killed, including thousands of innocent children, and much of the settlement and infrastructure of that benighted strip of land has been destroyed, whilst at the same time more illegal Israeli settlement has been established on the West Bank, and Palestinian rights there eroded.
What relevance is this, you may ask, to a Parish Magazine in the Bakewell Benefice of Derbyshire, and what can we do about it anyway? Well, its relevance is that we are talking about a geographic location, “between the river and the sea” (the Jordan and the Mediterranean) historically described as Palestine and, to many people, – Jews, Christians and Moslems – regarded as a “Holy Land.” For us, it is the land where Jesus, and his ancestors, lived, where He was born, grew up, carried out His mission, died on the cross and arose from the dead. And it was where the Christian Church began. So what happens there matters to us. What we can do about is is admittedly limited, although our government could, perhaps, be doing more than it seems to be at present…but we can pray, express our concerns and opinions and support those organisations that are trying to bring peace and alleviate suffering.
It is, perhaps, worth remembering too that we, as the British nation, do in fact bear some historic responsibility for what is happening. During the first world war we were fighting the Turks, who controlled the area, and at the same time promised the indigenous Arabs their independence, and the Jewish diaspora a homeland, if they would helps us in our fight. In 1918 Britain was given a 30 year mandate over Palestine, during which time it allowed settlement of Jews from around the world – largely in kibbutzes – but after the second world war the numbers mushroomed, not surprisingly, following the Holocaust, and a war of independence (against Britain) broke out, which became a civil war between Jews and Arabs, leading to the creation in 1948 of the state of Israel, two small Palestinian territories – the West Bank and Gaza – and a great many Palestinian refugees. And as we can see, it is far from being resolved. So perhaps we too should pray for forgiveness?
Roger Truscott
