{"id":19304,"date":"2020-11-22T15:29:36","date_gmt":"2020-11-22T15:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/?p=19304"},"modified":"2020-11-22T15:29:36","modified_gmt":"2020-11-22T15:29:36","slug":"a-letter-from-roger-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/?p=19304","title":{"rendered":"A letter from Roger"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Roger Barnes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear Fellow Members of St Bartholomew\u2019s<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well, here we are again \u2013 another lockdown, but at least it\u2019s not quite as draconian as the first lockdown. The church is open daily from 11 to 3 for private prayer (read meditation, contemplation, or just being awed by a holy place that has stood in its present form for 900 years \u2013 on a site probably much older), and with a skeleton staff we can Zoom services live from the church, and ring one bell for 5 minutes before the \u201cservice\u201d starts (yippee).<\/p>\n

There was quite a discussion at the Core Team weekly meeting as to whether we should continue broadcasting from church during a lockdown, or whether we should go back to Paul running the service from home as we did during the first lockdown. I voted for the church as to me it is the spiritual heart of the village. I know \u201cthe church\u201d is not a building, e.g. Greenbelt, and I also know that God is everywhere and not just in St Bartholomew\u2019s on a Sunday morning \u2013 but our church is a special place and one that we need to promote to the village population \u2013 it\u2019s their church after all.<\/p>\n

Talking of which, it was good to see so many \u201cpassers-by\u201d at the war memorial on Remembrance Sunday. All the comments I have had about the ceremony, from either live viewers or Zoom, have been very positive. The new telephone line into the church, that carries the broadband connection, was used for the first time on 8th<\/sup> November, and again last Sunday. What a difference it makes \u2013 no more loss of church! It\u2019s a great shame that Jane and Martin have had to self-isolate at home for the last 2 weeks and missed managing from church the first use of the broadband connection.<\/p>\n

Thinking of church finances as I often do, I recall a sermon preached recently by Paul concerning the taxation of the Jewish people by the Romans; \u201cRender unto Caesar the things that are Caesar\u2019s\u201d as Jesus referred to the fact that Caesar\u2019s head was on the coin. Rather impishly I thought that as the Queen is the head of the Church of England and all coins and notes contain her head, could we create a parallel by saying \u201cRender unto the Queen (in our case St Bartholomew\u2019s, Ducklington) the things that are the Queen\u2019s\u201d. Seriously though it would be good to get in some extra cash especially as there are no collections during this second lock-down. I must thank those of you who have made additional contributions \u2013 these are helping to keep us afloat and are so much appreciated.<\/p>\n

Please pray for a successful vaccine, and for those who have been directly or indirectly affected by this dreadful virus.<\/p>\n

God bless<\/p>\n

Roger<\/p>\n

Churchwarden<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Fellow Members of St Bartholomew\u2019s   Well, here we are again \u2013 another lockdown, but at least it\u2019s not quite as draconian as the first lockdown. The church is open daily from 11 to 3 for private prayer (read meditation, contemplation, or just being awed by a holy place that has stood in its present form for 900 years \u2013 on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,310,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-covid","category-news","ctfw-no-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19305,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19304\/revisions\/19305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}