Christmas day puppet show - interview with the shepherds

 

Christmas Day service details and a poem

 Our Christmas day service this year is at 9:30am and will be a family service with carols, a puppet show and time for reflection.
Here is a poem to sit with as Christmas approaches.

Christmas Poem: Mary Oliver

Says a country legend told every year:
Go to the barn on Christmas Eve and see
what the creatures do as that long night tips over.
Down on their knees they will go, the fire
of an old memory whistling through their minds!

[So] I went. Wrapped to my eyes against the cold
I creaked back the barn door and peered in.
From town the church bells spilled their midnight music,
and the beasts listened –
yet they lay in their stalls like stone.

Oh the heretics!
Not to remember Bethlehem,
or the star as bright as a sun,
or the child born on a bed of straw!
To know only of the dissolving Now!

Still they drowsed on –
citizens of the pure, the physical world,
they loomed in the dark: powerful
of body, peaceful of mind,
innocent of history.

Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas!
And you are no heretics, but a miracle,
immaculate still as when you thundered forth
on the morning of creation!
As for Bethlehem, that blazing star

still sailed the dark, but only looked for me.
Caught in its light, listening again to its story,
I curled against some sleepy beast, who nuzzled
my hair as though I were a child, and warmed me
the best it could all night.

Tough but Lovely

Mary and John the Baptist. A strange combo?

The peaceable Kingdom

Our sermon from Advent 2 last week. 

 

Christ our King

 

Democracy sausage Sizzle this Satureday.

 Our church is a polling booth this Saturday so come along and buy a sausage and vote.

Hey Zac! Come down from that tree!

Jesus sees us, God sees us. Jesus follows us home. God is with us. 

 

Cracked and beautiful

YES, I HAVE A PIMPLE ON MY LIP, 

But hopefully the sermon is helpful. :)

Planting gardens in exile

 

What's this about dashing kid's heads against rocks????

A bit of reflection on Psalm 137 and Habakkuk.