A Message From Matt

A Special Service for Remembering the Departed The pain of separation from those who have died lasts many years. It is often a pain that is very personal, and which we cannot easily share. We would like to invite you to the above service in the hope that, by joining together with others who have lost loved ones, you may know that you are not alone in your grief and that you will receive some comfort. On Sunday 4th November at 4pm we will be holding a service at St Andrew's Church in Heddington to pause and remember those who have died. In the service, during a time of special prayer, we will mention by name all those whose funerals have been conducted by the Clergy in the Oldbury Benefice during the last 2 years, together with any other names given in before the service begins. Later in the service, everyone present will be invited to light a candle in memory of their loved ones and leave it burning on the altar as a visible sign of remembrance. . We hope that the service

Dear all It's harvest time, and all over the countryside churches and schools are being decorated with flowers and food to celebrate the successful completion of another year's hard work by our farmers. Once again, we will have enough to eat through the winter. As the old hymn has it, "All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin." In our modern, interconnected world, where shortages in one place are met by importing from another, we may have lost some of that joy our ancestors experienced. True, those directly involved in farming can (hopefully) breathe out again as they get the reward for their labour, but it takes something like the carbon dioxide shortage we had this summer to remind most of us what it looks like when supermarket shelves are comparatively empty. And that shortage was, I hope, a helpful reminder to all of us that the abundance of food we enjoy in this country is not a right, but a privilege; a blessing, perhaps. Because when we take