ADVENT SUNDAY

                                                   Pour down, O heavens from above
                                             And let the skies rain down righteousness
                                                                       (The Advent Prose)

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

Nearly thirty families attend 'Connections' family event.

Mary and Joseph begin their journey around Weston Favell.

Parishioners celebrate at Advent Sunday services.

Tents go up in St. Peter's before 'Experience Christmas'

And tomorrow...

The week begins with Morning Prayer at 8.30 a.m.

From 9.00 a.m. the first of our visiting schools are welcomed to the church by Sue Kirby and the 'Experience Christmas' team.

In the hall, people will be giving blood from 11.00 a.m.

Please pray for all who take part in 'Experience Christmas', that children (and through them their families) may have their eyes opened to the meaning of the season.

Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind,
Dreading to find its Father lest it find
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good:
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood.

Where is that Law for which we broke our own,
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned
Her hereditary right to passion, Mind
His will to absolute power? Gone. Gone.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own?

The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
Was it to meet such grinning evidence
We left our richly odoured ignorance?
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.

We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.

                                 W. H. Auden

This is the Advent section of a long poem (1500 lines and 52 pages) called 'FOR THE TIME BEING: A Christmas Oratorio', written during World War 2. You can find the whole work in W.H.Auden's 'Collected Poems'.