Dear St Mary’s, 

It was such a joy to celebrate Revd Jacintha Danaswamy’s priesting last week with a bring-and-share lunch in the church after our 10.30am service. This Sunday 6th October, we’ll share Holy Communion at 9am with Revd Alan Moss leading and presiding and Revd Tim Scott preaching, and again at 10.30am with Alan leading and presiding and Revd Jacintha Danaswamy preaching. 

At 9am, we’ll mark ‘Homelessness Sunday’, focusing on those who lack housing and how we respond as a church, while at 10.30am, we will say prayers for the marriage of Emma Clements and Isobel Gordon as part of our Holy Communion service. There will be special refreshments after the 10.30am service in celebration of Emma and Isobel’s marriage and the gift they are to us as a church. 

On Sunday afternoon at 5pm, our Youth Group (Year 7 and up) will meet in the Welcome Centre – for details, email Revd Jacintha Danaswamy at . 

No Morning Prayer on Friday 4th October 
There will be no Morning Prayer in St Mary’s this Friday 4th October. We usually say Morning Prayer in St Mary’s side chapel every weekday at 8.30am and all are welcome. We also livestream Morning Prayer to Facebook (www.facebook.com/StMarysE17). 

Celebrating Change-Makers in our Parish and Diocese for Black History Month 
October is Black History Month and the Diocese of Chelmsford is celebrating ‘change-makers’ as its theme. Do you know someone at St Mary’s or in our wider Parish who has delivered positive, Christ-centred change in our community? To nominate a change-maker as part of the diocese’s Black History Month celebrations, click here or go to www.chelmsford.anglican.org and search ‘celebrating change-makers in our diocese’. 

St Mary’s Harvest Festival on Sunday 13th October
We’ll hold this year’s Harvest Festival on Sunday 13th October. As part of our Harvest Festival, we are also inviting you to bring canned and other non-perishable food items to church that Sunday. All food will go to Mill Grove Children’s Home in South Woodford. 

East London Brass Band to Partner with St Mary’s on 19th October Concert 
On Saturday 19th October, the renowned East London Brass Band will perform at St Mary’s at 7.30pm. Entry is free but we will run a card-only bar to raise money for the church and the band will encourage people to donate to the band via a retiring collection. Join us if you can! 

New Community Choir Starting Rehearsals in the Welcome Centre 
A new community choir is starting in Walthamstow and will be rehearsing in the Welcome Centre on Tuesday evenings, 7-8.30pm, starting 29th October. The Walthamstow Singers is a no-audition, mixed voice choir for adults and costs £60 per term. For more information about an upcoming taster session, or to join the choir, visit www.walthamstowsingers.co.uk. 

Free Concert at St Gabriel’s on Tuesday 5th November at 1.30pm 
The Royal Albert Hall Singers will give a free hour-long concert at St Gabriel’s Church (Havant Road and Wood Street) on Tuesday 5th November at 1.30pm. All are welcome. 

Save the Date: St Mary’s Christmas Fair on Saturday 23rd November 
Don’t miss our Christmas Fair on Saturday 23rd November which will include a craft market, refreshments and family activities. The event will run from 11am-5pm in the church with our cafe open as normal. Watch this space for more details – we’d love to have you join us.

St Mary’s School Forms Needed by 1st December
St Mary’s Primary School forms which require a clergy signature must be handed in by 1st December. If you have a form, please let our administrator Josie Wilson know by emailing her at . You can also drop your form at the Parish Office during the week or at another pre-arranged time. 

Register Your Child for Sunday Groups 
Our Children’s Ministry Leader Jo Talbott has told us that many St Mary’s parents and carers have yet to register their children for supervised children’s groups, which happen on the first three Sundays of the month in the Welcome Centre during our 10.30am service. If you have yet to register your child for Sunday groups, please take a moment to do so by filling out this online form. You can also find the form at www.stmaryswalthamstow.org/ChildrenAndYouth. 

EcoTip: Plant Trees 
While scientists say we must nearly halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to avoid the most severe impacts of the climate crisis – something which will involve a massive reduction in fossil fuel use – planting trees is a natural climate solution, and something which also has wider benefits for people and nature. In addition to capturing carbon, trees provide animal habitats, shade and flood defences. At St Mary’s, we are fortunate to be surrounded by several acres of trees, and in recent years, we’ve planted even more trees in the churchyard. As we enter the tree-planting season in the UK (October to March), it’s good to remember that churches and individual Christians can plant trees as a way of caring for creation and each other. For tree-planting advice, download this free tree planting guide from the Christian climate charity Operation Noah (www.operationnoah.org/GrowingTreesResource). 

Please pray this week for: 

• Those who are hurting and need pastoral care 
• Those who lack housing as we prepare to mark ‘Homelessness Sunday’ 
• The many crises around the world, especially escalating violence in the Middle East 
• All who seek refuge, asylum or shelter in this country or in other safe countries 
• The ministry of St Mary’s and the wider Parish 
• All who enter our buildings or visit our churchyard, that they experience God’s love
• Emma and Isobel, giving thanks for them as we bless their marriage this Sunday 
• For all who work to bring healing: doctors, nurses, social workers, clergy, etc 
• Those who work in the charity sector and seek to build a better, fairer world 
• Those on low incomes who will be especially impacted by high energy bills this winter 
• Government to stop the Rosebank oil field, which will exacerbate the climate crisis 

Next Week in the Welcome Centre (7th October to 12th October)

Monday 7th September 
Daphne & Friends (baby and child loss community), 10-11am 
Waltham Forest Community Choir, 7.30-9.30pm 

Tuesday 8th October 
Tai Chi, 7-9pm 

Wednesday 9th October 
HulaFit, 6.30-7.30pm 

Thursday 10th October  
Baby Massage, 10.45am-12.45pm 
FoodCycle (free community meal), 6.30pm 
The Singing Room, 7.30-9.30pm 

Friday 11th October 
Sing and Sign, 11am-12.15pm 

Saturday 12th October 
Walthamstow Welcomes Cafe (free help with confusing paperwork), 10am-Noon (www.stmaryswalthamstow.org/WalthamstowWelcomes) 

Reflection: ‘Communion’ 
Revd Jacintha Danaswamy writes: 

The past several days have been so special for me and my family as I was ordained a priest on Saturday surrounded by family and friends, and then on Sunday, presided for the first time at our Parish Holy Communion Service at St Mary’s. 

These have been such beautiful, powerful, and life changing days – I feel that I do not have the words to describe how profound they have been. I will be reflecting on this time for weeks, months and even years to come. 

Before my ordination on Saturday, I went, with seventeen other deacons, on retreat to our lovely Diocesan Retreat House in Pleshey. We spent a large amount of time in silence, and as an extrovert and external processor, I found the thought of a silent retreat a bit of a challenge. Yet I was encouraged by Martin Laird’s book Into the Silent Land to remember that, ‘We are built for contemplation…Communion with God in the silence of the heart is a God-given capacity, like the rhododendron’s capacity to flower, the fledgling’s for flight…’

This was a beautiful reminder that we each carry in us – in who we are in Christ, and Christ in us – an ability, innate in our very being, to be in communion with God. This communion with God can be seen when we gather to celebrate Holy Communion, for it is in sharing Communion that we are not only reminded of Christ’s death and resurrection, but that we are also invited into relationship with God and into the story of God. St Augustine describes this sacrament ‘as an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace’. 

In other words, it is an outward working of the transformative stillness and silence we encounter in relationship with God. This relationship, this story, we each carry and share with God, we also share with each other. We gather, as we did on Sunday, in our wonderful community of Walthamstow, to celebrate Christ and to remember his invitation ‘to do this in memory of me’, and in so doing, to be invited into this invisible transformative grace and to live in communion with him.

I am so grateful for our community of St Mary’s, and I cherished our time gathering and celebrating Holy Communion together on Sunday. I pray that this week you will feel nourished, as I do, and that you will know his silence and his grace this week.

Much love,

Jacintha