Dear St Mary’s, 

On Sunday 23rd February – the Second Sunday Before Lent – we’ll celebrate Holy Communion at 9am followed by our monthly Intergenerational Service at 10.30am. At 9am, Revd Jacintha Danaswamy will lead and preside and Revd Tim Scott will preach, while at 10.30am, Jacintha will lead and give a reflection as part of our Intergenerational Service. 

There will be no supervised children’s groups this week as children and adults will be together at 10.30am, however, we will have a Baby Lounge in the South Vestry for parents and carers to come and go as needed. For anyone unable to join us in person this Sunday, we’ll livestream the 9am service to our Facebook page (facebook.com/StMarysE17). 

On Sunday afternoon at 5pm, our Youth Group will meet in the Welcome Centre Lounge, and all secondary students are invited to join; if your child hasn’t been to our Youth Group before, please email for details. And then at 6pm this Sunday, there will be evening prayer in the church hosted by St Luke’s – all are welcome. 

Tonight: ‘Listen and Lead’ Course to Explore Faith and Community Organising
In association with the Centre for Theology and Community, ‘Listen and Lead’ is a short course which begins on Thursday 20th February, running four Thursdays, 7.30-9pm, that will give you the opportunity to explore practical ways to live out your faith at St Mary’s and in the wider community. We’ll look at how building relationships in our church and community can help us to discern personal and collective callings and form the bedrock for church leadership and working for the Common Good. Email .  

St Mary’s Knitting and Crochet Group to Restart on Saturday 1st March
Last year, we started a drop-in crochet and knitting group which met on Saturdays in our Exhibition Space and was extremely popular! The group has been on pause since Christmas and will now start back up again on Saturday 1st March, 10am-12pm. Bring wool, needles, crochet hooks and whatever you’re working on. Details: . 

Sunday Evening Worship on 2nd March at 6.30pm  
We’ll hold an evening service of sung worship on Sunday 2nd March at 6.30pm. Led by musician Matt Begg, ‘Embers’ is held quarterly and is an hour of praise and worship music. 

What’s Important to You? Join us on Monday 3rd March for a 1pm Listening Meeting 
Climate Change, Youth Safety, Air Quality, Affordable Housing, London Living Wage, Supporting Refugees – what’s important to you? Community Organising is more than public action: the methods and techniques of organising also shape our life as a church and help us to live out our faith as Christians. We are currently in the process of holding a series of congregational listening meetings, and our next one will be on Monday 3rd March at 1pm in the café space in church. For more details, email: . 

Opportunities to Mark Ash Wednesday and the Season of Lent 
As the season of Lent begins next month, join us for Ash Wednesday services at St Mary’s on 5th March at 7.30am, and later that same day at 7.30pm, as we offer the imposition of ashes and celebrate Holy Communion. There will also be a ‘No Faith in Fossil Fuels’ service at 11am at St John’s Waterloo in Central London on Ash Wednesday – an opportunity to connect Ash Wednesday observance with the harm fossil fuels are causing (to register for the service, click here, or visit www.greenchristian.org.uk). And starting 20th March, St Mary’s will run a Lent book group which will meet for four consecutive Thursdays in the church from 7.30pm-9pm. We will be discussing How We Learn To Be Brave by Rt Revd Mariann Budde (register interest here or by emailing Revd Jacintha Danaswamy at ). Our full Holy Week schedule will be announced soon. 

Marriage Preparation Course to Begin 9th March 
Are you considering getting married or are you currently planning a wedding? St Mary’s will run a free Marriage Preparation Course for couples on three consecutive Sunday afternoons beginning 9th March, 3pm-4.30pm. The course is a great opportunity for couples to consider and discuss the building blocks of a lasting relationship. St Mary’s is an inclusive church and our course is open to all couples, including those getting married elsewhere. To register or to learn more, please email Revd Vanessa Conant at . 

Book Your Ticket to Hear David Dark Speak at a Special 16th March Learning Event
On Sunday 16th March, professor and cultural commentator David Dark will preach at St Mary’s Sunday Services and also speak that evening as part of a free but ticketed learning event. David will give a 6pm lecture on ‘Art, Empire and the End of the World: Taking up the Human Assignment One Day at a Time’, followed by a discussion and Q&A. David is a Greenbelt Festival favourite and author of The Gospel According to America, Everyday Apocalypse, Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious and We Become What We Normalize. Book your ticket here or visit www.eventbrite.co.uk and search ‘David Dark’.

Is St Mary’s Your Church? Join Our Parish Roll in March and April 
Every six years, dioceses from around the Church of England ask parish churches like St Mary’s to start from scratch and create an entirely new Parish Roll, which is a listing of everyone who considers a particular church to be their church home. If St Mary’s is your church, starting in late March and continuing into April, we will be asking you to fill out a short form during or after a Sunday service (or online, if you’re not able to join us in person). While being on our Parish Roll allows you to vote at our annual parish meeting as well as to stand for church leadership, it also helps us see how we are growing as a church. 

EcoTip: Lent Course from Operation Noah Explores Money and Climate 
Where Your Treasure Is is a five-week course from Christian climate charity Operation Noah exploring how we can use our money to tackle the climate crisis. Each week includes a reflection and discussion questions, a prayer and suggested actions. Click here to download the free course or visit www.operationnoah.org; you can also register to join Operation Noah staff on Wednesdays at lunchtime in Lent and participate in the course over Zoom. 

Please pray this week for:

• All who are unwell in body, mind or spirit: for support, rest and healing 
• All who are struggling financially: for guidance and help 
• The safety and security of Ukraine and Europe as the US signals reduced support
• The upcoming German elections: that extremist parties would be defeated 
• Strengthened alliances between nation states which promote/ defend human rights
• Churches around the world to support those who are marginalised or in need
• Interfaith cooperation on climate change, peacemaking and support for refugees 
• The UK Government to stop all new oil and gas fields, including Rosebank 
• Pope Francis, who has been unwell in hospital 
• Our bishops, Lynne and Guli, and our archdeacon, Mike 
• Ongoing trauma and tensions in the Middle East: for justice and peace  
• For people around the world to encounter Jesus Christ this Lent and Easter 

Next Week in the Welcome Centre (24th February – 1st March) 

Monday 24th February 
Daphne & Friends (baby and child loss community), 10-11am 
Waltham Forest Community Choir, 7.30-9.30pm 

Tuesday 25th February 
Walthamstow Village Community Network, 2pm 
Hula Fit, 6.30pm 
Tai Chi, 7.30pm 

Wednesday 26th February    
Ninja School, 4-7pm 

Thursday 27th February  
Baby Massage, 10.30am
The Singing Room, 7.30pm 
FoodCycle (free community meal), 6.30pm 

Friday 28th February    
Ninja School, 4-7pm 

Saturday 1st March
Walthamstow Welcomes Cafe (free help with confusing paperwork), 10am-Noon

Reflection: ‘I Have a Dream’ 
Revd Vanessa Conant writes: 

Next month, a member of our congregation, Dr Christine Checkinska, will lead a special service at St Paul’s Cathedral. The evening of music and reflection will celebrate a sermon given at St Paul’s by the Revd Dr Martin Luther King, Jr some 60 years ago. 

In preparation for this event, Christine read me some of her reflections one rainy afternoon last week. Unexpectedly, as she was reading, I found tears welling up. I was caught off guard by the strength of emotion I felt as she recalled Revd Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s vision of a world in which he said: ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.’

Perhaps what struck me was how far we are from the realisation of that dream. And how whatever progress has been made now appears to be under threat. In America, a war waged against diversity, equity and inclusion programmes is seeing people lose jobs, funding and opportunity. How long before this same slash-and-burn approach to justice and equality sneaks into the algorithm and starts to become part of the political discourse here? Maybe it already has. Racism is being normalised, embedded and – worse – celebrated. 

Writing earlier this week, J Kameron Carter, Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine, wrote: ‘What has always been the case is even more so now the case; namely, that racism is not a problem of knowing. If it were, it would’ve long ago been fixed. Rather, it’s a problem of enjoying…a problem of pleasure attached to inflicting pain…which aims to fill a hole, a gap, a void to build a sense of self or identity. The search for wholeness is where the religious comes in. It’s what makes the pleasure-seeking, pain-inflicting search at one and the same time racial and religious.’

What we believe matters. Our religious life is our political life – our choices, our actions, our silence, our protest is all connected to the way in which we look to fill our souls. If our faith in Jesus Christ, our rootedness in him, does not build an identity formed by love, mercy, compassion and grace, then we will go looking to fill that void in other places.

It is why I can think of nothing more vital than paying attention to our inner lives, than attending worship alongside others, than belonging to a community in ways which reshape and remould us so that we are able to resist the lure of division and prejudice which is everywhere around us. Dr David Dark, who is coming to preach for us at St Mary’s next month as well as to give an evening lecture, writes: ‘It could almost seem appropriate to ask each other from time to time, “How’s your religion coming along? How’s it going? Born again, or the same old, same old? Did you successfully distinguish darkness from light in the course of your day?”’  

Revd Dr Martin Luther King, Jr ended his St Paul’s sermon in 1964 with a paraphrase of a poem by Douglas Malloch. It was the invitation to be the best that each person could be. Perhaps this is our greatest power, in the face of the bewildering troubles of the world. Let us take seriously our religious lives, which is the story by which we live and the way that we live it. May we build our lives on Jesus Christ. With the help of God, may we be the best that we can be.

‘If you can’t be a pine on the top of a hill
Be a scrub in the valley – but be
The best little scrub on the side of the hill,
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree
If you can’t be a highway just be a trail
If you can’t be the sun be a star;
It isn’t by size that you win or fail –
Be the best of whatever you are.
And when you do this, when you do this, you’ve mastered the length of life.’