Dear St Mary’s, 

Last Sunday, we were privileged to say prayers for the marriage of Isobel Gordon and Emma Clements at our 10.30am service. Emma and Isobel are deeply loved members of our church family and have respectively served as a PCC member and Safeguarding Officer; it was a real joy to celebrate with them and to witness their love for each other and for God. 

This Sunday 13th October at both our 9am (Holy Communion) and 10.30am (Morning Worship) services, we will celebrate Harvest. As part of our Harvest Festival, we are inviting you to bring canned and other non-perishable food items to church on Sunday, with all food going to Mill Grove Children’s Home in South Woodford. At both the 9am and 10.30am services, Revd Ola Franklin will lead and Revd Tim Scott will preach. 

At the 10.30am service, we will have supervised children’s groups for ages 2-11 in the Welcome Centre, with a Baby Lounge in the South Vestry at both services. For those unable to join us in person this Sunday, we’ll live-stream this week’s 9am Holy Communion service to our Facebook page. 

St Mary’s Churchyard wins ‘Churchyard of the Year’ – Again! 
Last week, St Mary’s Head Gardener Tim Hewitt and several of St Mary’s Churchyard volunteers attended a London in Bloom awards ceremony in which St Mary’s Churchyard won London ‘Churchyard of the Year’ – an award we first won in 2023. Many congratulations to Tim and his outstanding team for transforming St Mary’s Churchyard from a difficult-to-manage space into one of the most biodiverse and beautiful churchyards in London. Do let Tim and his volunteers know that you appreciate their fantastic work! 

Baby Loss Awareness Week at St Mary’s
Baby Loss Awareness Week runs from 9-15 October, and as part of local commemorations, Poppy Walker, who runs a baby loss group in the Welcome Centre, has set up a ribbon display along the church railings between the Welcome Centre and the church. Each ribbon features the name of a baby lost. For more information on the display, see the poster along the railings. For more on Baby Loss Awareness Week, visit www.babyloss-awareness.org. 

Advent Book Group at St Mary’s Starts 28th November 
Revd Jacintha Danaswamy will lead an Advent book group on Thursday evenings, 28th November to 19th December, exploring Revd Dr Rachel Mann’s book, Do Not Be Afraid, which is this year’s Archbishop of York’s Advent Book. If you’re interested in joining our Advent book group, email Jacintha at . There is a recommended £10 donation for the book, but no one will be excluded due to the cost.  

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’. 

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 via a retiring collection. Join us if you can! 

The Vestry Sessions: New Music Series to Launch at St Mary’s this November  
St Mary’s is thrilled to announce a new collaboration called The Vestry Sessions – a music programme in our ancient building that will feature jazz, classical and other genres in a compressed one-hour format. Tickets will be priced at an affordable community rate, with the first gig on the evening of 14th November. Watch this space for more details. 

St Mary’s School Forms Needed by 1st December
St Mary’s Primary School forms that require a clergy signature must be handed in by 1st December. If you have a form, you can drop it off at the Parish Office during the week, in the day. We will aim to sign forms within a week and then have them available for pickup. 

EcoTip: Rewilding Church Land 
The campaign group Wild Card is calling on the Church of England – one of the largest landowners in the country – to set aside 30% of its extensive land holdings for rewilding. Rewilding is a movement to create biodiverse environments on land which lacks many of the natural habitats that animals and insects need: a crucial initiative given that the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. The Rewild the Church campaign is being backed by theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and by environmentalist and TV presenter Chris Packham among others; sign a petition and learn more here.

Please pray this week for: 

• Those experiencing the challenges/ gifts of dyslexia this Dyslexia Awareness Week
• Bereaved parents remembering a baby lost during Baby Loss Awareness Week 
• Young people who are involved/ at risk of being involved in anti-social activity
• Farmers and those who work in agriculture/ food production as we celebrate Harvest 
• Those around the world who are in harm’s way due to human-caused climate change 
• Small businesses in Walthamstow operating in a challenging environment
• Clergy and lay leaders at St Mary’s and around our Parish 
• Peacemakers everywhere, especially those working to end conflict in the Middle East
• Those who are struggling to make ends meet due to low pay or other circumstances
• The work of Mill Grove Children’s Home in South Woodford 
• Those who have recently lost a spouse or loved one 

Next Week in the Welcome Centre (14th October to 18th October)

Monday 14th October  
Daphne & Friends (baby and child loss community), 10-11am 
Waltham Forest Community Choir, 7.30-9.30pm 

Tuesday 15th October 
Tai Chi, 7-9pm 

Wednesday 16th October 
Walthamstow Welcomes Cafe (free help with confusing paperwork), 10am-Noon
HulaFit, 6.30-7.30pm 

Thursday 17th October  
Baby Massage, 10.45am-12.45pm 
FoodCycle (free community meal), 6.30pm 
The Singing Room, 7.30-9.30pm 

Friday 18th October 
Sing and Sign, 11am-12.15pm 

Reflection: ‘(God’s) Love Never Fails’ 
Revd Alan Moss writes: 

A couple of weeks ago it was the Moss wedding anniversary, and to mark the occasion we headed off for a spa day! As we celebrated 22 years of sharing our lives together – 16 of those years as a married couple – I reflected back on the journey that has taken us from being a secular youth worker/welder (me) and local council officer (Sarah), both of whom had no interest in church, to being two ordained priests in the Church of England. 

The journey has been a long one, and the saga continues, but what has always been consistent among the challenge and the change is our love and companionship strengthened by the presence and love of God, even when we didn’t believe.

This got me thinking about one of the readings we heard this past Sunday as we celebrated and declared God’s blessing over the amazing Isobel and Emma and their love and commitment to each other over the past 27 years. The reading comes from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7: ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.’

What strikes me most about this description of love is that it portrays love as something that requires effort, long-term investment, commitment, faithfulness, endurance and a desire to relinquish our self-centredness for the wellbeing of another person, even when they or we don’t deserve it. It frames love as a long-term journey that won’t always be easy and will often require sacrifice on everyone’s part. Yet in the end, this type of love will carry us through the darkest times of life and lift us toward heaven.

Yet we also live in a world where we know that our earthly attempts to love and be loved can sometimes fall short because we ourselves are fallen. There are times when we are selfish and don’t treat one another well; it is then that we can fall into the danger of thinking that God’s love for us is somehow the same. But the wonderful, life-changing truth is this: God’s love for us is divine, eternal, immovable, unfailing and unconditional! 

Jesus’s love for humanity took Him to the cross and raised Him from the grave for us all. The description of love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 isn’t about giving us an impossible standard to live up to, it’s a reminder of the nature of love itself which is modelled in the heart of God. It reminds us that we are made in the image of this love, therefore, we are never excluded from it because it lives in us through the Holy Spirit.

Isobel and Emma gave us all a glimpse of what true love looks like last Sunday, and the God of love, who is love, poured out a blessing over them and through them blessed us all. Love in the Bible is a verb, it takes root in us and works through us. Perhaps we have been hurt by love in our lives and we have built walls around ourselves as protection, but my hope this week is that you might let God’s love consume you, because it will never let you down.

So, I encourage you this week to read the passage from 1 Corinthians 13 again, but in a slightly different way as we recognise that God is love: 

‘God is patient, God is kind. God does not envy, God does not boast, God is not proud. God does not dishonour others, God is not self-seeking, God is not easily angered, God keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. God always protects, God always trusts, God always hopes, God always perseveres. God’s love never fails.’