News Items for the site: The Kingdom is Yours                   July 2010

Wantage Sisters offer regular website retreats with individual guidance by a Sister.

The Community of St Mary the Virgin, the women’s community near Oxford stream their worship live on the internet, five times a day. This is clearly appreciated across the world as people join in the Community’s worship through their laptops.

A weekly video is produced offering meditations and also a series of retreat material available on video . Presently, at the planning stage, is a nature watch page, to share the beauty of the gardens and the animals who live alongside the Convent.  All contact details are available through their exciting and imaginative website:   www.csmvonline.org.uk

Burford becoming Mucknell
In 2008, after 60 years at Burford the Benedictine nuns and monks sold their expensive to maintain and run building and bought the derelict ‘Mucknell Farm’ in Worcestershire. Set in 40 acres of land, the farm is being transformed into a well insulated and ecologically ‘sustainable’ monastery. The building materials are largely locally sourced and/or made of ‘recycled’ components, photo-voltaic cells, solar panels and a biomass boiler will provide the energy, rain-water will be harvested and grey–water re-used, and the effluent be treated in a bio-digester and run off through reed-beds in a series of swales. A large organic kitchen garden and orchard should provide a substantial amount of food, while the rest of the land will be wooded or grazed and kept as wild flower meadows. The Community hopes to take possession of its new home in October and resume its ministry of hospitality in the Spring of 2011.
This Benedictine Community is the only one in Britain in which there are both women and men. Together they are currently a community of nine, During this interval they have a temporary home at Broad Marston Manor near Stratford on Avon. Look them up under www.mucknellabbey.org.uk

Novices train together
It is usually accepted that those testing their vocation in a Convent or Monastery will be considerably helped by there being others doing the same thing, and asking the same questions. Recognising that if a programme of training brought together new sisters and brothers there would be more scope for organising imaginative programmes and generally more buzz.
Sr Clare-Louise, SLG has responsibility for the current form of inter-novitiate study days. Eventually she is hoping for several of these courses each year with a ‘rolling syllabus so that Novices could join in at any point in their Novitiate. She said, ‘I hope that we might be able to have a trial run next January and see how we go’.
Meanwhile the Franciscans have been thinking ‘world-wide’ and Novice representatives from their five provinces met in New York with the Brother and Sister Ministers General to identify a basic curriculum. This is to serve new members in whichever country they join, though clearly the opportunities may be different in Papua New Guinea and Plaistow, East London. A second gathering in the Solomon Islands is taking place in July 2010. There are, encouragingly, groups of novices joining in each of the five provinces throughout the world.

Oratory News (OGS)
The Oratory of the Good Shepherd is a Society of priests and laymen in Europe, North America, Australia and Southern Africa, numbering over 50, who are bound together by a common rule and discipline and are celibate.
At the end of April, Fr Alex Bennett, OGS, returned safely from a tour of duty with the 3rd Rifles in Afghanistan.  Fr Peter Ford, OGS, is Chaplain to Las Palmas Gran Canaria and there is a regular Anglican Eucharist celebrated on Fridays at Noon during summer months in the small chapel of San Fernando in Puerto de Mogan.

Learn more about this Community on their website: www.ogs.net
 A new Anglican Community for women, called to live the religious life in a similar dispersed style began to come together in 2004 in St David’s, Wales. Check them out at www.sistersofthegoodshepherd.org

SOCIETY OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD, BURNHAM ABBEY (SPB)
The eleven sisters of this Community, founded in 1905 at Taplow, near Maidenhead, are a contemplative Order living under the inspiration of St Augustine who wrote in the 5th Century “The reason you have come together is that you may have one heart and one mind entirely centred upon God” and in response many have felt called to open their hearts to the needs of the whole world in prayer.

Prayer is work to which the Sisters are especially called – essentially an inner journey with the Holy Spirit as guide. The whole of life should become prayer, including the times of work, but set times are needed to act as a focus. The Eucharist and the Divine Office are communal times of prayer and each Sister also takes her turn at the Watch of Intercession before the altar each day to intercede for the whole world and for those for whom our prayers have been asked, remembering the life-giving blood of Jesus poured out for all.  You will find further information under www.burnhamabbey.org

Anglican Single Consecrated Life (SCL)
Sr Judith Smith has recently constructed a website to offer a connecting and encouragement link for those who have made an act of consecration as a single person making private vows. There is also a regular magazine “Grapevine” which offers news of those living under this personal disciple which  can be obtained from Secretary, Revd Susan Hartley – suemhartley@btinternet.co, or through this new website www.singleconsecratedlife-cofe.org.uk 
About a dozen of those expressing this vocation have met annually at Alum Rock, Birmingham; the next meeting is scheduled for 14th May, 2011.  A weekend has been set aside in September 2011 at Offa Retreat House, 3 miles outside Leamington Spa. Further information about these events may be obtained from the addresses above. General information about the vocation is set out in the Advisory Council on the Relations of Bishops and Religious Communities A Handbook of the Religious Life ISBN 1-85311-618-1, or please write to Sue.

Community of St Francis (CSF)
Following the sad closure of the Franciscan house at Compton Durville, Somerset earlier this summer, the Sisters have just acquired a new home in the Lincoln Diocese at Metheringham which they hope will be functioning by the Autumn 2010. This Community are First Order Sisters with other active ministries in Birmingham, Leicester and London (Southwark and Plaistow) with an American Province centred in San Francisco. See the website for the Sisters and the Brothers at http://www.franciscans.org.uk/Page38.htm.

Hilfield Friary (SSF)
The men’s branch of the Franciscan Order also offer a specific  website for its House in Dorset known as Hilfield Friary; www.hilfieldfriary.org.uk  The brothers here, together with currently 16 volunteers, are well into establishing a community combining prayer, hospitality and a serious attempt to create an Godward atmosphere which promotes the Franciscan values of care for creation, working for peace and justice, and seeking respectful dialogue with peoples of other faiths.

Benedictine Sisters at Edgware
The Anglican Benedictine Sisters of St Mary at the Cross announced in early 2010 a two year plan to modify their community life.  Since then, the sisters’ plan has evolved into the following: The sisters will be retaining a portion of the abbey including the chapel and are converting part of the building to live in. The main Abbey building is now on the market and the sisters would very appreciate everyone’s prayers that this process will proceed smoothly. Different management options for Henry Nihill House Care Home are being explored by the Community and they hope to be able to announce plans for this by September 2010.  Their annual Foundation Day will now be held on Saturday 23rd July 2011 (a new date to the one originally given) which will be for a celebration of thanksgiving for 145 years of their Community at Edgware.
The three Sisters remaining are much in the prayers of other Anglican Religious.

New Communities Explore Monasticism
A second meeting in May 2010, representing new Communities that have found inspiration from the traditional Monastic Orders, came together at CMS House in Cowley, Oxford on 27th May. They met with Bishop David Walker, Chair of the Advisory Council and Bishop John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford, Abbot Stuart OSB (Broad Marston, formerly Burford), Fr Colin CSWG (Crawley Down), Sr Rosemary CHN (Derby) and Brs Samuel and Damian of SSF (Dorset).                                                                                                           
The meeting was informally structured to give maximum opportunity to network and explore what we share in common and how the best of the insights of the traditional communities might be shared with those developing under this wide umbrella described as New Monasticism. This may be best reported here in two extracts from the Day in May, a write-up of the homily given by Sr Rosemary.

Church Mission Society:
‘Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Community aims to be an inspirational model of mission service’. Their five foundational policies, shaping its mission strategy in practice, are

• Follow God’s lead  
• Put prayer first and money second
• Success depends on the quality of those appointed
• Begin small
• Rely on the Spirit of God

Several hundred members of CMS have made a new commitment with its seven newly stated membership promises. Connect with the CMS community online www.cms-uk.org  for details of how all this is developing. 

Church Army:
In their booklet Encounters on the Edge seven sacred spaces are identified – all taken from the setting of a traditional convent or monastery. These, together, express a community life in Christ which can be translated into so many alternative secular settings: Cell, Chapel, Chapter-room, Cloister, Garden, Refectory, Scriptorium.  Members of this Community try to see and live out these places which together make a Christian community. It is also a reminder that behind these imaginative responses by Christian societies that have been long established, is the dawning of the need to live and express community as a way of deepening a commitment to Christ and belonging to the Body of Christ.
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Sunday 25th July, 2 - 6pm - Mirfield
The Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield have given so much to the
Church at large in its one hundred or so years. Today it is best known for
its Theological College which runs alongside the fraternity. At the heart of
it all, our church is our place of worship and home for many other events. 
It is now in need of major refurbishment: structural repairs, a new heating
system, rewiring, new lighting and sound systems, a new floor, redecoration
and much-needed disabled access. 

If all our activities here are to flourish, we need a church able to meet the needs of today. We need your help to safeguard what makes this place special and to create a church that can serve and sustain its many users for another century.
This is just one element of the wider development of the site at Mirfield. Plans are afoot for the building a new monastery to be situated next to the church, and this will be separately funded.