New Year 2010

 Happy New Year to all our Visitors in 2010
This brings the Introduction to the Vicar up to date as of the feast day of St Hilary of Poitiers, 13th January 2010.
My 2010 began with a pleasant evening out at our local pub restaurant where the food and company was excellent. Many of my new year resolutions were already sorted out during Advent (December) and I have resisted the usual ones which I always fail to keep such as keeping a daily journal. Instead I have resolved to celebrate this year's significant birthday with a number of interesting projects all aimed at fun and some personal development. The key ones are:

• Continue work on my Ambrose project
• Prepare interesting material for the trip to southern Turkey in early April
• Arrange a day out in London for my birthday
• Hold a birthday lunch with friends from church and further afield
• Read my way through Homer (still my favourite poet of all time) this year

I have reviewed the priorities on my introduction page recently and have to concede that nothing spectacular has been achieved with the Eco Congregation initiative formally but we did have a good summer's sequence of Sunday Eucharists focussing on the the four natural elements of water, earth, air and fire - this continues to inform our understanding of the Scriptures and the needs of the world. We have also taken some small steps to improving our recycling as a church congregation including gathering up our used batteries from home and disposing of them collectively.
Theo's cafe church has now become a fifth Sunday in the month event so we can spend longer preparing resources for this. Our next one will be 31st January and is the day we will celebrate the Feast of the Presentation also called Candlemas. It is the very last celebration of the Christmas cycle as we recall Joseph and Mary presenting Jesus as their first born son in the Temple to God as required by the Law. It's one of the most beautiful feasts of the year perhaps because of the candlelight procession to the font which marks the end of the Eucharist.
First Sundays we now have Iona inspired worship - still a Eucharist. This enables us to use Wild Goose Resource Group materials and to sing our growing repertoire of songs by John Bell, Graham Maule and others as well as music from around the world. These hymns, psalms and songs has given us a lot of confidence with our singing and praying as we do not have a choir to lead us. It is spiritually uplifting to hear the congregation break naturally into improvised harmonies spontaneously.
The recent snow and icy weather has meant a gentler start to 2010 than anticipated but life is gradually returning to normal with school open once again and Miss Kirsty's dancing school back in action. The Oxford University Full term begins next week and the diary is already looking a little crowded for the next few weeks. I took the opportunity of being at my desk to get our pastoral email network running so that' the major part of our 'flu plan achieved. It will make communication to the whole congregation much more effective.
Books recently read include The Passport by Herta Mueller the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature winner - a bleak, atmospheric tale set in Ceausescu's Romania which is totally gripping. 
I am going through a Dorothy L Sayers craze and have just finished The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 
Currently reading: Ambrose 'On the Mysteries', Iain Pears An instance of the Fingerpost I took ages to read the first section but am now totally gripped - full of the intrigue of the mid seventeenth century with Oxford as the main backdrop. 
Coming up on my agenda is Lent. Yes, already and the preliminary steps for Holy Week. But most importantly ordering seed for the veg plot this year
Despite the blizzards outside my thoughts are already turning to Spring,
Elaine, 13th January 2010