PRIVATE PRAYER TIME

The Kirk Session of Kirkcudbright Parish Church are in the process of formulating plans to allow limited opening of our Church premises for private prayer. The Church of Scotland have issued a 35 page guidance on how to ensure that this and various other church related activities can be safely restarted.

It is hoped therefore to be able by July to open the Church building on a limited basis for private prayer, perhaps on Wednesdays & Sundays, with appropriate safety measures in place.

We will need volunteers to allow this to happen. If you would like to offer a couple of hours of your time on these days to staff the Church, please contact our Session Clerk by email: session@kirkcudbrightchurchofscotland.uk or alternatively use the details on our 'Contacts' page.

Thank you for your assistance.

Editor
 

A MESSAGE FROM YOUR PASTORAL CARE TEAM

Andrew and I were on the Isle of Lewis for a few days last December in weather that was very wet and stormy and we were in fact delayed returning to the mainland due to the adverse weather conditions. While we were there, we visited a remote little church that I was pleased to find unlocked and in the gloom I took a photograph of the beautiful stained glass window that was illuminated by what little light there was. It’s not the best quality given that it was a very dark day and was taken on my phone, but I hope you can see that the inscription says “Christ be my Light” and the stained glass window was very beautiful given that the light, such as it was, was shining through on to the simple wooden cross below. All this a few months before the storm that we have all encountered by way of Covid-19. Thankfully, that particular storm looks as if the worst may be over, but I am sure we have all felt the need of God’s light more than ever. With thanks to Gerard Manley Hopkins, I’m sharing another poem this month that I hope you will enjoy, and please remember that we are always at the end of the phone for any concerns you may have.

Pied Beauty

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him

Alison Best