Message from our minister, Clare

Annwyl ffrindiau/Dear friends

What a joy it was to share a picnic with some of you as well as with our friends from across the pastorate this summer! I thoroughly enjoyed spending time socialising together in Ynysangharad Park as we marked our first anniversary as a pastorate. It was wonderful to catch up on such a perfect summer’s day and to see connections being made. There is already talk of where we might hold next year’s pastorate picnic and how we can get together in future – if you have any thoughts, please do share them.

I am happy to say that in this summer of moving house and moving the family, there have been other moments, like the picnic, which have brought real refreshment too.

Something that has stayed with me from our summer holiday in Germany was a visit to the church of St Stephan in the city of Mainz. The church had been extensively damaged in WW2 and in a powerful testimony to that a huge, broken church bell still lies on the ground in the cloisters. In the immediate post-war recovery period the shattered stained-glass windows were replaced with clear glass and stayed that way until early 1973 when priest Klaus Mayer did something remarkable.

From this church, which is nothing particularly exceptional (it is not, for example, the cathedral in the centre of the town, but one a little way out), he wrote to the world-renowned artist Marc Chagall to ask if he would consider designing a coloured window for the church as he had done for significant buildings around the world. This was quite a bold move; not only was this an unknown church reaching out to a famous talent, but Marc Chagall was of Russian Jewish heritage and had only just managed to escape with his life when he and his family fled to America in the face of Germany’s murderous assault on European Jewry and on Jewish culture. And here was a German Catholic priest asking him to create artwork for its church. Chagall took time to consider his response. It was not until over two years later, after he and the priest began to exchange letters and eventually meet, that he agreed. And he not only designed one window but nine.

There are many elements that I find inspiring about this story.

• I love the brass neck.
• I love the thinking big.
• I love the reconciliation and healing.
• I love the interfaith collaboration.
• I love that it took two and half years. It wasn’t overnight. It took its own time, it took the speed of a relationship slowly developing.
• I love the generous and surprising response.

It made me wonder many things as we start this second year as a pastorate and as a church with a new minister. Where might we be bold enough to step out into unknown territory? Art was a means of healing and a sign of grace, what means might there be that helps us to connect with others and strengthen bonds? What might we learn from the process going at its own pace? And how might we incorporate beauty and wonder into our worship and life as a church?

I will leave you with some photos of the windows. Unfortunately many of the picnic photos we took as a family did not come out well, if anyone has any better ones please do send them to Alison to share in next month’s Newsletter.

Here’s to the year ahead.

Pob bendith/Blessings

Clare

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