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Detail of one of the paintings in the 'Stars are Bright' exhibition, details below.
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Wednesday 2 September 2020
Dear Friends
It's hard to believe that a couple of weeks ago we were having a heatwave! It certainly feels like Autumn is here and with the schools re-opening and people being encouraged to go back to their work places there is, perhaps, a sense of new beginnings albeit tinged with anxiety. We keep in our prayers all who are facing anxious new beginnings and all who are isolating at home.
This week's email contains details of an exhibition that resonates for our time. The pictures in the exhibition were 'locked down' for nearly 30 years in a church in Shoreditch. They were rediscovered in the 70s and some of the pictures are now being exhibited. More details about the exhibition are below. As we continue to re-open St John's we are beginning to work out how we might live stream our services. This will involve some outlay in terms of buying new equipment. If you are feeling energetic you could join in the sponsored bike ride on 10th October which will raise funds for St John's. If you are not quite so energetic, perhaps you could consider sponsoring one of the cyclists.
If you have any news you would like to share or if you have an idea for our new monthly magazine, the first edition of which is next month, then please do get in touch.
With love and prayers
Raymond
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St John's Library
Jim Nurton recommends: 'Pilate: The Biography  of an Invented Man' by Ann Wroe (1999): Although hardly anything is known about Pilate's life apart from his role in the trial and execution of Jesus, Ann Wroe has compiled a 350-page "biography" based on sources including the Gospel accounts, early church documents and traditions, medieval mystery plays and 20th-century literature. Inevitably much of the book is supposition and speculation, but it provides lots of insights into Roman and Jewish life in the time of Christ as well as what we think about Pilate himself. You could equally well read it straight through or dip in and out.
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£5k for St John’s
Will you join our sponsored bike ride on 10th October?
We are continuing to raise funds to help meet the costs of reopening the church. Thank you to everyone who has donated so generously. Our fundraising efforts continue and we will be holding a sponsored bike ride at 10.00am on Saturday 10th October 2020 in aid of St John’s.
The bike ride will be around 10 miles, be non-competitive and suitable for families and children. Starting and finishing at St John’s with three breaks walking with bikes in parks and woods, passing through Peckham Rye Common, Mayow Park, Sydenham Wells Park and Dulwich Woods. The ride should take a maximum of three hours including breaks.
Please bring your own refreshments. Children under 18 must be accompanied by an adult. You will be responsible for your own safety, including the need to follow coronavirus guidance.
If you are interested in taking part, please contact Chris Eldridge by email by Sunday 4th October at the latest.
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Southwark Foodbank
Southwark Foodbank still urgently needs donations. Their updated list includes: long-life fruit juice,  tinned meat, rice pudding, tinned fruit, UHT milk, toiletries, nappies (size 6) and tinned tomatoes.
Collection points for donations include:
- Pecan, 121A Peckham High Street SE15 5SE (9:30-17:00)
- Co-Op 56-62 Lordship Lane, Dulwich, London, SE22 8HJ (7:00-23:00)
- Sainsbury’s 83-89 Queen’s Rd, Peckham, London SE15 2EZ (7:00-23:00)
Find out more about how you can help the Foodbank here.
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The Stars Are Bright: art exhibition
This exhibition at The Theatre Green Rooms, Shoreditch, opened only ten days after the lockdown on galleries was lifted, though the paintings themselves have been ‘Locked down’ for almost 70 years. They have an extraordinary story and depict Zimbabwe through the eyes of a group of more than 40 young artists from the Cyrene Mission School, a boys' school near Bulawayo in colonial Zimbabwe over a seven year period, 1940-1947. Many of the painters went on to have important careers at home and abroad.
Cyrene Mission School was founded in the late 1930s by Canon Edward (Ned) G. Paterson (1895-1974). He was an accomplished watercolourist and took the view that art should be a compulsory part of the curriculum. However, he was also firmly against imposing Western artistic tradition on the students and no reproductions were put up on the walls. The boys, generally drawn from Mashonaland Bantu tribes with little history of two-dimensional artistic production, were given with art materials and encouraged to draw and paint the world around them.
Paterson brought the works to London in 1949 and held an exhibition at the Royal Watercolour Society Gallery in Bond Street. Many of the paintings were sold and dispersed; some acquired by The Bodleian Library (Oxford) and The Smithsonian Institute (Washington). The unsold works were boxed up and stored in an annexe of St Michael and All Angels, Shoreditch. There they stayed, forgotten, until 1978, when the church was deconsecrated and its contents were put up for auction. The collection was bought initially by the London Architectural Salvage and Supply Company (LASSCO) and catalogued. It is now under the care of The Belvedere Trust.
Exhibition details here.
Theatre Green Rooms, Shoreditch, EC2A 3HH.
Admission is free subject to booking a time slot online in advance.
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The Gander
From October instead of a weekly Wednesday magazine email we will be moving to a monthly magazine. The magazine will be called ‘The Gander’, to tie in with our being located on Goose Green, and the goose being a symbol of the Holy Spirit in Celtic Christianity. We would love to receive your contributions to the magazine or ideas of what you would like to be included. Please do email Raymond with your thoughts and ideas.
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And finally . . .
A Finale from Rossini’s 'William Tell' Overture, played by the San Francisco Symphony with families and four-footed friends.
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