Post Standard

St Matthew

The call never ceases Think of the worst person you can. You don’t have to know them personally: maybe you’ve seen them on the TV or TikTok; on the bus every morning filling the claustrophobic...

Songs for an October Sunday

Choral Scholars Dotty & Violet perform an afternoon concert of beautiful music at 3 pm on Sunday October 5th.

Harvest Festival

Join us for our Harvest Festival Parade service at 9:30 am on Sunday 5th October. Please bring along your donations of tinned and dried food and toiletries for our local charities.

Chaos and confusion Tell me, are you feeling confused? Even if, right this minute you are feeling intellectually comfortable and experiencing the benefits of some exceptional mental clarity, there will, you must admit times when...

Patronal Festival

Join us to celebrate our Patronal Festival, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the 7th September. Said Mass at 8 am, Sung Mass with Incense and Guest Preacher Fr John Burniston at 9:30...

St Bartholomew

Who? They say you should never preach about something of which you know little or nothing. Rarely stops anyone in the pulpit, but the manual insists that you always choose to speak from your knowledge...

Trinity 6

That was then, this is now They were the best of times, they were the worst of times. I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before… The best of times, the worst of times: it all...

Trinity 5

Here, there and everywhere Wallington Station: it doesn’t have a lot going for it, but then perhaps it doesn’t need to. It’s the place you pass through in order to get somewhere else, as long...

Trinity 4

The most annoying sound in the world Here’s a question for you: What is the most annoying sound in the world? Fingernails scratching down a wet window pane? A new stick of chalk scraping across...

St Peter and St Paul

What have you got to lose? It is the experience no parent would ever want to face. The time when the nightmare that only happens to the careless, the thoughtless, the neglectful- in short, to...

Corpus Christi

Heavenly heartbeat Day after day, week by week, year after year, life is largely the same. Monday, wash day; Tuesday, ironing day; Wednesday, half day; Thursday, slow day; Friday, fish day; Saturday, wedding day; Sunday,...

Pentecost

Tongues of mortals and angels The Reader’s Digest died last year, and nobody noticed. Not anyway in the UK where it ceased publication in April 2024. It continues to be published elsewhere in the world,...

Ascension

The upward trajectory 2025 is a year of anniversaries. Every year apart from the very first, is, of course, but it’s 2025, not any other year. It will be, for example, 60 years ago that...

Easter 5

Never coming back You do hear some unexpected things in churches. I don’t mean the characteristic ambient sounds of worship-in-progress; the peculiar sonority of a silent snore; the murmurating timbre of a congregation faced with...

Annual Report 2024

Toddlers @ St Mary’s

Runs during school term time– no Toddlers Friday 23rd October St Mary’s Toddlers group for parents/carers and toddlers meets in the church centre for free play, crafts, stories, music and refreshments. Suitable for all children...

Easter Vigil

The very first time Do you remember the first time? Whatever it is that is important to you, whatever it was that changed your life, even if you didn’t realise it at the time. The...

Good Friday

Response and responsibility We don’t even know we’re doing it. No we really don’t know we’re doing it. We are blithely unaware, wholly insensible, utterly oblivious. Because that’s the way we see the world, it’s...

Palm Sunday

Speaking truth to power Just keep looking straight ahead. Try to blend in. Keep quiet. Fit in. They’ll always smell fear, they’ll always jump on weakness, always punish deviance. Don’t make any demands. Don’t dream...

Lent 5

We will not turn away Reticules. Beadles. Bottle and rag shops. Spencer jackets. Workhouses. Pints of porter. Bodices, bonnets, Broughams, chariots, ostlers. No work of fiction has featured the forgoing in a hundred years or...

Lent 3

To forgive is divine Although often dismissed as an urban legend, it is in fact true the Inuit dialect spoken in the Nunavik region does indeed have 53 different words for ‘snow’ (I suspect though...

Lent 2

It can’t be that simple I’ve had some strange Christmas gifts during the twenty years of my ministry: my first Christmas as a curate saw me gifted a CD of morris dance music, set of...

Lent 1

How did that get there? Gardens, gardens… A comfort and obsession in the long years of retirement, a pain in the back of the house in earlier years. Gardens; never dull, always changing, even if...

2 before Lent

What are you saying? Being a school governor is a common occupational hazard for the clergy- it’s always in the risk assessment for any particular parish- but that is one peril of a post that...

3 Before Lent

It ends with love Saint Paul, second only to Jesus himself, is without doubt the person who most moulded and shaped the Christian faith to be what it is today. Paul’s are the earliest of...

4 before Lent

The real you Contrary to what all the stereotypes might lead you to believe, I am not a fan of musical theatre.I know I’m letting the side down but there is something that just fails...

Epiphany 3

Prepare for the best No matter how well you plan, no matter how much you’ve prepared, no matter how carefully you’ve read the runes, consulted the cards, tested the tea leaves and studied the entrails;...

Safeguarding

The parish of St Mary Beddington takes the safeguarding and care of children and vulnerable adults very seriously. Further information about this can be found at Safeguarding.

Epiphany 2

Running in parallel Quantum physics is, well, bonkers. I know people say that about religion as well, but us fakirs of faith have nothing on quantum physicists. That stuff is really, seriously, away with the...