Pew Sheet – 4th October 2020
The Eco Congregation Committee writes…
This Sunday Harvest Thanksgiving Services will be celebrated in our Parish.
It gives us the opportunity not only to thank God for our Harvest, but to celebrate the gift of God’s creation and recognise the inter-dependence of it all.
We are an Eco Congregation and so have a commitment to support the initiative that environment issues and caring for God’s creation form part of the parish’s life, mission and through member’s personal lifestyles.

The award is given by Eco Congregation Ireland which has been developed in co-operation with the following churches – Church of Ireland, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist and the Quaker community. To qualify for the award churches undertake projects/initiatives in Practical, Spiritual, Community and Global focused areas. It is ongoing work for which any suggestions would be most welcome.

Sunday October 11th
Cork Autism Online Conference
Autism: Beyond Behaviours. This online conference offers interventions, skills and strategies to support people on the autism spectrum. Suitable for Parents, Families, Caregivers, Autistics, Employers, Educators, Professionals, Agencies, Advocates and anyone with an interest in autism. Visit: www.autismcork.ie
Sunday October 18th
Wholeness & Healing and Thanksgiving for our Caring Professions Service on the Feast of St Luke. 7pm St Mary’s Church
Saturday October 24th
Virtual Harvest Supper

Fundraiser 2020
Saturday 24th October 2020
Price: €20
Includes Prizes
1st prize ‘Fresh Free Range Christmas Turkey’
Drop off and Collection from Canon McCrea Hall
This year our Harvest Supper Fundraiser will be very different due of course to Covid 19, but we are committed to making it as successful as possible and with your support it will be.
This year it will be a takeaway Harvest Supper to include Turkey and Ham & Salads and Selection of delicious Desserts plus your ticket will be entered into the Raffle for some wonderful Prizes.
We are requesting donations of Salads to include: Potato Salad, Coleslaw, Green Salad and Bean Salad, and we are also requesting any Desserts too please. All these donations may be dropped to the Canon McCrea Hall, St Mary’s School, Waterpark between 10.30 and Noon on Saturday 24thOctober and then you can collect your plated Suppers with prizes between 2pm and 4pm from the Hall. Your support is much appreciated, Thank you.
Tickets must be pre purchased, please contact: Henry Forbes 087 203 5000, Joy Keefe 087 255 9844, Hilary Warren-Perry 086 263 7137 or Millie Kingston 086 809 1443 for offers of food or tickets.

Music Notes 04-10-2020
Hymns for today at St. Mary’s, Carrigaline are:
47 We plough the fields and scatter
247 When I survey the wondrous cross
27 God who stretched the spangled heavens
566 Fight the good fight
Our hymn before the prayers today was written by the Canadian-born hymn writer Catherine Cameron. The hymn was written in 1967 a time of exciting scientific research and discovery, but also the era of the Cold War and a developing nuclear threat. The poem reflects on man’s scientific creativity and how it can destroy life and happiness unless we use our discoveries to serve others and honour God. The hymn will be played as a meditation on piano while you read the words given below.
The melody is ‘Holy manna’, a lovely American folk song.
God, who stretched the spangled heavens, infinite in time and place, flung the suns in burning radiance through the silent fields of space, we, your children, in your likeness, share inventive powers with you. Great Creator, still creating, show us what we yet may do. Proudly rise our modern cities, stately buildings row on row; yet their windows, blank, unfeeling, stare on canyoned streets below, where the lonely drift unnoticed in the city's ebb and flow, lost to purpose and to meaning, scarcely caring where they go. We have conquered worlds undreamed of since the childhood of our race; known the ecstasy of winging through uncharted realms of space; probed the secrets of the atom, yielding unimagined power, facing us with life's destruction or our most triumphant hour. As each far horizon beckons, may it challenge us anew, children of creative purpose, serving others, honoring you. May our dreams prove rich with promise, each endeavor well begun. Great Creator, give us guidance till our goals and yours are one.
Bébhinn bebhinnmuire@gmail.com 087 228 5965
Random Notes No. CCCLX
Just over three weeks ago, on the morning of Wednesday, 9th September, an important element of the furnishings of St. Mary’s Church was brought home, so to speak, and replaced from whence it had been removed some seventeen years earlier.

In or around September of 2003, it was decided by the powers that be, that the communion rails in their entirety be removed from the Church. To have done this would have seemed to some to have been a most dreadful act of vandalism, particularly so, as apart from their not inconsiderable aesthetic qualities, the rails, together with the pulpit, and the pews in the galleries, were the sole surviving fixtures in the Church dating from the time of its construction, built between 1823 and 1835 to designs of the noted architects, the brothers, George Richard, and James Pain.

In the event, as a compromise to total destruction, it was decided to remove the central part of the rails together with the two gates, and to leave the remainder of the rails on either side, although they were removed from their original position within the chancel, and advanced in to the body of the Church, where they presently are.
Fortuitously at the time, a quick thinking and sensitive member of the congregation, Cecil Poole, of Ballinrea, had both the wit and the presence of mind to salvage the ripped out woodwork, and it is this woodwork, carefully conserved for the past seventeen years at his home, that has at last been returned to where it belongs.
(The Select Vestry voted unamimously to restore to the former arrangement on 7th January 2016)
We as a congregation in Carrigaline Union really do owe Cecil a great debt of thanks, both for having guarded for so long and so carefully what was in his benevolent care, and then, with his grandson, Kyle, replacing the missing communion rails to their former home.
The compiler of this note wishes to thank the Rector, the Revd Canon Elaine Murray for the two photographs to be used to illustrate this Random Note.
K.L.R.