St Bartholomew's Church, Sydenham

Arson Attack

We have had a long record of being attacked by vandals and in February 1996 St Bart's was set on fire. Considerable damage was done but the Church was saved by an unknown passer-by who called the fire brigade. Pictures and Details

Sydenham Life

Sydenham Life is published monthly and distributed to every home in the parish. Here are some articles from the February edition.

• I wish to change
• A couple of Valentines
• The Black Man

I wish to change

I wish to change... Four hundred years ago, back in the time of knights and castles, a young man lay recovering from a painful operation on his leg. The leg had been shattered in battle, but he hoped that now it would mend properly. Properly, so he could ride and fight, and wear the tight leather boots which showed off his shapely calves. He wanted to serve his king again, dance, sing, do great deeds to win the heart of a fair and noble lady.

But meanwhile, he had to wait for his leg to heal. And because he was bored, and there was no TV, he asked for books to read, preferably something gripping, with 16th century high class sex and violence. But all they could come up with in his noble home in the north of Spain, was a biography of Christ and a collection of Lives of the Saints. He started to dip into these. But he also spent a lot of time daydreaming fantasis mg about an ideal woman, maybe a princess, and how he'd win her hand.

As the weeks passed, he found that the saints, like St Francis, had done some remark able deeds, too. And in his daydreams he imitated them as well, copying their courage in God's cause, their endurance, their fight for peace and justice. He spent hours, lost in the two kinds of fantasy, quite in another world. Now he noticed something else. His daydreams of love and war left him feeling tired and out of sorts. But the time spent in fantasy with the saints made him calm, contented, with a new kind of energy.

Finally one night, as he lay awake, he saw in front of him Mary, the mother of Jesus and stayed happily with this vision for several hours

His life had changed. Many more things hap pened to complete the process. But those months spent in his sick room - the hours, absorbed in his own thoughts, feelings, prayers. had done the first transformation. The young man's name was Ignado. We know him now as St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit order. He could speak about God in a simple, straightfor ward way to anybody - and he had an infectious belief in the way that human beings can change and grow, if they want to. Jesuits spread the message of Christ to India, Japan, Africa, South America - a worldwide influence.

Anybody who follows his method of prayer, called The Spiritual Exercises, is led into change. You are asked to watch yourself, to develop a sharp but loving inner eye. But this is not the only way to change. Each Lent, Christians are called to a special time, a special period of reflection on our lives. This does not mean we have to go around with our eyes cast up to the heavens, fasting and sighing about the wicked ways of the world and its pleasures. Instead if we do take time to be quiet, to look at ourselves as we live in the world, to ask what really, truly, matters to us - then change will probably happen, as it did to Ignatius. If we want it.

Charlotte Elvey

A couple of Valentines

That's a difficult question to answer because there were two (well, some scholars think they could have been the same man). One was a priest physician in Rome, the other (?) was the Bishop of Terni.

They are both recorded as having died on the same day in AD270 and that is why they are commemorated on 14th February.

Both were brave (they were martyred for their faith) but are not known to have been romantic. The connection with the romantic tradition is probably accidental.

The origin of the Valentine custom may lie in the mediaeval belief that the birds began to mate at the start of the second fortnight of the second month. Chaucer ha a line in his 'Parlement of Foules' which goes: "For this was on synt Valentyne's day, whan every foul cometh to chese his make".

The Black Man

When I am born, I'm black; when I'm grown up, I'm black, when I go into the sun, i'm black; when I die, I'm black.

And you! White man: When you are born, you are pink; when you grow up, you are white; when you are sick, you are green; when you go into the sun, you turn red; when you are cold, you turn blue; when you die, you go purple.

And you have the cheek to call me coloured!

The Edgemead News, Cape Town, Christmas 1996