Beaminster Team News is a 40-page A4 magazine which is distributed every month to subscribers in Beaminster and the surrounding villages. Team News has an estimated readership of 3,000 and is widely used as a source of information about providers of local goods and services.
Advertising copy is needed by the 14th of the month for the month following, and can be sent by email.
If you’d like to advertise in Team News, please call Mandy Alford on 01308 488635.
To submit articles for publication, email them to the editors at teamnews@bluebottle.com by 12 noon on the 14th of the month.
FROM THE RECTORY
The Rector Writes
Epiphany
With that deep hush subduing all our words and works that drown the tender whisper of thy call,
as noiseless let thy blessing fall as fell thy manna down.
Christmas can be a noisy time of the year, Rightly so, for it's a time of celebration, and we sing joyous carols to mark the birth of Jesus Christ, God's Son and our Saviour, over two thousand years ago.
Excited afresh by the Christmas story, we are almost overwhelmed by the raucous voices of all those who have come to Bethlehem to register; we hear the song of the angelic host as they create a chorus of unparalleled harmony on a cold hillside for an audience of shepherds and sheep. Christmas is full of the music and mayhem of a world event that outstrips all other world events.
After Christmas, when the angels have 'left.....and gone into heaven', and Bethlehem has resumed 'business as usual', it can seem quiet flat. We prepare to eat the last of the turkey and remove the decorations from the tree. 'What now?' we may ask. The Christmas accessories are put away for another year, and we pause briefly before girding our loins in readiness for the January sales, and the resumption of busy lives.
Maybe this is a good time to
take stock, to reflect on the real and ongoing meaning of Christmas, to
remember that we can still experience 'Emmanuel'- 'God with us'- here
and now, as we stand on the threshold of another new year. Like the wise
men who came later, to visit the new-born King, travelling through silent
landscapes under starry skies, we can pause and wonder and, in the 'deep
hush', allow the 'tender whisper' of God's call to bless us afresh, to
feed us on our journeying and to inspire our epiphanies.
Only then can we hope that, as John Grenleaf Whittier wrote in another,
more familiar, verse of his much loved hymn, 'our ordered lives confess
the beauty of thy peace.' May we all experience God's 'still, small voice
of calm' as we move forward into the New Year.
Your Team Rector, Parish Priest and Friend
David Baldwin