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| A warm hello to everyone from all of us at Bedlington Lay Carmelite Community. As we joyfully await the great celebration of the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we can scarcely contemplate how that tiny baby, born in the poorest of circumstances would change the lives of so many people across the world in the past two thousand years. And as we gaze in wonder into that little manger our hearts are overwhelmed at what we ourselves have received through the coming of the most special child ever to be born. Children are very special blessings. In many of the words they speak in their innocence and purity they can wrench the hardest hearts and touch them with the love and softness that can only come from their Heavenly Father. In our Advent newsletter we are very privileged to have two very beautiful reflections from two little girls who wrote them from dreams they had. As we give thanks for the gift of the Son of God this Christmas let us also give thanks for the precious gift of childhood, a gift that is ours for so short a time. May the Holy Child fill your hearts this Christmas with the peace that he came upon earth to bring. Joyce M. BROKEN HEART by Charlotte, age 11 (Close your eyes) Just imagine, your heart as a house and inside the house lives a very important person, not Tony Blair or the Queen, no, it is Jesus. He is sitting happily having a cup of tea, nice and cosily. Suddenly the devil comes from the back of your heart and breaks it open with a mighty ‘CRACK’! The Devil doesn’t know that Jesus was in there, you see the devil is scared of Jesus, so when the devil sees Jesus he runs away as fast as his evil legs could carry him. Since your heart is broken Jesus calls in the Angel force to glue it back together again. The moral to the story is that if your heart is filled with Jesus love, evil can’t touch it. It is always good sometimes to visit Jesus in your heart. Try it. JESUS IS ALIVE by Rachael, age 7 Imagine you’re walking on the desert, thirsty and hungry. Then, there’s a big shine. It comes down to you. Then you notice that it’s Jesus. You beg and beg for a drink. Then there’s this little shine and there in his hand is a cup with the blood of Christ. You drink it all up. you thank Jesus very much. There is a shine and a ‘BOOM’ and fruit is in his hand. There is another shine and ‘BOOM’ the body of Christ is on his hand. You eat it and thank him. He says, “I am always in your heart and if you are naughty or nasty I always love you.” This means when you receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ you will have more of Jesus in your body. MEDITATION Today is not yesterday; how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change indeed is painful, yet ever needful. Here at Bedlington we have been enjoying our extra hour of quiet prayer and reflection which we have bi-monthly on a Saturday before our normal meeting. We begin with three readings from our Carmelite saints, and after a quiet time to reflect on each we go into Lectio Divina and after fifteen minutes silence we finish with a sharing of thoughts and a prayer. This has been successful and enjoyed by those who have taken part. |
| The Scapular That Saved Two Lives. The Story is true. My batallion was a member of the Irene Brigade. We were just about to advance. After we passed Eindhofen, our trucks and tanks went through Uden. In the evening we encamped on an old farm near Nijmegen. Behind the house there was an old wooden pump surrounded by bricks. This offered a fine opportunity for a soldier to wash away the sweat and dust of hours of fighting. You can well imagine that we made good use of this opportunity. I was one of the group and so I tossed my jacket on the ground and hung my scapular on the pump while I washed. An hour later we received orders to proceed about a mile and a half further to occupy a trench there. We were looking forward to being able to get a peaceful night’s sleep in that trench. I was about to lie down and was unbuttoning my collar when to my horror I realised that I no longer had my scapular. It had been a gift from my mother. I had had it with me all during the war and now that we were approaching the lion’s den was I to be deprived of it? To go to fetch it was unthinkable, so I tried not to think about it any more and go to sleep. I pitched and tossed from my left side to my right, but I couldn’t get to sleep All around me my buddies were sleeping like logs even though from time to time shells fell dangerously close. Finally I was overcome by the desire to get my scapular back and I crept out among my sleeping companions. It wasn’t easy to get past the sentry but I managed to do it and ran back the way we had come. It was pitch dark, but nevertheless I had good luck and in a short time I was back on the farm and at the pump. My hands glided searchingly all over the pump but the scapular had gone. I was just about to strike a match when there was a dreadful explosion. What was I to do? Was that the sign of an enemy attack? As fat as I could I ran back to our trench. Maybe I could do something there for my buddies. Near the trench I saw engineers busily at work hurriedly removing piles of dirt and barbed wire. At the very spot where my companions had been sleeping there yawned a gigantic shell-hole. Before they had vacated this trench the enemy had placed a time-bomb in it and it had exploded during my absence. Nobody survived the explosion. If I had not set out to fetch my scapular, I would have been buried under that rubble too. On the following morning I went to the field kitchen and met a buddy there. He looked at me with astonishment. “I thought you were in that trench!” “And I thought you were buried there!” My friend continued, “I was lying in a trench, but before I went to sleep I went looking for you. But I couldn’t find you. The corporal saw me hunting around and asked me what I wanted. When I told him what I was doing there he said, ‘Be sensible! Instead go to that inn nearby and get me a bottle of water.’ And while I was on this errand, the explosion occurred.” “Well I escaped it by a hair’s breadth too,” I replied. ‘But why on earth were you looking for me so late at night?” “To give you this,” he replied, and handed me my scapular which he had taken from the old pump. |