Details of dates and times for 2012 Ultreyas
see Calendar page.
On Saturday 18th. February around 100 Cursillistas enjoyed the first Ulterya of 2012 at St.Agnes Anglican Church, Black Rock. We were blessed to have 8 musicians who made a glorious sound and encouraged loud, melodious and joyful participation in all of the singing. The Witness Speaker was Richard Pennington and Richard wove together the most interesting tale of the Orange Cake and the Dustbuser. Richard's talk is reproduced below so that everyone can enjoy this most interesting and intriguing talk and get some understanding of the title of his talk. The Revd. Donald Bellamy, Vicar of St. Agnes, was Richard's Spiritual Advisor and gave a perceptive reflection on the talk.
Richard's Talk
Richard's talk was preceded by this reading from Romans.
Romans 12. 4-8
For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching;8the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
SPEAKERS SONG: WE'LL WALK THE LAND WITH OUT HEARTS ON FIRE.
We'll walk the land with our hearts on fire
We'll walk for truth, speak out for love;
In Jesus' name we shall be strong,
To lift the fallen, to save the children,
They are powerful words - It doesn't matter how many times I sing this song those words stir my blood and raise the little hairs on my neck and a lump in my throat - I hope it did for your too.
I have called my talk ORANGE CAKE AND THE DUSTER BUSTER and to that end I have baked a cake and have it here. I want to think about this cake for a moment - I cheated with this cake - this is the third that I have ever made - the first two were my mother's can't fail chocolate cake and they were made from scratch and don't ask me what went wrong but it didn't rise so rather than being a thick big cake moist chocolate cake it was like a giant flat hard and dry biscuit - and this happened twice - the no fail chocolate cake failed - so this one was made from a packet but the principal is the same - you take seemingly unrelated and very different ingredients mix it all together and bake for an hour and you have created something completely unlike what you started with and may I say absolutely delicious from a lot of other stuff many of which are not particularly palatable on their own - if you have ever had a mouthful of raw flour you will know what I mean.
So we have this cake which, if I had a knife we could cut in half, but I will just sort of break it, and now we have two cakes slightly smaller but still the same. I could continue to break it and again we would still have the same cake just in smaller pieces. What has happened though is that as I have been breaking it, small pieces have been breaking off and I have crumbs and bits all over the place down here on the floor. This is where the duster buster comes in, we can now suck up the pieces so we don't attract ants to St Agnes. So now we still have two cakes, some crumbs in the duster buster and some that I have missed still down here.
I guess no one is particularly interested in the crumbs, on their own they have little interest for cake eaters and they don't do anything but if I look here inside the cake there are a whole heap of crumbs in there all held together, all working as one to hold the cake together, and whilst they are all together we have a delicious, pleasing, useful cake, if they all let go at once then we would just have a big pile of crumbs on the floor. If that was the case then I would duster buster them up and they would be lost forever.
My father was very fond of cake - but also he was deeply religious man - he had a long and unshakable belief in God, I know that he used to kneel by the bed and pray every night, he had a more than working knowledge of religious text and I don't know but I believe that he regularly read the bible - funnily enough he rarely went to church and he rarely put his beliefs out there - many would not have known of his faith - It's a great shame that he never experienced a Cursillo weekend as I think that he would got a lot more out of his faith but we will never know - he passed away before I ever went to cursillo - and I guess he was a bit like the crumbs that are on the floor here - not lost, but not in here in the cake - and he was certainly not the only one - many people like the crumbs, some like those in the duster buster lost forever, some lost but maybe not forever and many like those in the cake still hanging in there.
There used to be a thing that we did as children when we interlaced our fingers and said here is the church, here is the steeple, open our hands and here are the people, hmmm very full church - I was blessed to be able to take the position of Chaplain of the Mt Buller Ski Village 8 years ago - and one of my duties, if I can put it like that, is that I take services on Saturday nights during the ski season - it is a very floating population on the mountain, but our chapel is not nearly as full as this lots of the time. It is extremely rare that we have no one turn up to church but we do sometimes have less than ten and on occasions only a couple of people have turned up, but that's OK - I think that we are a bit like this corner of the cake.
Over the 8 years there have been many things that I can sight as special but a couple of things stick in my mind. I remember after an Easter service, and Easter is pretty big up there, after all the people had gone, a group of about 5 people came with a platter of food and there was a piece of everything that they were going to have for lunch - I think that they may have been Polish Catholics - and they asked me to bless their Easter Sunday feast which is their tradition - not being Catholic or Polish or a priest - I was totally out of my depth but I did my best and after they left I reflected what a privilege that was to be able to do that - another time - last year after a particularly small service - it was foul weather - a girl waited until everyone had gone and thanked me for the service and said "we didn't sing" and asked if she could share a song with me - she got out her i phone and played a song by Mercy Me who had a rendition of I surrender all - we stood in the church with a blizzard howling around us outside and listened to the song and after she left I was moved to think of what I had been asked to share with a stranger. Just two of the very special times that God has given me.
I have lots of friends and acquaintances outside the church - I work with people who certainly do not go to church, and though they know me well by now, I know that many continually wonder why I travel 4 hours to Buller every weekend in winter, to trudge through a blizzard of howling wind, snow and flying ice wrapped in 5 layers of clothes against the cold to stand in the Mt Buller Cathedral so that I might run a service for the two people that turn up - they wonder why we are here today, why we go to people's houses to pray with someone who is about to undergo Chemotherapy, why I chose to spend my 50th birthday at 14,500 feet above sea level, high in the Andes in Peru, building a bridge across a river with a small bunch of others, so that school children could get to school in the wet season - I could say that it is about being with other Christians, being part of the cake, and that is certainly part of it - over the last couple of years I have gone to services at Barwon heads, Lorne, Magnetic Island, and a number of others whilst travelling around, I had the privilege of giving a dinner talk to a group from Parkdale Uniting Church recently, and subsequently visited their church, and universally I have been welcomed and felt the warmth and love of God and his people. It is something very special, but that is not what makes me walk the land, with my heart on fire - what does it for me is found in
MATTHEW 20.28 MARK 10.45
"JESUS CAME TO SERVE - NOT TO BE SERVED"
Simple, it's nothing special, nothing particularly confusing, I am not a saint or anything - I just think that I have been given certain gifts by God and I am going to use them to serve - I, for one, believe that it is a privilege to serve, and if God puts me in a position where I can follow Jesus' example and serve then that is what I will do.
In the reading from Romans that - Paul wrote
4For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function,5so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, 6We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us
I like the idea of all of us in the cake, ever little particle, all using our gifts according to the grace given to us, all serving not being served.
I wonder - if every person on earth followed Jesus' example and served instead of being served - what a world this would be.
De Colores