Welcome
We are the Church of England parish of St Mary’s Shaw cum Donnington – just to the north and east of Newbury.
Our purpose and focus is Knowing Jesus, Sharing God’s Love, Caring for People.
You can read more about it here.
We meet every Sunday at 10am, as well as at other times during the week.
Everyone is welcome to join us.
Word for the Week
- Holy Mystery
Do you like a good whodunnit? A battle of wits between the writer and the reader – with joy for both when the crime is solved and the reader can see all the clues were there but wasn’t able to join the dots before the ‘reveal’ at the end.
John Fowles wrote a whodunnit where the ‘who’ was never revealed. Nor the ‘how’. But then, Why should everything be explained? Or be explainable? In The Enigma, the mystery dissolves because everyone loses interest – leaving the impression that, without the diversions, the mystery could have been solved.
It’s one of humankind’s proud boasts: we feel that, if we search long enough and hard enough we will be able to understand and explain (and control!)
Agur, who wrote the penultimate chapter of Proverbs, talks about three things too amazing, four not understood: flying, slithering, floating and seducing Proverbs 30:18f.
In some fields, creative thinking and hard work can explain; but God will always be a holy mystery. A truly wise man will recognise this: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9.
Raymond