Dear Family & Friends (in UK, Malta, USA, Canada, Australia, Parish and Lay Community)
(Click on blue links for bonus highlights!)
We got a bit behind with our Christmas cards this year and some of you dear people reading this will have got their card in the days between Christmas and New Year. Whatever way you’ve found this page then …Congratulations for getting here, and a (belated) Happy Christmas and best wishes for a great New Year. Well, it must be better than 2020 surely?
We were due to be with the Olivers in Haywards Heath for Christmas but had to abandon that plan when we were put in Tier 4 just half a mile from the county border ( where Tier 2 started). But we did have Richard home with us for the week and made do with an overdose of Star Wars… The Rise of Skywalker and 8 hours (2 series) of The Mandalorian. Worth watching if you are into Star Wars!
As with everyone, the year has been a case of how best to cope with covid and lockdown. We were eligible for self-employed support grant thanks to Boris and Rishi and this allowed me to devote much of my time to the Lay Community of St Benedict with my webmaster hat on. Starting with a brilliant virtual Easter on zoom , we have gone from strength to strength and the community now embarks on 2021 with a renewed spirit and celebrating our golden anniversary (since the start of Worth Abbey Lay Community in 1971). We now meet on zoom 4 times a day for the Divine Offices.
My contribution to the LCSB Advent Calendar for the Feast of St Ambrose( 7th December) may be of some interest as well as an article I wrote for Listen , our community magazine.
With all the zooming fervour engendered by the LCSB back in March/April , I kicked off a Parish Liturgy of the Word on Palm Sunday and this continues to thrive with people zooming into join us from far afield. There have been several zoom events on the back of that and, if nothing else, this has all been a great silver lining to the covid cloud.
We’ve been able to get over to Haywards Heath to see the Olivers a few times over the summer but not as often as we’d like , and feeling somewhat bereft as all grandparents are. You can hear Marianne reading and singing in the on-line Carol Service put on by St Paul’s Haywards Heath (skip to 18:40 in for M’s bit).
If not with the LCSB then I’m generally lost in Malta, making new connections and drawing in ever more distant cousins into the family Facebook groups. Gets complicated in Malta when you discover you can be connected 4 or 5 different ways! This is a fairly typical example of how I try and explain it to the cousins…
Meanwhile, Marilyn has been knitting for the grand-children and Knit for Peace , where she has been declared ‘Knit of the Day’ a couple of times on their Facebook page!
If you feel inclined to respond to this Christmas letter then please email peter@agius.biz
Love
Peter & Marilyn
Eleanor, Matt, Marianne, Joseph, Evie (family Oliver)
& Richard
xxx