Beating the Bounds

Wivenhoe’s new Mayor Kevin Read started his Mayor’s Charity Fund rasing on this beautiful sunny day as he and a group of walkers set out from St Mary’s churchyard to  walk around the Parish boundary. Usually performed in Rogationtide and therefore slightly late, it was a pity that the Beating the Bounds event now coincided with the CONFIRMATION service at St Mary’s so that the parish priest could not process round with the walkers as traditionally would have happened – perhaps something for next year!
Be that as it may, Mayor Read’s charity collection was fitting to the occasion and would have had the approval of George Herbert, who gave four reasons why the Beating the Bounds custom should be encouraged

A blessing of God for the fruits of the field;
Justice, in the preservation of the bounds;
Charitie, in loving walking and neighbourly accompanying one another, with reconciling of differences at that time, if they be any;
Mercie, in relieving the poor by a liberal distribution of largess, which at that time is or ought to be used.

The blessing and a prayer for the walkers and the community of Wivenhoe was given by the Rector – after he had hastily handed the simultaneously arriving bishop into the care of the churchwardens – it was that sort of Sunday…!

Confirmation

For St Mary’s this was the more important event of the day and it only gets a mention second because that was the chronological order in which things happened.
Fourteen candidates, some from other churches in the Deanery, were confirmed by bishop Derek Bond. Our congratulations go to all those who took this important step today on this day of Pentecost when, in the words of Malcolm Guite

The Earth herself awakens to her Maker
Translated out of death and into birth*

*from Pentecost