Christ Church Moreton Hall

By now almost all of us will have felt the full effects of the prices going up at the pumps, at the food store, on our electrical bills and on our mortgage and credit card repayments. Almost everyone on the estate will be dreading each morning's post and the brown envelopes that come with it. Even though we are planning to go on holiday and probably will do, nonetheless nagging in the back of our minds will be the question of can I really afford this.

Despite what the politicians say and don't say we should all know that there is actually very little they can do to change things. The rises in fuel prices have been decided in other countries. The growing affluence of China and India means they are buying up more of their share of the world's food supply causing prices to rise. Perhaps saddest of all the growing of specialist crops to produce alternatives to oil has reduced the amount of land available for ordinary foodstuffs and that too is making prices rise.

But in the midst of all our concerns and anxieties just stop and consider this for a moment. While we may be struggling to pay our bills, for many across the world they will be struggling to fill their bellies. While we find our politicians remote and ineffectual, many will find their politicians despotic and cruel and completely unaccountable. And while we may struggle to hang on to our homes with or without negative equity, there will be so many this year who will be struggling to rebuild their homes out of corrugated iron and whatever pieces of wood they can find following monsoon, earthquake, land clearance, political violence, as well as tsunamis and cyclones. Yes, things are bad. But they are not as bad as the media would have us believe with the scaremongering headlines. I am old enough to have lived through not just 12% inflation but 25% inflation and we are nowhere near that yet.

In the middle of May was Christian Aid week, and in 2007 we collected £1600 from the generous people of Moreton Hall. Other churches help us cover the estate and I don’t know what they collected last year.

As we held the service on the 11th people could not be reminded of both Burma’s cyclone and China’s Earthquake. But also in the news that week was the news that every year in Britain 3.6 million tons of food is thrown away un-eaten. 60% of it has not gone past its sell by date and is still unwrapped. We spend £10.2 billion on food we never eat. That means ever year each man woman and child spend nearly £170 each on food that will never get to the table let alone to the mouth. If only that money was not thrown away, look how much more could be done for those in need.

Maybe these things touched people hearts this year, or maybe they remembered that the coins notes and cheques that go into that big red envelope means some people in Africa don’t starve to death. It means, children won’t have to sit there and watch their parents die of Aids. It also means someone will not have to watch their children die of a curable disease because they only have dirty water to drink.

Railways
As you are probably aware, we have had another change on our local trains. When I first came to East Anglia it was Anglia Rail, for some time it has been One Trains, and now of course we are part of National Express.

I am an infrequent traveller to London by train and one of the reasons is the amount of exasperation I have had trying to order tickets either by ‘phone and on line or going to my station and buying them. The second exasperation has been buying tickets for trains that never appear at the station because they shouldn’t be on the timetable. That is not counting all the frequent delays, engineering breakdowns, overcrowding, non-reserved seats, which I have taken as a matter of course. Many is the happy hour I have spent catching up on my reading or my typing while stuck between stations somewhere in the midlands.

Imagine my delight therefore when having to return to London for a business trip I ‘phoned up the direct line and got straight through to a helpful, efficient operative. He sold me a ticket which was £30 less than the one they were trying to sell me on-line. When a problem arose with the ticket, much to my amazement, I got straight through again to correct the mistake.

Snow at Easter
It was amazing to wake up on Easter morning and find more than 4 inches of snow dispersed around the Moreton Hall estate. The church looked very beautiful. I am pleased to say it did not stop people coming to church to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. More than 150 people were there with us on that Sunday morning. I don't know whether it was global warming or some other phenomenon which has caused weather patterns to change in recent years. However as I reflected upon a very strange occasion, a different thought came to mind.

At a stroke, God was able to change the world that we were expecting into something completely different. Everything was turned into beautiful picture of white, like a picture postcard. That must have been how the disciples felt on that first Easter morning. The very last thing there were expecting was for Jesus to be risen from the dead and for it to have such a lasting impact on their lives. It was not just that Jesus died and rose again, but their lives were so completely changed by these events, they never lived in the same way ever again.

Christ Church, Moreton Hall does not make claims against any property on the Moreton Hall estate for repairs.

Despite stating this publicly, some solicitors and estate agents, who assist in the buying and selling of houses on the Moreton Hall estate, have been known to ask or insist that people take out insurance against repairing Christ Church.

If you live on the Moreton Hall estate, which covers all properties from the A14 to the flying fortress public house, Christ Church is your only parish church. We do not have any legal right to claim repair bills from the residents of the estate.

Other parts of Suffolk do have churches which have this right. If you wish to know who they are, a list can be obtained from Mr James Hall, 20 – 32 Museum Street, Ipswich IP1 2UH.

Chancel Repairs document on the St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Diocese website (from June 2006).
Ipswich Borough Council conservation website with links to the Ipswich Historic Churches Trust.