Winter draws on Page 3Letters and Emails Page 4News of the Church Family Page 7From the Church Secretary Page 8Refurbishment Update – end of January Page 9It’s a Wonderful World (and we need to look after it) Page 10Raif Badawi Page 11A Smiley Face Page 12Classic Cinema for February and a premiere Page 15Collection Point – Medicins Sans Frontieres Page 17Rotas Page 20

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EALING GREEN CHURCH

(Methodist and United Reformed)

Ealing, London W5 5QT

Telephone (020) 8810 0136

Web site http://www.ealinggreenchurch.org.uk/

Email egcadministrator@btconnect.comegcsecretary@btconnect.com

Contributions to Unity unitymagazine@hotmail.com

MinisterRev. Dr. Jen SmithDeacon Richard Goldstraw

(020) 8579 8114(020) 3718 9577

Church Administrator Ms. Rebecca Catford (020) 8810 0136Church Secretary Dr. Anita Oji 07435 081342

Church SecretariatPhilip Burnham-Richards, Hector Chidiya, Fleur Hatherall

Choir Leader Mrs. Fleur Hatherall (020) 8248 6774Organist Mrs. Fleur Hatherall (020) 8248 6774Communion Steward Mrs. Hema Souri-Parsons (020) 8840 4200Unity Magazine Mr. Lee Horwich (020) 8567 2851Unity Distributor Mr. Peter Chadburn (020) 8537 1966Ecumenical Officer Mr. David Groves (020) 8933 8315Bible Reading Rota Church Administrator (020) 8810 0136

The Church Office is staffed on Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week between 9.30am and 12.30pm, with the exception of public and other occasional holidays.

UNITYcontributions:

All contributions gratefully received. Please hand them toLee Horwich, or email them to: unitymagazine@hotmail.com

Last date for contributions to the March issue Sunday 8th February

If you are new to the church, the following groups meet on a regular basis, either weekly or monthly:Afternoon Bible Study Thursday (monthly) 1.30 pmMonday Fellowship (fortnightly)

Monday 2:00 pm

Choir Practice Friday 7:00 pmLuncheon Club Thursday 12:00 am-1:15 pm

Full details can be found in the weekly notice sheetThere are also a number of House Groups, which meet on a regular basis - see Church Notice Board for fuller details.

You are welcome to come to any meeting.

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Winter draws on From Jen

Dear friends,

Welcome to the February edition of Unity Magazine, and the depth of winter. The Christmas ornaments are back in the crate, the cards are (mostly) down, and the sales finished. At church, the front has filled up with earth excavated from the site of the new side building, and we are making our way through the long parts of the refurbishment.

Unusually, this month I am making preparations for my three month sabbatical, March - May. I am very glad to have a chance to launch it in such great style with the barn dance at Ealing Green on February 28th! Methodist ministers are asked to take a sabbatical after ten years of active service, and then every seven years thereafter. During mine, I will be working at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts to do background research about a manuscript written by Roger Williams, (1603-1681) the man about whom I wrote a PhD many years ago. The manuscript itself lives at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, and I'll likely spend some time there as well, and perhaps at a library in Los Angeles. The manuscript has a tangled title sounding more like a table of contents than a catch phrase, but it is a long attempt to explain the Jacob and Esau story. Or more properly, to read the 'typology' of the Jacob and Esau story to show how the brother's lifelong conflict and final reconciliation prefigured conflicts in Roger William's own time and place. The large question he faced in the southern New England colonies in the mid 1600s was this: could a diverse society without state mandated belief be a peaceful place to live, or would it tear itself apart?

This was a man given to colourful prose. He had a best seller in London in 1644 with his polemic in favour of liberty of conscience, 'The Bloody Tenent of Persecution.' His chief Boston adversary responded within the year with 'The Bloody Tenent washed clean in the blood of the lamb,' and Williams followed up with an epic 300 pages called (you guessed it) the Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody by Mr. Cotton's attempt to wash it in the blood of the lamb.' This was a man who was serious about freedom.

However, Roger Williams thought the state authority should control economic, personal, and household behaviour, to reinforce people's sense of obligation to one another and protect the 'tender religious conscience.' He was hopeful for reconciliation within society, much as Jacob and Esau were reconciled at the end of their lives - by his way of reading the Bible, the fact that they were reconciled proved that his society would be reconciled. He was hopeful.

I'll be reading church records, sermons, court proceedings, correspondence and anything else to give me a window into whether people in the network of small towns South of Boston in the later 1600s shared his hope. Did they feel safe and protected? Did they have confidence to build and save? Where were the threats they perceived? How did they manage and approach conflict in their

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churches, businesses, households? Fundamentally, how do people work out how to live peacefully in a diverse, changing society where economy and migration shift with the season?

With a sabbatical the purpose is spiritual and intellectual refreshment. I am hoping to revisit the themes that were important to me when I first offered for the ministry, and think about them again now with the eyes of experience. I don't expect to have any earth shattering epiphanies, but I do expect to encounter God in the lives and hopes, fights and dreams of these seventeenth century companions. And I do expect to have insight about the role our small communities can play in their own diverse, changing society where economy and migration shift with the season, and perhaps write something about it. We shall see!

While I am away, Richard Goldstraw will of course continue as minister, and the other circuit ministers will give him and you all help and support. Look after each other, and keep praying, serving, and building!

With every blessing,

Jen

P.S. The first festival in February in the English catholic calendar is Candlemas: on this day (Monday, 2 February) by tradition the church blesses all the candles that will be used in the coming year. I suspect in the way of all such festivals, deeply rooted in the folk tradition of their place, Candlemas has as much more to do with marking the moment when light begins its inexorable seep back into the earlier morning and later afternoon. Happy Candlemas!

Date for the Diary

Saturday 28th February 2015

We will be having a Barn Dance at Ealing Green from 7.00 until 9.30pm. Moredetails to follow but this will be a fundraising event for Refurbishment. Tickets will be £10each, but children free.

As space in our Hall is limited, please get your tickets soon, as invitations will shortly be sent to other Circuit Churches.

Cold refreshments and soft drinks will be provided. Permission has been granted for people to bring their own wine if desired.

This will be a fun evening – no dancing experience needed! We will be instructed by the experienced team led by Rev Rachel Bending and her husband. As 28th is the day before Jen starts her Sabbatical, it will give us a chance to wish her well.

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Letters and emails

From Marion and Paul Martin

Marian and Paul Martin are delighted to announce the safe arrival of their Granddaughter Isabella Beatrice Brown at 00.36 on Monday 1st December 2014, weighing in at 7pounds 13onces. A sister for George. Mother and baby are doing well.

Marion and Paul Martin

Used Postage Stamps

Although we no longer receive a great volume of letters with postage stamps attached, there is still a demand for used stamps. As well as recycling them, we can help a charity. Please give them to Zena Hardy, who will pass them to her daughter Glynnis who raises funds for The Leprosy Mission.

Church Flowers – Appeal for Donors and/or Arrangers

Thank you to all those who have donated and/or arranged flowers during the past year. I am now trying to prepare the Flower Rota for 2015 but am very short of arrangers and donors!

You are invited to remember any special anniversary, birthday or occasion for family or friends, by donating money for flowers on a Sunday of your choice. If you would like to give the flowers on a specific Sunday, please let me know. Occasionally the date clashes with a date chosen by someone else, but I will do my best to accommodate your request. You will not need to arrange the flowers as well, if you do not wish to, but if you could be persuaded to ‘give it a go’, that would be wonderful – it can be a simple arrangement – just a bunch of flowers is fine.

The Flower Fund relies on your monetary support for floral decoration, Sunday by Sunday, to enhance our worship. Thank you for your continued support. Contributions would be welcome and may be handed to Gill Hatherall.

January is always a good month for behavioural economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year's resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.

Sendhil Mullainathan

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Je suis Charlie. It's a phrase that has really grabbed the attention of the world of late. Humans do appalling things to each other allegedly in the name of religion, which was never the aim of those whose teachings are at the heart of the various faiths. At the same time we have so-called devoutly religious people pointing fingers, and worse, at those whose beliefs do not align precisely with theirs. It is a tragedy when something, such as happened in Paris, occurs. There can be no accepting it as a response to insult, real or imagined. One can only try to get inside the mind of someone who is willing to give his life, the only likely long term outcome of such an attack, in the belief that he/she is standing up for his deity, but that's a hard one for most of us.

At the same time, we all need to realise and understand that those who carry out such atrocities lie so far to the outside of any group they claim to represent that they are virtually off the scale and cannot be considered as part of the continuum of that group. People in positions where their opinions are widely disseminated also need to realise that and respond accordingly. Rupert Murdoch recently, in response to the killers in Paris, opined:"Maybe most Muslims are peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible."

For a man so professedly devout and one whose words are instantly broadcast around the world, this can only charitably be considered a slip of the tongue. It fuels misunderstanding, hostility and the taking of positions that are unreasonable -which further exacerbates the problem.

And we have to understand that it's not only Islam that has characters acting intolerantly on it's, claimed, behalf. Mosques and Synagogues are regularly damaged and destroyed by the self professed 'faithful'. Some Southern Baptist Churches in the US are a byword for bigotry (we have some over her too, it's just that they aren't as visible) and Judaism has its own darker side. Ironically this indicates that it's nothing to do with religion itself.

J.K. Rowling's response to Rupert Murdoch sums it up:

"I was born Christian. If that makes Rupert Murdoch my responsibility, I'll auto-excommunicate...The Spanish Inquisition was my fault, as is all Christian fundamentalist violence. Oh, and Jim Bakker."

God bless you.

(Jim Bakker, pronounced Baker - American televangelist who sunk in the face of sex and fraud scandals, now partly rehabilitated, but still owing the US government an estimated $6million in unpaid taxes.)

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News of the Church Family – for January & February

Please continue to pray for Irene Robey who spent Christmas and New Year in Ealing Hospital. She is likely to be discharged to a Nursing Home quite soon, but remains poorly.

Alma Baker sends New Year greetings to all at Ealing Green and grateful thanks to those folk who went to sing a few carols outside her windows on Christmas Eve. She was very moved. Please pray for Alma who continues to have a lot of leg and back pain, which limits her mobility.

Please pray for Zena Hardy who had a brief spell in Ealing Hospital over New Year, due to breathing problems. Since then, she has been staying with her daughter but hopes to return home soon.

We have all been shocked to hear about the recent crash of the Air Asia plane and we support Erny Tianus in our prayers, as she lost several friends and their families in the tragedy.

It was a pleasure to welcome Peggy Allaway and Elias Laichena as members of Ealing Green, during our Covenant Service on 4th January, having had their Membership transferred.

Congratulations to Barbara Hawkins who has been awarded ‘the National Branch Award of the Year for Epilepsy Action’. Well done Barbara!

Our congratulations to Helen and Adam Brown, who had a beautiful baby daughter, Isabella Beatrice, a brother for George on 1st December. We are also delighted for Marian and Paul, Helen’s parents.

We were pleased to welcome Jen’s parents from USA, at all our Christmas services. We hope that they enjoyed their stay and family time together, and had a good journey home.

We heard just before Christmas that Doreen Maynard died unexpectedly on 8th

December. Doreen was the wife of Rev Eric Maynard, who was the Methodist minister at Ealing Green when we joined in 1972. Please pray for Eric (who is virtually immobile and awaiting a knee replacement) and for all his family at this sad loss.

We pray particularly for those mentioned above and for all who carry the burden of illness and for their families and friends.

We have received some lovely photos of Colin and Merle Paige’s garden and their family Christmas in South Africa. Strange to see them in summer clothes enjoying a BBQ in glorious sunshine as we turn up the heating! We are delighted to learn that they will be coming to the UK from 13th April until 19th June and are looking forward to meeting up with Ealing Green friends once more.

We wish all our Church Family and readers of ‘UNITY’ a Happy, Healthy andPeaceful 2015.

Gill Hatherall

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From the Church Secretary

For the past week or so I have been unable to get out of my mind a recent government reply to a Parliamentary question on the number and costs of so-called ‘wrongful birth’ cases. Since 2003 the government (made up of different parties but voted in by the community we live in) has paid out more than £95 million on successful claims (totalling 164 with 104 of these being now closed) for damages from parents wanting compensation for the birth of a child. These costs do not include the defence fees for a further 83 claims. At first glance this may seem appropriate for cases where the child is disabled in order to defray costs for the parents. However, this applies to just over half of the cases where the claims have been closed. There are 45 children who are healthy. One question is what do these children feel as they grow up knowing that their existence was an expensive mistake and they never should have been born? Another is should the NHS be paying out for the birth of healthy babies? The financial cost to the NHS will increase unless the law is changed. The less visible burden is the reinforcement of a culture that sees the birth of disabled and unplanned children as avoidable.

The most striking feeling I have had was to pray for those children so that they would know God’s love and to remember all those who struggle to bring up children in loving homes without a government pay off. In addition there are all those involved in the judicial system developing and processing claims and others that we vote into our Parliament who make the laws that are being applied. I ask myself as a regular voter what my corporate sin is in this matter.

As the election campaign heats up opportunities will present themselves to ask questions to prospective Parliamentary candidates. For Christians, silence is not an option because we are responsible to God and our community for our individual and corporate actions. Where can we go to get help in this matter? The Bible has numerous positive examples e.g. arguing for justice (the Prophets are a start), managing money honestly (Jesus’ response to Roman government, to Temple bankers, and tax collectors e.g. Mark Chapter 11) and encouraging cultural diversity (Jesus’ approaches to Jews, Samaritans and other nationals e.g. Luke Chapter 10). Examples to avoid are also under the same headings with injustice (linked to adultery, murder and King David - 2 Samuel Chapter 11 - or to stealing vineyards, 1 Kings Chapter 21), bribery (such as Judas’ involvement in Jesus’ capture - Matthew 26), and religious conflict (between the Jews and Samaritans e.g. John Chapter 4). Somehow mercy and justice for all, honesty and grace in shared living are still current elements in electioneering.

At our church we too have voting procedures that bring together our corporate responsibilities. Our Council is elected and that is why you are encouraged to make sure that there is a voting process i.e. to nominate more folk than there are spaces on Council. In addition members vote on proposals in our congregational meeting. Yet in some Christian denominations this is not allowed and church administration is by decree from a hierarchy. I value the more democratic process though each person then has to take responsibility for the actions that ensue. In which case, I pray that God gives clear guidance to each of us. Anita Oji

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Refurbishment Update, as at the end of January:

Design choices continue, and kitchen, lighting, and audio visual (AV) designare now well advanced.

We have taken a decision in the kitchen to have a section with sink, hob, and oven all handicapped accessible, and also to have an extra large range with wide over for catering sized trays; a hard wearing, attractive shaker style for the units, and a black granite effect countertop.

The pictures are not a final design, in other words, but show the style and space to good effect.

Since Christmas the foundations for the new extension building have been dug, and we have good news that they passed the first buildings inspection on 21st Jan with flying colours.

Right now, we are awaiting final figures for the different floor designs, having discovered there was more work there than anticipated.

Thanks to all for the continuing work!

Jen Smith

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It's a wonderful world (and we need to look after it).

Returning to my ecology kick, I wondered if we might all plan to do some little thing (maybe more) to preserve or enhance the environment (human or natural) this coming year. Genesis is not too helpful on this count as, in my view anyway, God seems to allocate power without responsibility (Chapter 1, Verse 28) although later on (Chapter 6,Verse 11), Noah at least seems to do his best to preserve living creatures. The important thing to realise is that whilst we seem to be top of the heap (in my view, again, this is an oversimplification of evolution), without the heap, we are all compost.

I was inspired (that sounds rather overblown - apologies) to think about this whilst chatting to the Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Prestwood who was describing some of the plans for the church: one of which is to cut back the avenue of yew trees lining the path out of the churchyard. Yew leaves (last year's growth particularly) contain a rather useful chemical - paclitaxel, known by the trade name Taxol: a drug used in the treatment of several cancers. Whilst by no means a cure for cancer - there is probably no such thing - it has proved a very useful weapon in the oncologist's armoury. Whilst visiting Dorneywood in July 2014, I talked with a gardener who was cutting back a yew hedge and he told me that the cuttings went to have the drug extracted. So I am looking into whether Prestwood's cuttings might be used also.

Yew is by no means the only drug (or useful chemical) to be extracted from the natural world. Most people know that quinine (an early malaria palliative) comes from the bark of Cinchona genus trees and was brought to Europe - then ravaged by malaria - in the 17th century by the Jesuits - hence Jesuit's bark. And willow trees contain salicin, closely related to aspirin, perhaps the most widely used drug in the world today. Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy is the source of many common painkillers such as morphine and codeine and a derivative, diacetylmorphine or heroin.

Many drugs derived from natural products can be made, and are made, synthetically when it is cheaper or produces a better product, but a considerable number are so complex that they can only be obtained from the natural world: none of the sources mentioned above are endangered and many sources are cultivated.

But the genius of the natural world in producing chemicals with useful attributes (to humans - they also have uses for their source organism) appears to outstrip human ingenuity - witness the shortage of new antibiotics. Only yesterday did reports appear in mainstream media of the first new family discovered for some 25 years -not in the billion pound laboratories of big pharma - but in a field in Maine State, USA (teixobactin). Development of resistance is said to be unlikely but we have all heard that before.

Cultivating soil bacteria in the search for new drugs is not easy: it will be even harder to look for new drugs or even their precursor chemicals if we continue to destroy global ecosystems at the current rate. We have barely scraped the surface of the potential of our planet to provide life-saving or even (just?) life-improving

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drugs but we are destroying those places where they may be found at an ever-increasing rate. The Amazon Rain Forest and the Great Barrier Reef are uniqueecosystems in severe danger - perhaps we all know that - but what might HS2 destroy? After all the micro-organism (a fungus) that is Quorn was found in a garden just down the road from where I am writing - in Marlow, Buckinghamshire.

That may be a little alarmist, but not much!

So might we all do a little bit this year to help the environment - recycle, re-use and repair even better, leave the car at home a bit more (it is carbon dioxide which is destroying the Barrier Reef not very indirectly), if we are lucky enough to have a garden, build a compost heap, feed the birds - after all as a failing supermarket says "Every little helps".

peterbaker68

Raif BadawiYou may not have heard or Raif Badawi. He is a Saudi Arabian writer and activist and the creator of the website Free Saudi Liberals.He was arrested in 2012 on a charge of insulting Islam through electronic channels and brought to court on several charges including apostasy.

In May 2012, shortly before his arrest, Badawi addressed the nature of liberalism.

For me, liberalism simply means, live and let live. This is a splendid slogan. However, the nature of liberalism – particularly the Saudi version – needs to be clarified. It is even more important to sketch the features and parameters of liberalism, to which the other faction, controlling and claiming exclusive monopoly of the truth, is so hostile that they are driven to discredit it without discussion or fully understanding what the word actually means. They have succeeded in planting hostility to liberalism in the minds of the public and turning people against it, lest the carpet be pulled out from under their feet. But their hold over people’s minds and society shall vanish like dust carried off in the wind.

His final thought quoted Albert Camus:

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

What has happened to Raif – from Amnesty International

Just after Friday prayers on 9th January, Raif Badawi was led by Saudi officials out of a bus and into the middle of the square in front of al-Jafali mosque in Jeddah. A large crowd had gathered to see the flogging.

Raif stood in the middle of the crowd, handcuffed and shackled by his ankles, his face uncovered. A security officer approached Raif and began caning him across

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the back and legs, until he had been beaten 50 times. A witness told us it took just five minutes to cane Raif 50 times; the lashes were constant and quick.

Raif raised his head towards the sky, closing his eyes and arching his back. He was silent, but you could tell from his face and his body that he was in real pain.’Eyewitness

On 21 January, two days before he was due to be publicly lashed another 50 times in a Jeddah square, doctors deemed Raif too unwell to be flogged. The week before, the authorities had postponed his scheduled 50 lashes after a prison doctor advised that Raif was unfit to be lashed, and that the flogging should be postponed for a week on medical grounds. While medics advised for the second week that Raif should not be flogged, it was not yet clear whether the Saudi authorities intended to act on this advice and refrain from flogging Raif on 23 January.

More information on the Amnesty International website. Lee

A Smiley Face

A smiley face is international. I remember first seeing oneyears (and years) ago. At one stage Glasgow adopted it as a logo along with a catchy phrase meant to sum up the attraction of that fair, but in my experience mainly cold, wet and windy, city. The catchy phrase is long forgotten, at least by me, but the smiley face is still in my memory.

Last year I bought some Christmas presents for my family after an experience online I would not like to repeat. The sheer frustration of trying to use a Korean web site, in English that is not catering for foreigners in Korea could well substitute for older, but less technologically developed tortures. In the end, just to register, took three days, several conversations with the site’s help desk and two calls where the help desk operator talked me through the process until we got to an impasse, asked me to send in a screen dump to show where I was, and went off to the IT people to see how we could progress further. THEN, when I had registered we went through the same process to pay. Unhappily, for me at least, foreign credit cards are only good if you want stuff delivered to foreign addresses – and that’s for a price. If I wanted the free deliver anywhere in Korea I had to use a Korean credit card, or one of the highly sophisticated ATMs that are dotted around the place here. BUT only if the final price is a round thousand Won (10,000, 50,000 etc.). Unhappily the total of my expenditure ended in 500 Won, which is a coin, and the highly sophisticated ATMs can’t cope with coins. The thought of spending good money on another article to get to the round thousand crossed my mind, but a quick look at other things and the complications of buying from different suppliers soon made it clear that that was not the answer.

The solution was to spend my lunchtime in a bank. Do you fondly remember having to do that years ago? Many’s the time I have queued up while the person in

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front disputed charges that had been levied by the bank, or negotiated a house purchase, a complex set of loans or a transfer of all their finances into a hedge fund. This wasn’t much different. Eventually the nice lady in the bank, with only the merest hint of disdain at the choice and quality of my purchases, generated the paperwork, and wasn’t there a lot of it, necessary to take the money from my bank account and transfer it to the people selling the presents.

Later that day I got an email from the people selling the stuff to confirm they had the money and I would get my goods, without actually telling me where, or indeed when, this would be. Thoughtfully, and clearly with a view to security, they had put asterisks in place of everything that could identify me or where I was except the first four letters of my name.

The next day I got a cryptic message at work telling me that Kim Bomin was on the third floor. I’m not used to getting strange messages from people and wasn’t sure quite who or what Kim Bomin was. Eager to investigate I travelled down 13 floors to find a room containing Kim Bomin. There aren’t many rooms on the 3rd floor, which is mostly given over to a gallery looming over a huge foyer below. I found a room and there she was, with a puzzled look on her face and a small parcel in her hand. Quite how long she had been holding it I’m not sure, but her relief at seeing a foreigner who might be able to decipher the asterisks (only slightly fewer than on the email) was palpable.

On the basis that there aren’t any other foreigners with names starting Horw*** expecting parcels from 11st I was, indeed, the intended recipient and Kim Bomin, for I assume it was her, was clearly very glad to get rid of the thing.

I travelled back up the 13 floors and opened the parcel. It was the presents I had been told would be delivered to me less than 24 hours before. So I sat down and wrote, in my best (thank you Google Translate) Korean – ••••• (pronounced gamsahabnida) “Thank you”.

I got an email back comprising only one thing - a smiley face

Lee

I've been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning. Most of it's just whining, but every so often there'll be something I can use later: a joke, a description, a quote. It's an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments. 'That's not what you said on February 3, 1996,' I'll say to someone.

David Sedaris

I miss everything about Chicago, except January and February.Gary Cole

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Classic Cinema Club Ealing February 2015

There are two special events in February. The first is a very special and highly regarded film being screened on Friday, February 13th for The Ealing Music and Film Festival.

Friday 6th February 7:30pm

The Trial 1962 118 minutes directed by Orson Welles starring Anthony Perkins, Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider

Orson Welles called it the best movie he ever made. The Trial is based on Franz Kafka's story of a man named K. who is charged guilty with a crime that is never explained to us. Not even K. knows what he has done.

The Trial is truly affecting in all the ways that make a successful movie. It stuns your eyes and ears with its imaginative playfulness, and it swirls around inside your brain, taking bits and pieces from your own personal nightmares and sharing them with K. It's one of Welles' greatest achievements and should not be missed.

Friday 13th February 7:30pm

Camera Buff is an acclaimed Polish film made in 1979.

Directed By: Krzysztof KieslowskiWritten By: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Jerzy Stuhr

This Polish comedy offers some subtle political jabs as it documents the changes in the life of a factory worker after he buys a home movie camera. He is a creative fellow who quickly gets bored with filming his family. Instead he decides to make investigative documentaries. This causes friction with his wife who eventually leaves him, and with his boss who tries to convince him not to make the documentaries.

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Friday 20th February 7:30pm

Nothing But a Man 1964

95 minutes directed by Michael Roemer starring Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, Julius Harris, Yaphet Kotto

An African-American couple's search for independence, respect and dignity is challenged by racism. Made independently in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, and featuring a soundtrack of Motown music, it is "one of the most sensitive films about black life ever made in this country". With music by Martha and the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and Mary Wells. The Venice Film Festival awarded the film the San Giorgio Prize as "especially important for the progress of civilization."

27th February 7.30pm

The second event is a restored version of the silent film Jane Shore, the first British epic, made in1915 with a new original film score performed live in Ealing's historic Victoria Hall in Ealing Town Hall.

This is a famous silent move filmed, in part, at our very own Ealing Studios. It is an adaptation of the 1714 play The Tragedy of Jane Shore by Nicholas Rowe and is based on the life of Jane Shore, the mistress of Edward IV.

It is a spectacular production, employing thousands of extras in some of the set-piece scenes, and deals with a period of English history in which internal conflict prevailed, the Wars of the Roses.

Laura Rossi, an Ealing resident, has written an original score and will perform it live with Orchestra Celestial. BFI has just released this restored film and we believe this to be the first screening in the UK in its centenary celebration. Letalone with a live performance!

More details on the http://classiccinemaclub.co.uk/ website.

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Every year, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides emergency medical care to millions of people caught in crises in some 70 countries around the world. MSF provides assistance when catastrophic events—such as armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, or natural disasters—overwhelm local health systems. MSF also assists people who face discrimination or neglect from their local health systems or when populations are otherwise excluded from health care.

MSF is a neutral and impartial humanitarian organization that aims first and foremost to provide high-quality medical care to the people who need it the most. It does not promote the agenda of any country, political party, or religious faith, and, as such, endeavours to communicate its history, background, and capabilities to all parties in a given situation so that it may gain the necessary access to populations in need.

On any given day, more than 30,000 doctors, nurses, logisticians, water-and-sanitation experts, administrators, and other qualified professionals working with MSF can be found providing medical care around the world.

In 2012, MSF medical teams carried out more than 8.3 million outpatient consultations; delivered more than 185,000 babies; treated more than 1.6 million people for malaria; treated nearly 350,000 severely and moderately malnourished children; provided some 284,000 people living with HIV/AIDS with antiretroviral therapy; conducted more than 78,000 surgeries, and vaccinated 690,000 against measles and 496,000 against meningitis.

When MSF Responds

At its core, the purpose of humanitarian action is to save the lives and ease the suffering of people caught in acute crises, thereby restoring their ability to rebuild their lives and communities.

In the countries where MSF works, one or more of the following crises is usually occurring or has occurred: armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, natural disasters, or exclusion from health care.

Armed Conflict

In numerous countries, MSF is providing medical care to people caught in war zones. Some may have been injured by gunfire, knife or machete wounds, bombings, beatings, or sexual violence. Others are cut off from medical care ordenied the ability to seek the treatment they need. This could be a pregnant woman

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who cannot reach help to deliver her baby, or someone with a chronic condition who has no way to resupply his medicines. Conflict’s consequences are manifold, and MSF has historically attempted to respond with speed, focus, and flexibility in order to deliver the necessary care to those most in need.

Epidemics

MSF has a long history of responding to epidemic outbreaks of cholera, meningitis, measles, malaria, and other infectious diseases that spread rapidly and can be fatal if not treated.

Over the past decade, MSF has also become involved in the treatment of the devastating pandemics of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB), which is the leading cause of death for people with HIV/AIDS. MSF also treats neglected diseases such as kala azar, sleeping sickness, and Chagas, diseases that largely affect the world's poorest people and for which there are, at present, few effective treatment options. Furthermore, MSF treats and advocates for people afflicted with drug-resistant and multi-drug resistant forms of TB that require lengthy, difficult treatment regimens.

Malnutrition

An estimated 195 million children worldwide suffer from the effects of malnutrition, with 90 percent of them living in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In fact, malnutrition contributes to at least one-third of the eight million annual deaths of children under five years of age.

In 2012, MSF treated approximately nearly 350,000 severely and moderately malnourished children in a host of countries in Africa and Asia. In many cases, teams employed ready-to-use therapeutic food, or RUTF, a revolutionary product that is changing protocols for responding to malnutrition. These nutrient-dense milk- and peanut-based pastes include all the minerals, vitamins, and nutrients that rapidly growing young children need for proper development. In traditional treatment programs, severely malnourished children had to be hospitalized for several weeks to receive treatment. The fact that several weeks’ worth of RUTF can be given to families and then taken at home means that far more children can be treated than ever before.

Natural Disasters

Natural disasters can overwhelm a local or national health structure in a matter of minutes. There are times when the aftermath of monumental disasters requires more of a development and reconstruction focus than a medical one. This was the case after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2005, when other organizations and government agencies had the necessary capacities to address the most pressing needs and there actually was not much for MSF to do.

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Exclusion from Health Care

In many parts of the world, certain groups—refugees, internally displaced people, migrants, minorities, the unemployed, prisoners, people with HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis, drug users, sex workers, street children and others—are marginalized and prevented from accessing adequate health care simply because of who they are. They may fear stigma and be reluctant to seek help, or their health caresystem may deliberately neglect or exclude them.

In these instances, MSF tries to bridge the gap in services and call on governments to make sure that all of the people for whom they bear responsibility can get the treatments they need. In places such as Bangladesh and Honduras, MSF medical teams provide medical, social, and mental health care to those affected by institutional neglect and advocate with local and national governments and civil society for improved access to services and increased social acceptance for their patients.

Expertise

Since its inception, MSF’s work has required specialized medical and logistical support and medical departments that work together to ensure that innovations and research advances are incorporated into the organization's practices. This is an ever-evolving process, one that the organization is constantly looking to improve and expand. For instance, MSF has continually tried to upgrade its logistical networks and supply chains. And the organization now utilizes specialized medical kits and equipment that enable its teams to start saving lives immediately after they are deployed.

Medical data and research from MSF field operations are regularly published in peer-reviewed journals and other periodicals. MSF also publishes special reports on devastating health issues, such as sexual violence and paediatric AIDS.

Speaking Out

As part of its founding principles, MSF stands ever ready to speak out publicly on a given issue should the situation call for it. This could mean that a certain group is being neglected, that military or political efforts are causing severe medical consequences, or that international organizations are not doing enough to respond to an emergency.

Please give generously, Thank you

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February Rotas

February Preacher Reader PrayersCommunion

Stewards

1st 11.00 am Jennifer Smith Janette Pender PBR, DL, GH, NG

8th 11.00 am Donney Samuel Hazel Humphries Vera Marston

15th 11.00 am Mark Budu-Manuel Fleur Hatherall Colin Hatherall

22nd 11.00 am Ade Benson Christine Edwards Peter Chadburn

Note: Could we have some volunteers for the Coffee Rota. All help is welcome - and it would be nice to see other faces behind the counter (no offence to those who already volunteer).

March Readers1st

8th To be advised15th

22nd

29th

Too often we under estimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

Leo Buscaglia