Milford on Sea Food Week is a celebration about all that is great about food. The village will be alive with dining offers, cookery experiences, educational events & the chance to buy local produce at our very own food market. We have events for all ages so please come & join us! - Milford on Sea has something to suit every taste - why not give them all a try!

Milford on Sea Food Week is organised by the Milford on Sea Community Tourism Group in association with the voluntary contributions of www.milfordonsea.org & Jon Crouch. All profits donated to Milford on Sea Community Centre.

www.milfordonseafoodweek.org

This is the text of the Christian Comment I submitted for the Lymington Times of 15th October, 2009.

The following week's L.T. printed a lengthy letter of complaint from an elder of the local Jehovah's Witnesses, so I thought it would be good to make the original available:

Christian Comment

As this year marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, 'On the Origin of Species', it is an excellent time to reflect on the natural world and our place within it. (It's also rather comforting to reflect that one can still make a such a contribution to the world at the age of 50!) Although some of the detail is unclear, it is now certain that all the complex life forms we see around us, including penguins, poppies, and people, evolved from microscopic common ancestors over the past four billion years or so. It's a truth about God's amazing creation which should make us stop and think. Not only are other human beings our brothers and sisters, but also all living creatures are our cousins. Our past is shared and our futures are interwoven – we all depend on one another, and this is the way God intended it to be. As St.Paul put it, “Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.” Darwin helped us to see that those words apply not only to the Church of Christ, but to the whole created world.

Peter Salisbury, Vicar of Lymington

Remembrance which makes a difference
I want to say this morning, through several different accounts, that true remembrance must make a difference.
And I want to start by remembering someone who died 80 years ago this year..
Woodbine Willy
Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, a young vicar in Worcester who became an army chaplain in the First World War and was given the nickname “Woodbine Willy”
Here's what he had to say about war:
The brutality of war is literally unutterable. There are no words foul or filthy enough to describe it. Yet I would remind you ... that if we believe in a God of love at all, then we must believe [despite] war and all it means. The supreme strength of the Christian faith is that it faces the foulest and filthiest of life's facts in the crude brutality of the cross, and through them sees the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
In Christ I meet the real God. In him I find no metaphysical abstraction, but God speaking to me in the only language I can understand, which is the human language.
In [the crucified Christ] I find the truth that human sin and sorrow matter to God.
In the risen Christ I find the promise and the guarantee that the moral struggle of our [human] race will issue in victory.
Woodbine Willy was spurred on, by his remembrance of the horrors of war, to work for the relief of the poor in the slums of England and Germany.
True remembrance makes a difference.
Three new names
Three new names are being dedicated on our War Memorial on Wednesday, the 11th of the 11th at 1100
Among them is a name from the Bosnian conflict, Stuart Wilson.
He died a couple of days before his 21st birthday, driving his United Nations truck over a cliff rather than hit an oncoming civilian vehicle.
He'd be 33 by now
He's remembered each Boxing Day, when the New Milton Rugby Club plays an invitation side comprising ex-servicemen and currently serving men.
The proceeds of the day are donated to his family, who still live here in Lymington.
True remembrance makes a difference.
Royal British Legion
A week or two back I was at the monthly meeting of the British Legion branch in my capacity as their chaplain.
My goodness, that's a hard working group of people, and largely unthanked and unrecognised.
Each meeting begins with the exhortation: they shall grow not old...
And we respond “We will remember them”
And the meeting continues.
It reminds us all in the branch that remembrance has to make a difference.
So as we hear reports from the Welfare committee, hear about funerals attended by the standard bearers and make decisions about the Poppy appeal, we do it all to remember the fallen, and in particular to try to make life a little more bearable for our ex-service personnel and their families.
True remembrance makes a difference.
Howard Miles
You may think I've forgotten to shave this morning, but in fact I'm growing a moustache for November.
Some of you may know about the Movember organisation which encourages people to grow a moustache through November in order to raise awareness about Prostate Cancer.
In my case it's another act of remembrance, because a little less than a year ago Howard Miles, our churchwarden and my friend, died of Prostate Cancer.
So on the first Monday of November, I went into Lymington Hospital, with my two day old moustache, for a PSA blood test which can help detect Prostate Cancer.
It was quick and painless, and yet surveys show that about 50% of men don't even know about the PSA test.
My hope is that, by raising awareness, my remembrance of Howard can make a difference.
Camp Bastion
I was moved, as I'm sure our whole nation was moved, by the TV footage of troops preparing for Remembrance day in Camp Bastion, Helmand province, Afghanistan, heaving up a huge wooden cross and planting it in the desert sand.
How immediate and personal it must be for them.
There are 6 names on our news sheet of troops who have died in Afghanistan this week alone.
As their comrades erected that cross, their faithful remembrance has helped our forgetful nation to remember once more.
True remembrance makes a difference.
The gospel reading (Matthew 5:43-end)
In the reading we heard earlier, from St.Matthew's gospel, Jesus recognised the vicious cycle of war and retribution, offence and revenge, and pointed to the only way out of that futile round:
“You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
As we respond to the challenge of Jesus' teaching, we can follow in the footsteps of Matthew's church who, in the face of brutal persecution, resolutely tried to love their enemies, in remembrance of Jesus.
True remembrance makes a difference.
Bonfire night
Last night I went to visit a friend whose wife has recently died.
He used to be President of the British Legion branch, having served with the Gurkhas in the war.
After we had chatted about his lovely wife, and prayed together, I walked out into the damp night which was full of the noise and sparkle of bonfire night.
The Lymington Rotary club were performing their annual magic: turning the remembrance of a treasonous terrorist murder plot, into a joyfully raucous celebration; a community coming together to help local charities.
And as I made my way along Daniells Walk I could hear the distant strains of music rising and falling on the wind: "Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the free..."
And I was proud to be part of a nation which remembers: in ways which make a difference.