The Shepherd, December 2007
BROOKWOOD NEWS
VALUED GIFTS
CLLR MELANIE SWAN, a parishioner of the St Boniface Mission in Ryde, Isle of Wight, has kindly given St Edward’s a portion of the soil from the grave of Saint Nicolas Planas of Athens.
Among various books, photographs and icons, Nadezhda Knupffer has given us a portrait of the late Metropolitan Vitaly, made when he was serving in London as an young bishop. We asked Nadezhda the provenance of this picture and she replied as follows, a note we would like to share with our readers: “Yes, the portrait was drawn in chalk by a great friend of my mother’s - Lydia Svinina. She was an artist from Russia, we knew her from our earliest childhood. I remember saying my prayers with her help and after the ‘Our Father’ asking what temptation was; to which she answered: ‘What you are doing now not concentrating on your prayers but playing with your hands; the devil is distracting you at a time when your heart should belong to God alone.’ For years temptation meant just that for me, even now in old age I remember her as she said it, I was then about four or five years old. She worshipped at the Convent in Brechin Place; she died of cancer in the late fifties, I think. The portrait was drawn at the Podvorie* in front of the iconostasis, as you probably guessed. For years the portrait hung in my sitting-room, first in my mother’s house then in mine after I married. However I now feel it should be part of the English Heritage and be seen by a greater audience, who would I hope ask about who he was and thus learn more about the history and growth of Orthodoxy in England. I could think of no one better suited to have it and pass on its history to further generations than yourselves at St. Edward’s Brotherhood. Please remember her in your prayers. She is one of those forgotten souls.”
* The Podvorie was the old Russian Church House and Chapel of All Saints in Baron’s Court, W6, founded by the Ever-memorable Bishop Nicolas of London in 1928. Despite the the founder’s express blessing, it has now been closed and the property sold.
TALK AT WOKING UNITED REFORMED CHURCH
FATHER ALEXIS was invited to address the “Meeting Point” group of Saint Andrew’s United Reformed Church in Woking on Thursday 22nd November. There were about twenty-five people at the meeting, and after the talk, there were so many questions that the meeting overran by about half-an-hour - apparently the first time this had happened. Mrs Margaret Marcham, who had arranged the invitation, later sent us a donation from the group for the New Monastery House Building Fund, and some of the group are intending to join us on the celebration of Christmas according to the Orthodox calendar.
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