Gathering at the Regent Hotel

My dear Friends

Just to report that my little gathering at the Regent hotel here in the heart of Cambridge went really well. Eleven people gathered to celebrate 15 years of The Little Sisters of Joy, now a Foundation of Prayer, Peace and Reconciliation, which takes many forms;  Concerts of Peace and Reconciliation in various lovely halls, usually in and around the university of Cambridge, the occasional lectures and much more besides. In any one day I can meet up to half a dozen new and very diverse people.

Getting back to last Saturday, the eleven people came from different Christian traditions,which was fitting especially on that day as it was the beginning of The Week of prayer for Christian Unity.Traditions represented were Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Russian Orthodox and even American Orthodox!

Our newly refurbished surroundings added to the JOY of being together and chatting over some food and drink. I gave a brief overview as to what happened in the Project in the past year and what is planned for the year to come, including singing with my guitar at a service in Grantchester Parish Church. where 3 Anglican Parishes will come together for their annual celebration-a great privilege for me!

A holiday beckons and I can now tell you that i have planned a short holiday in the 'wild and wooly West' of Ireland. (That is how someone described it to me when i said I was going quite a way beyond Galway city.) My final destination is to an Abbey in Connemara, but I am flying to a shrine in County Mayo first, to give thanks for my 25 years in the Catholic Church.

My flight is booked for the second half on May and i will prepare to put my little pussycat in his holiday home in a village near Cambridge, where he is well cared for while I am away.

Until the next time!

Shalom from Gila

Music at Queens

My dear Friends

Life has been quite hectic since we kicked off into the New year. My main project as you know this year is the publication of my second little memoir, Where the Woods the Water.

I was feeling a bit frazzled, having just come from the University library and the Graduate Centre and was passing Queens College in Silver Street. I popped in and over the mathematical bridge and into the court with the huge walnut tree. This is where tihe Chapel is and as I entered I heard the sound of the organ playing.

I could see a young man perched below the huge pipes, playing with great gusto. I sat down down in the middle of this really beautiful space and listened. After he had stopped playing the first piece, I clapped and shouted what a joy it was to hear such wonderful music. I think he was pleased to have me there, as he told me he was practising for an organ recital at 1.15 today. I explained I would be unable to go as i was holding a gathering of Friends in the Regent Hotel, but that i would love to listen to more.

Qutie a selection of music followed; Bach, some French music-quite delicious-some loud and soem quiet. This short interlude in my life really soothed my soul.

There is a variety of organists playing in this lunchtime series and I hope to go to something in the future.

Have a great weekend, a report about my meeting will the next blog entry
Shalom from Gila

A very happy and healthy new year to all my Friends

My dear Friends

In 1989 I was in Amsterdam for my first real Christmas and New year with two very close friends I had met in Israel in the summer of that year-Liesbeth and Chava. I remember that I was in Chava's mother's house in New Year's Eve. People lit bonfires in the street and my friend was playing the piano. As the bells of midnight struck, I could actually feel the year 'turning' and another close friend back in england came very strongly into my mind.

This will be my third New year in 2013. The first was the Jewish new Year for Trees, on which The Little Sisters of Joy commemorates its anniversary-2014 will be its 15th birthday. A gathering of friends met in (yes you know its my favourite hotel) the Regent Hotel in Cambridge, among them Methodists and Catholics, who were meeting each other for the first time. I gave a little speech about the progress of the Project and we all had tea and cakes and chatted happily. We will do it all over again this coming January, with a few different people this time, with hopefully a lady from the American Orthodox Church.

Then there was my trip to Toronto in June, highly successful and quite emotional for me for as you know I really love the place and hope to return many times in the future. A visit is already planned for September 2015, when my friend Sarah will accompany me and I will show her the beauties of the city, before she goes travelling. And I have a little event in store at that time, which i will reveal to you nearer the time.

In September I celebrated the Jewish new Year, Rosh Hashanah with two dear Friends, Marcellus and Ivona, who celebrated their wedding just two weeks ago. W e were joined by a Russian friend and her daughter and the food and the good will flowed!

Let us hope and pray that this beautiful and creative period will flow into 2014, that Where the Woods meet the Water will be published as planned on 19th october 2014 and that i can keep on singing! No time for a Concert this coming year i fear, but Sue is keen to do another one and lets hope for Spring 2015.

I don't mind planning if I feel it is God'w work-anyhow i was brought up to it as I am the proud daughter of a Jewish businesman!

Every blessing, health and happiness
Go safely wherever you go
Love and shalom
Gila

Happy birthday Gila

My dear Friends

Yesterday i celebrated one of the best birthdays I have ever had. To begin with I discovered, being 62, that i had spent exactly half of my life, thirty one years,in Cambridge. when i came here in 1982 I did not know even one person, but my life changed took off and changed forever when i started on a course at what is now Anglia Ruskin University and what was then known fondly as the Tech.

I think I have grown and matured as a human being in those thirty one years. You may recall that I was unhappy in my twenties and although exciting revolutions were going on around me in the sixties and early seventies, it was a rasher dark period in my life.One good thing though-the music. It was then I learnt to sing and play the guitar in a way that was to carry me through the res of my life and form the basis of the Concerts for Peace and Reconciliation that I have been doing for the last eleven years.

I received many cards from old and new friends yesterday and was showered with affection.I started the day with prayers with the Methodists in Wesley, as I usually do on a Wednesday morning. at coffee in a cafe afterwards, Angela the minister's wife, bought me hot chocolate with a huge amount of cream, which was a great start to all the eating I was to do. for this was quickly followed by a wonderful lunch in the double Tree hotel by the river, where my Canadian friend and i watched the mist turn into lunchtime sunshine. We ate and talked of many things, including Canada, which as you know is my spiritual home.

Later in the Regent Hotel my friends there gave me a beautiful card with some very touching words and a bottle of my favorite tipple-brandy, and very special stuff it was too.

2014 beckons and there are many things to look forward to. Top priority is getting my second little memoir into the light. I thank the Lord for all he has brought and ask him for the strength to continue.

May you all be truly blessed at this holy and special season.
Shalom from Gila

Quiet time

My dear Friends

It has been quite a hectic year. Some major things have been accomplished; I got another newsletter to The Friends of The Little Sisters of Joy out and 700 letters went out to 23 countries. The Royal mail in the UK had just been privatised, but let's hope that most of them got to their destination, and i certainly got some good feedback from some of you, who enjoyed my tale of my time in Toronto. Another trip is planned for September 2015!

This time a friend wants to come with me and I may be going for a special event-will tell you all in due course. but how I long to return although i guess it's getting cold out there by now.

I am spending Christams day very quietly with an old friend I met at a local church lunch. Her name is Mary and she lived in China as a teacher for over thirty years. She has a lovely engaging personality and I look forward to being with her on that special day. Neither of us cooks very well so there will be no turkey, just cold chicken and all the trimmings, with of course mince pies to follow.

Speaking of turkey, we used to have that on Christmas day in my childhood. Nothing unusual you may say, but if you remember we were a Jewish family who don't normally celebrate the birth of Christ. However, my parents were married on Christmas Day in 1929 and so we used to have the turkey to celebrate their anniversary.

My mother used to say that there was a lot of snow on her wedding day and that she had to be carried into the Synagogue. Garnethill Synagogue, which my great grandfatther helped to found, is a listed building and used for services in the Glasgow Jewish community to this day.I visited it exactly a year ago when you may remember that I went to Glasgow to see my family and friends.

Will finish now, keep well and warm and enjoy your quiet days, as i will

Shalom, peace and Blessing
Gila
 

Success at Robinson College chapel

My dear Friends

I am delighted to tell you that the concert last Wednesday wasa a success. The venue was fabulous in robinson college Chapel and about thirty five people of different persuasions turned up, seemed enthousiastic and sang most of the music! It was lovely to see so many Friends in the audience.

Normally I give the audience a little time to warm up, but as i kicked off with Last night I had the strangest dream, that seminal Peace song by Ed McCurdy, father of folk in the modern day, they were encouraged to sing along amyway. it was a magic!

Donna Donna is a moving song anyway, all the more so when I stopped singing and they kept on, as they had in the first Concert for Peace and Reconciliation in Clare College all those years ago.

The evening would not have been such a great success if I had not shared the platform with a very special lady. Sue Gilmaurray is a singer and composer of some distinction, composing her own Peace songs, such as So let Peace Come.She introduce her songs in a very moving way. singing one of Tommy Sands, entitled Music of Healing, she recounted how Tommy Sands grew up as a Catholic in Belfast during the Troubles. As a child he would hear his father play some musical instrument as he was going to sleep; from the window he could hear the sound of the Orange drum, beating and from time to time he says it seemd that the two sounds were in tune together.

I sang a famous love song called Autumn Leaves (which my friend Anne Maddocks says is one of her favourites) and concluded the evening with a little medley of peace songs from the Jewish liturgy. They seemed to go down well and in the final tune from Psalm 33. Behold how good and pleasnat a tribe of brotheres living in uity together, the audience sang in parts.

Grateful thanks goes to Rev Simon Perry, Chaplain of Robinson College. I was able to make a small donation from the generous proceeds to the College. Simon was pleased, says he was sorrry not to make it to the concert, but hopes to come to the next one!

All good wishes and shalom
Gila

CONCERT FOR PEACE AND RECONCILIATION

My dear Friends

This time next week I will be gearing up for my Concert for Peace and Reconciliation. It will take place on Wednesday 6th November 2013 at 7pm. The venue is Robinson College Chapel, Grange Road, Cambridge which is a very beautiful space.Highlight of the chapel is the stained glass window by John Piper, a feast of yellow and greens, with the shape of the sun in one corner. It will be dark outside when my friend and I start playing, but you can still much of the beauty of the window at that time of night from inside.

I sang in the chapel once before-in December 2006 to a small but enthusiastic audience.It was out of term and i had asked the college if the bar could be open in the interval. Everyone went into the bar and afterwards they told me that, mysteriously, smoked salmon sandwiches had appeared from nowhere, to their delight! And I sang well, even waiting for the audience to come in for the second half.

This time I am very pleased and privileged to have someone singing with me. Her name is Sue Gilmurray and she is very active in the Anglican Pacifist Movement and the Movement for the Abolition of War.(MAW). Best of all she composes her own songs on the theme of Peace and will perform a number of them on the night, accompanying herself on the piano. I will sing my usual mix of Jewish songs and songs of the 60's, including the famous and quintessential song about peace - Blowing in the wind by Bob Dylan.

I am beginning to feel excited and hope very much that the audience, who will have some of the words, will join in, as they have in the past and that our communal voices will effect a tiny healing of the world.

Will let you know how it goes
Shalom for now
Your sister Gila