Goodhand in Banbury

The following prayer was written  for worship in the light of Mark 10: 17-31 Let us pray God   Father Son and Holy Spirit   one in perfect community we thank you   for drawing us into your community of love. Not that it is an easy place to be. But we do thank you God, that you have this amazing knack of drawing our attention   to what we need to do   if we claim to follow you. You make it both personal   and community based. This makes us uncomfortable at times, for we recognise   we are not as generous as we could be with our wealth, our care, our forgiving. So we pray   keep prompting us to walk in your ways, and gift to us your Holy Spirit that we might be enabled to do so. Lord in your mercy hear our prayer We pray today for all those devastated by the hurricane in the US whose lives and livelihood   have been turned upside down. May the richest nation on earth use its resources to rebuild homes and lives, while recognising that as a community they can do this. Lord in your mercy H

  Having spent the last two years returning to Sheffield to our excellent NHS dentist, we have due to a broken tooth ( both of us), ended up having to go private. This is really disappointing because we cannot find an NHS dentist locally. It is just not sustainable to go back and forth to Sheffield especially in an emergency.  For the last 14 years dentistry has been underfunded. This has made it impossible for many dentists to make it work financially to have NHS patients. This is of course a scandal. Going private goes against my belief in health services which should mean everyone has access to GP's, dentists, mental health services etc, without being dependent on your bank account.  So we have had to compromise. The treatment we both have just experienced, by an excellent dentist, is eye watering in its cost. That we are able to pay reveals how fortunate we are, and serves to remind me how many cannot, and the damage that is doing to their well being.  I can only hope and trust

 You might have to be in the mood to read this book but once you start you will want to continue to the end.  When a country is taken over by internal forces and the rule of law is changed to suit those in power everyone needs to be scared.  What is so disturbing about this book is we can see that this is what has happened in history and continues to happen all around the world. It's the Handmaid tale, or 1984 or what took place in 1930's Germany with 'the enabling act' of the nazi's when they were elected to power.  It's as if all free societies have to be constantly vigilant against those who would deprive people of their freedoms under the guise of actions designed to protect those freedoms.  In America it's project 2025. In the UK its we need to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, and oh we need to control protest we don't agree with.  In the media, much of which is controlled by individuals on the right, we see how unbalanced reporting ha