Piddingworth Greg Benton |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Honour all men. Love the Brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the King. (1Peter 2) |
 |
 |
| Trust in the Lord and He will give you the strength & courage to do your Duty... Rose West Leonard |
|
|
|
|
| 'This noble and elegant site
is both a tribute to a family's history, and to a national heritage.' --Daniel J. Cassidy Sunlit Uplands |
 |
 |
| COMMENTARY |
| Swifter far than summer's flight --
Swifter far than youth's delight -- Swifter far than happy night, Art thou come and gone -- As the earth when leaves are dead, As the night when sleep is sped, As the heart when joy is fled, I am left lone, alone. Percy Bysshe Shelley |
| 'The Last Walk' by Greg Benton, 2010 |
|
 |
 |
| Let us then move forward together in discharge of our mission and our duty, fearing God and nothing else. Sir Winston Churchill |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
| Christians are marginalized, they’re mocked, they’re told their views don’t belong, they’re told to keep their views out of the public square and keep their religion at home. And where it can be quite sinister is at universities where Christian students they’re told that their ideas are stupid. I’ve even seen it with my children who are in university. Somehow Christianity is not a valid area of thought any longer. You can bring your socialism, your feminism, your homosexuality, your anti-Zionism into the class but if you bring your Christianity that’s not to be taken seriously. Michael Coren |
|
| THE VICAR OF PIDDINGWORTH 1996 - 2010 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
| CATHOLICS OF THE ANGLICAN USE |
 |
 |
 |
| SHARE THE INHERITANCE From our friends at 'Brits At Their Best', David Abbott and Catherine Glass, thiswonderful book brilliantlysets out the richness ofour British inheritance and the foundation of ourcivilisation. I especially recommend this for young people in Britain,Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It belongs to us all. It really is quite superb. G.B. |
 |
|
|
 |
| Narcissus by Michaelangelo |
 |
 |
 |
| THE STATE FUNERAL OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL (movie approx. 28 min.) |
| ‘Civilisation will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a ery large majority of mankind unite together to defend them’ Sir Winston Churchill |
| Let us then move forward together in discharge of our mission and our duty, fearing God and nothing else. Sir Winston Churchill |
| "I am a Canadian,
a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and for all mankind." The Canadian Bill of Rights Prime Minister John George Diefenbaker, PC, CH, QC, FRSC, FRSA, Dominion Day, 1960 |
 |
| Stanmer Churchyard, Sussex |
| In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased? Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death. Burial Office, The Book of Common Prayer |
| THE DEPARTED |
| 'Piddingworth...where St. George's Cross is not yet banned.' --Mark Steyn |
 |
 |
| If |
 |
| by Rudyard Kipling If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on"; If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run - Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son! |
| More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
| Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come unto thee Psalm 102 |
| Quand égarés honneurs opinion publique ce qui est méprisable et méprise ce qui est honorable, punit vertu et le vice récompenses, encourage ce qui est nuisible et décourage ce qui est utile, se réjouit de mensonge et de vérité étouffe sous l'indifférence ou l'insulte, une nation tourne le dos au progrès et peut être rétabli que par les terribles leçons de la catastrophe. + When misguided public opinion honours what is despicable and despises what is honourable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe. Frédéric Bastiat, harmonies économiques, 1850 |
| I'm ready to go Home |
| Dixi, custodiam. Psalm xxxix.
LORD, let me know mine end, and the number of my days; * that I may be certified how long I have to live. Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long, and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee; * and verily every man living is altogether vanity. For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain; * he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them. And now, Lord, what is my hope? * truly my hope is even in thee. Deliver me from all mine offences; * and make me not a rebuke unto the foolish. When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin, thou makest his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment: * every man therefore is but vanity. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears consider my calling; * hold not thy peace at my tears; For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, * as all my fathers were. O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength, * before I go hence, and be no more seen. |
 |
| JESUS said, Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. St. John xiv. 1. |
| Come, ye blessed children of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world. Matthew 25.41 |
| THE REPEATING CYCLE OF THE CULTURAL SEWER That which was hidden in the sewer is, once again, not only displayed in the public square, but celebrated and venerated as it confronts and mocks the Decency of Christian Civilisation. |
 |
| COME BLESSED REST |
| Komm, süßer Tod, komm selge Ruh (Come, Sweet Death, Come Blessed Rest) is originally a song that was written for solo voice and basso continuo in the ' 69 Sacred Songs and Arias that the great Johann Sebastian Bach contributed to Georg Christian Schemelli's Musicalisches Gesangbuch (BWV 478), 1736. There is no doubt that the theme and words of this song can make some of us quite uncomfortable. The music, at first sombre but then moving towards ecstasy, expresses the longing for the joy and light of the Kingdom of Heaven in the presence of Jesus and all the angels. Come, sweet death, come blessed rest! I will now see Jesus and stand among the angels. It is henceforth completed, so, world, good night, my eyes are already closed. Come, blessed rest. I made this video mindful of the memory of George and Sarah Ann West, my great-grandparents, who are buried in Stanmer Churchyard shown in the movie. Both of them, indeed the whole family, were well-acquainted with suffering and death as they were also of Christ Jesus, the Saviour. I feel especially united to them and with them. It is important to distinguish between a desire for death simply to escape suffering and a desire to die in order to live forever in the light and presence of God. Bach's sentiments are not suicidal. Rather, they express the Christian belief that Death is not an end in itself but a portal to the reality and promise of eternal life. It is a prayerful meditation, through image and sound, on that great mystery. (A special 'shout-out' to Floyd Block, a brother in Christ, an American Veteran, and friend of Piddingworth, who has afforded me much in prayer, inspiration and music over the past few years.) GE Benton, 10 February 2013 |
 |
| DEATH: THE SACRAMENT OF THE UNGODLY |
| In his article titled, “The Women’s Medical Society”, New England commentator Tom McLaughlin, revealed much of the horror that took place at the abortuary run by one Kermit Gosnell, M.D. who is facing eight charges of first degree murder. Gosnell's clinic was raided by the Philadelphia Police, not for killing babies, but on suspicion for what our society considers to be the much more serious crime of 'selling' prescriptions for the painkiller oxycontin. What they discovered inside was a horror beyond belief or imagination; a scene that near echos the evils of the Holocaust: There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets. . . . The search team discovered fetal [human] remains haphazardly stored throughout the clinic – in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and even in cat-food containers. Some fetal [human] remains were in a refrigerator, others were frozen. Gosnell admitted to Detective Wood that at least 10 to 20 percent of the fetuses [babies] were probably older than 24 weeks in gestation – even though Pennsylvania law prohibits abortions after 24 weeks. In some instances, surgical incisions had been made at the base of the fetal [baby] skulls. The investigators found a row of jars containing just the severed feet of fetuses [babies]. McLaughlin's column is difficult to read and even more difficult to look at because it includes photographs of the horror that, he argues, will not likely be shown by the media covering the trial because that would mean that the unseen 'abortion industry would be rubbed in America's face' and we can't permit that because 'abortion' is sacred to the liberal elite as a 'woman's right' and by most accounts, that trumps just about everything. It takes some real courage to not only write about the utter hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of our society in the face of what is its most obvious evil and McLauglin did confess in his comments following that he 'felt ashamed to be human as I was reading the Report of the Grand Jury and posting the pictures'. 'I feel like Allied soldiers must have felt walking through those death camps after the SS guards had fled. I'm wrung out.' A man of faith, he then said: 'I'll look for an exposition of the Blessed Sacrament when I retreat to our city house this weekend with my wife. I need to spend time in His presence and purge this feeling.' His analogy with the allies liberating the Nazi camps in 1945 is not inappropriate. The soldiers who went into those camps were men who had already experienced the hell of war and death in fighting the mighty German army but for those who participated in the liberation of the camps the experience was even more sickening from the utter depravity of the ungodly enemy. I have included footage of the British and Canadian troops who liberated the camp at Bergen Belsen. Surrounded by the sight and stench of death, they organised the Nazi soldiers and camp staff into work parties to bury the thousands of corpses; the bodies of women, children and men made in the image and likeness of God, their creator cruelly beaten and snuffed out by a perverse ideology embraced by perverse minds. I dare you, the visitor, to watch this and not feel something of what Tom McLaughlin felt in presenting his column on the perverse practice in the euphemistic 'Women's Medical Society'. One would think that after seeing and knowing of the utter degradation and hatred spent on mankind by the Nazi regime, our civilisation would have a deeper respect for human life and, indeed, of the sacredness of the human person. Yet, the oppositie has been the case. There have been more and more genocidal regimes in Africa and Asia and perhaps most disturbingly in the millions of hidden deaths of the unborn little ones and children in infancy within our own 'civilised' society; a society that permits the likes of Dr. Gosnell. 'Abortion Is Normal' in this generation. The eugenics doctors of the Nazis who sought to rid the world of 'the imperfect' and 'the Jew' would recognise the procedure of early, mid-term, late term and partial birth abortions. And we all know that euthanasia, already practiced in the Netherlands, is on its way to the rest of the western world where the ungodly reign and their sacrament of death is become their badge of honour. THE LIBERATION OF BERGEN-BELSEN, 1945 WARNING: THESE ARE VERY DISTURBING IMAGES. O God of Life, strengthen us with courage. Courage before others; their threats, their seductions and deceit. Courage to bear the unbearable; the horror and mockery of the world. Courage to fight the Evil One. Against terror and trouble, temptation, Against shallowness, attachment, darkness and all lies, Against all fear. In your goodness, help us O God. Strengthen us with Your unending love and heavenly grace. Console us with Your blessed Presence and grant us the courage to persevere that we may live with You forever in in Your kingdom. Through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Amen. |
 |
| 'GO AND REPAIR MY HOUSE' There is a power in the new Pope's humility. Peggy Noonan |
 |
| Defiant. Resolute. Courageous. Indomitable. THE RT. HON., THE BARONESS THATCHER, LG, OM, PC, FRS (1925-2013) |
| Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George! |
| This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise; This fortress built by Nature for herself, Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth. Richard II Act 2 Scene 1 |
| Little Children |
| Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 19:14 One of the most difficult funerals that I have had to do, without any doubt, is that of a three day old little boy. His name is Michael. As it was near three decades ago, I cannot remember precisely why the little boy died but I remember him; and I remember his Mum and Dad in their profound grief. They were so proud of him. The enormously moving sight of Michael's father carrying the little casket up the nave of the Church is as vivid as ever. What a cruel moment for so many in the midst of so much love and care. Children, of any age, are never supposed to died before their time, i.e., their parents time. A mother and father are most captured in grief with the death of their daughter or son. And the years, months, days and hours that often lead to the death of child from incurable disease is a challenge that, whilst no one would or could imagine having to face, is lived by tens of thousands of families every day. How awful it is to realise finally that the struggle of child to live past leukemia, bone cancer, cystic fibrosis, cardio myopathy or some other dreaded ailment will soon come to an end. We resist with all our might to give in; to surrender. We so want to keep fighting and pray for a miracle. This is so obviously human and natural. Anyone in a relationship with such a child or family well knows the importance of the vigilance and round the clock care that we expect for a dying child. Nevertheless, as great a virtue that is; one of courage and hope, no one person, no one parent is really capable of bearing the whole burden. The Hospice movement in the care of the dying has grown dramatically over the past few decades but is still relatively new for children. It is one which recognises the special care and support that a terminally ill person, child or adult, requires and affords that strength to the family within a kind, warm and familial setting. It's a matter of decency really and perhaps more of the recognition within our higher nature of the sacredness of human life, all human life, and the respect that ought to be given and shared especially in the midst of suffering and loss towards the end of life. I have anointed and buried too many children and each was a tear in my heart. Jesus taught us that little innocent children are themselves icons of the kingdom of God. We are meant to be innocent as we were as children and so in looking upon them are reminded of our own profound worth and dignity. The Duchess of Cambridge's appeal in East Anglia is one that ought to be heard around the civilised world. If there is a hospice in your area please do support it with whatever you can. If there is no hospice, there really should be today. Caring for the dying reflects back on our own mortality. The hospices that we build today may well be the ones that come our own way, perhaps unexpectedly. God keep the children from pain and suffering and relieve their mothers and fathers in their sorrow and grief. GE Benton 28 April 2013 |
| Operation Chastise
On the night of 16/17th May 1943 a secret squadron formed from elite pilots set off from RAF Scampton on an audacious bombing raid to strike at the industrial heartland of Western Germany and attack the great dams of the Ruhr Valley. The mission, and the weapon which made it possible were devised by the inventor and aircraft designer Sir Barnes E. Wallis. 19 Avro Lancaster Bombers flew the mission. They had been extensively modified to carry a single 4 ton spinning bomb, codenamed 'Upkeep'. To breach the dam, each bomb had to be dropped at a precise distance, speed and height to enable it to bounce across the water, sink and then detonate at depth. The specially selected squadron, led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson, were required to fly at extremely low level, not only to drop the bomb but to keep below enemy radar enroute over the Netherlands. Reconnaissance images depicting the raids dramatic outcome, coupled with the courage, skill and originality of the mission led to 617 squadron becoming famously known as The Dambusters. About The Dambusters App The Dambusters® is 3D flying game inspired by the famous WW2 mission. You must fly through Holland to Western Germany, bomb the great dams of the Ruhr Valley and return to England. Each Lancaster Bomber carries a secret 4 ton weapon codenamed 'Upkeep', aka 'the bouncing bomb'. As with the historical event, you will have only 19 aircraft (and 19 bombs) to destroy all three dams and the bombs must be dropped close to a height of 60 feet, 220 mph and 420 yards from the dam. The three Dams, The Mohne, Eder and Sorpe, and their surrounding landscapes have been accurately re-created. Precision will be required to fly at extremely low level to reach the targets, drop the bomb (using the famous twin spotlights to gauge the height) and breach the dams. The Voice Over the voiceover has been provided by Wg. Cdr Graeme Morgan who, like Wg. Cdr. Guy Gibson D.S.O., D.F.C., V.C. also attended St.Edward's School in Oxford. Features Using smooth and intuitive tilt input to fly the plane, with multiple levels of difficulty to suit all abilities, The Dambusters® App will take players on a journey back to the night of May 16th 1943, recreating one of the most daring and iconic raids of the Second World War. Mission Objective Fly through Holland to Western Germany, bomb three major Dams and return. To complete the entire mission you have: 19 Lancaster Bombers. Each aircraft is loaded with only ONE Upkeep bomb. Increasing the level of difficulty will make the plane fly faster, bullets hit harder, and the gunners more accurate. Visibility will also be reduced, visual aids on the dam approach will not be shown and the dams will also require more direct hits to breach them. Harder levels will score higher. Licenced by MOD / RAF The Dambusters®, 617 Squadron® & associated RAF insignia used in the game are trademarks (or designs) of The Secretary of State for Defence and are used under licence. ‘The Dambusters March’ This famous musical composition by Eric Coates is used under licence from Warner/Chappell and has been recorded for Hyperspace by the Central Band of The Royal Air Force. Dedication To commemorate all the Pilots and Crew from Bomber Command who served during the Second World War. In particular, a tribute to the elite aircrew and ground staff of 617 Squadron, led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson. To the dogged determination and creative ingenuity of Sir Barnes E Wallis. And finally, in remembrance of all those lives, military and civilian, that were so tragically lost on both sides of the war. from thedambusters.co.uk |
 |