Levavi oculus:
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills : from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh even from the Lord : who hath made heaven and earth.

The past few years have been difficult ones: in the Woolfonts, and in the wider world. His Grace and the Canon have known illness even amidst joys and triumphs. Mr Wemyss, chronicling the Woolfonts, Beechbourne, Chickmarsh, and the Downland parishes, has likewise seen his non-fiction co-author and Bapton Books partner, the valiant Mr Pyle, in and out of hospital, and full several times near death.

For such reasons, both the tale of Ordinary Time in the villages in 2017, and the history of the July Crisis of 1914, have been delayed in publication.

But for such ills there are remedies: and here is one such, the mixture as before. Collected in this volume are many of the homilies and sermons preached to date in the Combined Benefice of The Woolfonts, Somerfords, & Harstbournes, by Canon Paddick, Fr Campion, Fr Bohun, and Fr Gascelyn Levett.

Some may be recalled fondly by Village Tales fans; others shall be new to most; and a few are thus far exclusive to this volume. The Church Year, the Kalendar, is represented, feasts and fasts, major and minor; and here are words apt to the chances of this mortal life, and its portals and points: christenings, marriages, burial services, and Remembrance.

And so, despite storms and delays, a happy Christmas to you all.