Parish and Community No. 11: St Aidan's, East Acton

GRAHAM Sutherland's taut and terrible Crucifixion: today's Christ against a red brick wall, under an electric light. It is a constant reminder to the parishioners of St Aidan's, East Acton, that Christ is crucified today if they care to look. And care they do.
Some find him in Wormwood Scrubs Prison or Hammersmith Hospital, others in the joys and pains of those growing up in the youth organisations, the families club, the' senior citizens' group or the children's instruction classes.
Priests and people search for him, available, tired by the challenge, frustrated by the economics, puzzled as only Christians can be by the fact of parish politics, yet sustained in their love of him whose sacrifice is shared in their common priesthood.
And it is a parish which tries not to be parochial. It has a tradition of welcoming missionaries for as long as they can stay. As far back as 1968 four members of the youth club, from n seed sown by a missionary, went to serve in the West Indies — the forerunners of the now nationwide volunteer agency, the Jinja Groups Trust.
And still the missionaries came: priests and deacons trying their wings, then leaving for the far corners of a Universal Church. So the St Aidan's Mission Group was formed: a channel for friendship, encouragement, mutual apostolic joy and the raising of funds for projects in the Cameroon, the Philippines and Kenya.
No impersonal donations
these, but activities linked to names and faces so that Fr Jim, Fr Franz. Fr Pat and others, although a world away, make focal points for the friendship that flows from each wine and cheese party, sponsored walk, sale or talk.
More than that too, the names of children and their parents in distant lands become familiar to these West London families who read about their lives in the regular letters distributed at Sunday Mass or in
the "pen links of brotherhood.
This personal touch has given over £1,750. It supplements funds raised in the mission field by those actually doing the work: encouraging them to rehouse 150 families after Hurricane Asang, to provide a mobile clinic, a lad's artificial limb. a self-help nutrition project, a fishermen's co-operative, leadership courses, priest training, medicines and a motor cycle named St Aidan by a grateful missionary.
All this is a way of showing they are members of an Apostolic Church. But today that also means educating our own people in the cruel fact that our standard of living is linked inversely to the poverty of others and that we must accept the responsibility to do something to right the balance.
Chickenfeed, maybe, if looked at on a world level: but ask that Filipino boy who now has an artificial leg to get him to school. and a village cooperative to help him get a fair price for his labour when he goes to work. Ask him if it is worth while.
Tony Kirwin