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Rector's Letter, April 2003 Dear Friends, Is the world getting more complicated? Maybe daily life has never been straightforward and we just imagine that things were simpler in the past. As we get older, our brain (or I should say my and not make presumptions about others’?) doesn’t grasp new information as readily as it once did. Take the Prayer Books. They all disappeared. I stared at the space that had held about 90 Prayer Books and lo it was just that, empty space. I scoured the church and found enough for Compline (though our eyes were a bit strained by the tiny print – how did the Victorians manage to read at all?), wondering all the while. Had a thief found a lucrative outlet for Prayer Books? Had we been struck by an Anti-Prayer Book Society fanatic? Gradually in the far reaches of my brain came a dim memory of someone asking about borrowing them. Who? Why would they want so many? I think I’ve worked out who and why, with a bit of inspired guessing from David. It’s so easy to forget, half remember or put two and two together and make five. It’s always been so. The Garden of Eden is so deep seated in our collective consciousness that most folk have a tendency to look back to some golden era and bemoan the present state of things. Pick up just about any writer of past ages and they will be bemoaning the state of the ‘modern world’ and ‘modern youth’. That said, it is nevertheless a very complicated world, whether more so than in the past or not. It’s the sheer volume of information and disinformation we have to sift through that floors one. Even when everyone is trying to convey the truth, or at least their version of it, it’s misleading. It’s easy not to hear what’s being said. I called up to David to answer the door the other week, as I was on the phone. He came down asking peevishly what was wrong with the floor. A diplomat’s job must be a nightmare, trying to sift fact from fiction and arrive at a consensus that is both acceptable to all and will be adhered to by all. What one person has understood another to mean might be a million miles away from what was actually intended. Are people genuinely looking for a solution, or playing for time? What agenda are brought by people to any meeting? Is the goodwill expressed real or a blind? The present world situation is an example writ large. What’s going on and why? What are the motives behind what’s happening? Who do you believe? Is truth the first victim of any war? No wonder Jesus said, ‘I am the truth’. He didn’t give a series of injunctions to be followed and misinterpreted. ‘I am the truth’. We are promised that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, will lead us into all truth, if we have ears to hear what he is saying to us. May this Easter bring you closer to him who is the truth. Janice |