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Rector's Letter, October 2003 Dear Friends, So we slip into autumn. This year it is more of a slip than a sudden shock – ‘not with a bang but a whimper’. It’s still relatively warm but the signs of autumn are everywhere. To quote again: ‘change and decay in all around I see’. Don’t I sound cheerful? I don’t think I’m really lifting my spirits. Actually, I like the changing seasons. Do I then like change? I always thought I did. But I’m beginning to wonder. David had an altercation with the larder door. It hit him fairly soundly on the head and the resulting scrap between them meant a large chunk of paint fell off the door. I can vouch for the fact that the door hit him first, but still he was the one to be punished, for the door needed repainting – biscuit colour with a large splash of wine (colour, that is) is undesirable. I’ve never liked the colours in the kitchen anyway, even if I did choose them. The trouble is, having painted the kitchen another colour – do I like it? It’s different – I’ll need to get used to it. Perhaps the reason I’ve always thought I liked change is twofold – (1) I hate being bored and (2) I never notice what’s happening anyway. By the time I’ve registered that something’s different, it’s long past the complaining stage. I’ve always said in relation to church services – don’t always assume I’ve initiated a change – it could just as easily be that I’ve forgotten what we did last week or the week before or indeed ever. I have to think all the time; if I let my mind go on automatic pilot, it just doesn’t do it and instead does the most amazing things. Like the seasons, change is often almost imperceptible. It’s when some picture, programme, smell – how evocative the sense of smell is – or exhibition, suddenly casts one back into earlier times, one is jolted into a realisation of how different something is now. There’s been a lot of interest in how we were in the fifties recently. It’s strange how alien it seems, how totally different, or at least it does to me. For others the past is familiar, remembered, territory, almost akin to safety. People say it is the rate of change that is disturbing, for certainly nothing can or does ever remain the same, so we should have got used to change by now. Perhaps our attitudes are determined by our personalities. Someone once said to me that if you look at the human arm, some muscles are for allowing it to stretch out and others for allowing it to retract. Without both, arms would be a bit useless. Some people seem to favour stretching out and others pulling back. What was it Gilbert wrote? Each baby born is ‘either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative’. For some, the importance of God lies in his unchangeableness – ‘the same yesterday, today and for ever’ – a sure stronghold in a changing world. For others it is the call for radical change that excites: ‘these Christians are turning the world upside down’. Like the arm, we need both for the church to be effective. Indeed, even the most radical of us sometimes find times in our lives when we need a sheltered safe harbour, and even the most reticent need a little adventure every now and again. Janice |