My final "Deanery Thought for the Month"

I thought this worth posting here  -  my final piece for our deanery magazines before retiring :-

One of the things I’ve enjoyed doing while serving in Hereford Diocese has been editing the Diocesan Prayer Diary - I’ve done it since 2016, and before that I edited it between 1994 and 2004, so it has taken up quite a chunk of my life. I’m in the middle of editing next quarter’s as I write this piece - this is the one they need in the Diocesan Office as early as I can get it to them, since they, like everyone else at this time of the year, have to contend with the Christmas rush.

It’s something of a bittersweet exercise this time, editing the Diary, as it will be my last; and, as I put together prayer biddings for February and March, I’m very aware that by then I’ll no longer be part of the Diocese.  January is my last month as a parish priest, and at times these last few months have felt like heading towards a precipice. Like Wiley T. Coyote in the cartoons, I’ll step off the cliff, spend a moment or two realising that there is now nothing under my feet, and then disappear from view.

I’m quite sure a lot of people feel the same when they head towards the gate marked “retirement”. And it’s surely even worse, I should think, when the gate you’re heading for is one marked “redundant” - an appalling word, I’ve always thought, with overtones of “no longer useful” and maybe even “no longer usable”.

I recall Bishop Richard saying at a clergy meetings that “There’ll be no clergy redundancies in this diocese, on my watch.” I was glad to hear that - not least because it’s quite clear that there are no redundancies in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom no-one is cast off as “no longer useful”.  And I confess that by now I’m beginning to look forward to a busy and useful retirement. It’ll include a little more rest and a little more time for family and friends, and outings and visiting, than maybe life has over the past few years, but it’s certainly not going to be the end of either ministry or discipleship.

Having said that, we can make ourselves “no longer useful” - as the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25.31ff makes clear. The goats in that parable hadn’t ceased to be religious, in a churchy sense, but they had stopped being useful, because they’d stopped being kind. They’d stopped noticing and responding to their neighbour in need.

As it happens, Random Acts of Kindness Day falls within the next quarter of the Prayer Diary (it’s 17th February in fact, but don’t wait till then!). Kindness is the currency of the Kingdom - not random in the sense of only doing it when we feel like it, but certainly random in the sense of “It doesn’t matter who or where you are, just that you need help or comfort or encouragement, and I can give it.”  So, welcome 2025, I say! Every year is a whole new adventure, and this one certainly will be for me.  And whatever resolutions you make as you look ahead, make sure kindness is at the head of your list!

The Light of the World

This year Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, falls on a Sunday. I would quite like it to have been my final Sunday as a parish priest, but instead it falls two days after my retirement! But I love Candlemas, which brings to an end the great forty days of Christmas and Epiphany, and turns us round to look towards Easter. In our gardens and even in the countryside in sheltered places, the first hesitant signs of Spring can be seen - primroses, a few early crocus flowers, here and there a crumpled celandine, the brighter yellow of aconites, and of course, the snowdrops which in places are great sweeps of white. There will probably still be plenty of wintry stuff ahead, but the lengthening of the days is becoming more and more obvious, the birds are beginning to sing, and we naturally want to look ahead.

 

Throughout Epiphany we’ve been discerning the signs that presented Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, the one God had promised he would send to set his people free. At the Presentation itself, the official title of this day, we see how Mary and Joseph bring their child to the temple, to do what all good Jewish parents would do for their firstborn son.

For every first born son was “deemed to belong to the Lord,” and so had to be brought to the Temple, presented to the Lord - and then bought back by a gift, a sacrifice: in this case a pair of pigeons, which is what parents who were not particularly well off would offer. And as they come, they’re looking forward, just as we might if we bring a child to be christened. Praying that God will bless them as parents, and bless their child as he grows, and, I guess, wondering what life might have in store for him.

Everything changes when a child is born, and especially when a first child is born: the conversion from couple to family, from lovers to parents, in which your hopes for your child, and your child’s need of you - especially when still an infant - take precedence. Been there, done that! However well you’ve planned and organised, it’s a huge dynamic shift in life, and a challenge too.

For one thing, the stretch of the future before you now goes beyond the span of your own lives and into the span of the life you’ve made. There’ll be joyful times, but also testing times, times too of maybe pain and sorrow. That’s true when any child is born, and when the journey of parenthood begins.

But for this firstborn child there is more. One of the things I especially like about the story is the pivotal presence within it of these two old people, Simeon and Anna. They see that this is the child they’ve been waiting for, that this is the child sent from God to bring salvation for his people. So Simeon tells Mary and Joseph that their child will change not only the shape of their own lives, but the shape of the world as well - not only their future as a family, but the whole course of history. And Mary especially is going to bear some of the pain of this.

Simeon and Anna, despite their age, and despite whatever pains and sorrows the long story of their lives has brought them, are still hoping in God as they see this child, still believing that God is going to do something new. They typify for me some of the people whose quiet and trusting faith and constancy in prayer have been a support and strength for me in my ministry, the sort of people who provide the bedrock of quiet and trusting faith on which to a greater extent than sometimes we realise, the ministry of the Church depends.

But also - in their quite and patient way these two old people, Simeon and Anna, are announcing a revolution. They have been waiting and watching for God to set his people free, for a light which will enlighten everyone. And now they see this work beginning - but beginning in secret. Joseph and Mary will go quietly home to continue their exploration together of what it will mean for them to be parents, to have a family, just like any other family. The child will grow in the ordinary setting of a carpenter’s shop in a provincial town, with work to be done, and brothers and sisters to be born, and years to pass.

Not all revolutions need to be loud or disruptive. And I’m reminded how God’s glory is revealed in love and in service, in kindness and care. Cathedrals and temples are special places - but the work of faith, though it may use them and praise God in them, doesn’t actually need them. The child of Mary and Joseph will teach his friends that they can call God “Our Father” whoever and wherever they are, and know that their prayer is heard. Palaces proclaim the secular power of kings and governors, but true royalty doesn’t need pomp and circumstance, even if it makes for a good show. The child of Mary and Joseph will teach his friends the royalty of service: “Let the greatest among you be the servant of all.”

Wherever people in our world are faithful and kind as they get on with life, care for each other, and contend with the uncertainties and insecurities that surround us, God’s love is affirmed and proclaimed. And the Holy Child, once presented, is for the moment then hidden among those who know what it means to work hard, to struggle to make ends meet, and yet still to show kindness and to praise the Lord.

“Shine as a light in the world, to the glory of God,” I have said so many times at so many christenings during my ministry. As the Spring approaches and the days grow lighter, our hearts respond to those changes. We were made to live in the light, and we’re called to be bringers of light into the dark places of our world, into the dark places of our lives.

At Candlemas, we begin to look forward to the testing time of Lent, to the cross on which this King will be enthroned, and then to Easter Day, when the Paschal candle is lit with the shout of “The light of Christ!” May that light be kindled in us, and may we be witnesses to it: in kindness and in love may we be bringers of light in the name of the one hailed in the very Jewish setting of the Temple by Simeon and Anna - but presented there as the one who will be not only the glory of Israel, but the Light of the World.

 

Walking on a January Morning

 

On one of the bright sunny mornings we had early in January, I decided to walk out through the castle park and down to the canal at Belan Locks, and then take the canal towpath back to Morrison’s, where I could pick up my daily paper.  It was a cold morning, but the air was as clear as crystal, and resident birds are already beginning to sing by January. Robins of course sing all the year round, and they were loud and insistent in the defence of their winter territories.

A delightfully musical twittering as I rounded the corner of a coppice turned out to be goldfinches, reflecting brightly in the sun.  A pair of bullfinches sped away along the hedge as I neared the stile between two fields, the male an astonishingly bright deep pink in the chest, and both with their trademark chubbiness, dark wings and bright white on the wings and above the tail as they flew.  I reached the locks and was met by a grey wagtail, the longest-tailed of our wagtails, constantly wagging of course.  The name “grey” seems inappropriate in the summer, when the colours that dominate are its black throat and bright yellow underparts, but they do come across as rather duller and greyer in winter.

A flash of white glimpsed across the hedgerow as I began to walk the towpath turned out to be a couple of little egrets, which really are a dazzling white, especially on a morning like this one. Little egrets are increasingly common in these parts, much smaller than grey herons, and distinguished by their long thin black bills, and their legs which, rather charmingly, are black but with yellow feet.  Last winter I often encountered a great white egret along this section of canal - this is about the same size as a grey heron. Not today though.

A wren fizzed across the canal and vanished into the reeds on the other side. I haven’t seen as many of these on winter walks this year as I did last winter, but they find the reeds and hedges along the canal a useful source of insect food.  Magpies and jackdaws were squabbling in a nearby field, and blue tits and house sparrows danced through hedgerow trees. A small and very agile group of little birds as I drew closer to Welshpool turned out to be lesser redpolls, little finches that are almost as acrobatic as tits.

But then the bird that absolutely made my day: a kingfisher, perched on a small branch on the opposite side of the canal, like a brightly multicoloured jewel in the sun. The blue of a kingfisher is iridescent: in ordinary light it’s slatey and dull, but the sun turns it into something else completely. It was quite still, and I watched it for maybe two or three minutes, not daring even to raise my binoculars. Then two young mums with pushchairs came chatting along the pavement on the road side, and the kingfisher was off, a glowing arrow of blue. Sadly, I don’t suppose they even noticed.