It was St Patrick’s Day on Thursday – did you mark the occasion? I don’t appear to have any Irish ancestry at all, according to my Ancestry.com DNA test! However, Carol has some mixed Scottish and Irish heritage in her (from her Gordon family roots) – but we’re not hugely into St Patrick! Coincidentally, we did make a basil pesto and pasta dish for tea on Thursday – so, I guess, inadvertently St Patrick was acknowledged, not that he would have ever eaten pesto I don’t think! You’ll find St Patrick in our Service Sheet this week – along with our theme for Lent.
We think of you all often – some in isolation, some coming out of isolation, and others hanging on holding their breath hoping that they manage to avoid sickness. Strange and unprecedented times, indeed. Our prayer is that you are managing to thrive – and finding ways to energise and encourage yourselves!
We are coming to a time of staffing transitions. The great news is that we have today appointed a replacement for Andrea, to start at the beginning of April – but we’ll tell you more about that next week!
I don’t know about you, but I have found that there is a constant ‘layer’ of sadness each day at the situation in Ukraine at present. It sits in the background and comes to mind over and again as a stark contrast to the everyday triviality (or so it seems) of much of what I find myself doing. It’s almost as if I feel guilty because life is relatively ‘normal’ here for us. I have struggled to find words even for framing a lament – until I came across “A Liturgy for those who Weep Without Knowing Why” in the book “Every Moment Holy”. Yes, I do know why something inside me is weeping, so it’s not strictly the right place to go – but it’s hard to plumb the depths of the emotion to be able to express what’s really going on. However, I thought I’d share some of the opening words with you, in case they resonate for you, too, and give you some words to express how you are feeling over it all. (If you would like the whole liturgy, let me know.)
There is so much lost in this world, O Lord,
so much that aches and groans and shivers
for want of redemption, so much that
seems dislocated, upended, desecrated,
unhinged – even in our own hearts.
Even in our own hearts
we bear the mark of all that is broken.
What is best in the world has been bashed
and battered and trodden down.
What was meant to be the substance has
become the brittle shell, haunted by the
ghosts of a glory so long crumbled that only
its rubble is remembered now.
Is it any wonder we should weep sometimes,
without knowing why? It might be anything.
And then again it might be everything.
For we feel this.
We who are your children feel this empty space where
some lost thing should be rested in its perfection,
and we pine for those nameless glories, and we pine
for all the wasted stories in our world, and we pine for
these present wounds. We pine for our children and for their
children too, knowing each will have to prove how this
universal pain is also personal. We pine for all children born
into days of desolation – whose regal robes were
torn to tatters before they were even swaddled in them.
O Lord, how can we not weep?