Dear Friends

No two days are the same in this job, it is what makes it so unique and so very special. I am granted such privileged access to peoples lives, at great and happy times and at some of their saddest and most desperate moments.  This last week has therefore been very typical, a good deal of my time is spent in the office with Hayley and on the computer, I have been able to visit a number of parishioners and I have had the very sad task of arranging two funerals. Yet in the ordinariness of my week there are very occasionally moments which can literally take my breath away.

To see a mother carry the coffin of the child she bore in her own body into our church and then to carry her into the crematorium will remain with me for the rest of my life. It’s what mothers do – carry their children, all their lives. It took all her mental and physical strength to do this thing – it was one of the purest expressions of love and its enormous cost I think I have ever seen. There were many beautiful words spoken by family and friends, the most poignant for me was to hear Amy’s sister Rosie tell us all that life is short, we do not know the day or the hour, so she suggested, tell the people that matter most, we love them, because who knows when we will never have the opportunity to do that again.

So this week tell the people closest to you, you love them, it costs nothing, it means everything.

With love

Simon

Dear Friends

General Synod of the Church of England has been gathered for the past four days. On Sunday one member tweeted as follows:

“Today we begin two days behind closed doors talking about sex. We’re not meant to blog or Tweet about it. So I have to be silent.
But as Elijah discovered it was ‘in the sound of sheer silence’ that he encountered God on the mountain. So my prayer is that that may be true for us who engage in these shared conversations. Lord, in our talking and our listening may we also enter into that deep silence in which your voice can be heard. Amen. ”

We pray that their conversations will have been constructive and resulted in a greater depth of understanding amongst a group of individuals holding such a diversity of views.

Eileen