Autumn

Seems as if we’re having a bit of an Indian Summer over the last few weeks, which compensates in part for a very soggy July and August. Nevertheless, we’ve reluctantly put away the garden furniture and accepted that it’s definitely autumn: we had our meal in the garden exactly twice this year. Hence the change to the seasonal header. It’s a picture of a cranberry harvest in British Columbia.

Mouse heaven

La cuesta de enero

It means literally ‘the hill of January’ in Spanish. You could render it as ‘the uphill slog/trudge of January’. The excitement of Christmas is over, we’re all tired, the yearly bills come in this month, the worst of the winter is still to come, and we’ve got to get back to work.

Nevertheless, some of my memories of January are of occasional balmy days (‘false spring’, it’s sometimes called), and a different quality in the light as the days begin to lengthen (not so you’d notice, at least not for a while).

It can’t be winter for ever.

So, a happy New Year to both our readers.

Do I know you?

Yet again, I’ve been reminded of how little we know about people we thought we were fairly close to. I’ve spent the morning with a family preparing for the funeral of a much-loved member of our congregation, whom I thought I knew reasonably well. As has so often happened before in similar circumstances, a whole new vista of a complex and creative life opened up, gifts displayed in the person’s youth and middle years, which were obscured in old age by infirmity, memory loss, diminishing of the personality.

A reminder of the unfathomable mystery of being human.

Be vigilant

In the midst of the euphoria about the American election, this is a salutary reminder.

Lest we forget

Welcome, everybody!

I’m starting this new blog just after Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday. I tend to be somewhat ambivalent about Remembrance. Of course it is right to honour those who paid a high price for such imperfect liberties as we enjoy today. I could hardly believe otherwise, since both sides of my family were directly involved, and one person made the supreme sacrifice.

Nevertheless, isn’t it time just to have a simple service of remembrance, thanksgiving and penitence, rather than something that can so easily turn into a display of military triumphalism? I say ‘penitence’ because for a long time we have concentrated on military casualties at the expense of the civilian victims. There are no war memorials in Rwanda, and the prisoners in Guantánamo, whatever they may have done, are also casualties of the so-called ‘war on terror’.

To forget the nameless victims is to deny their precious humanity.