Stuck in the Middle

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 At this time of year, it can be difficult to know whether to say Merry Christmas or Happy New Year.  Both are clearly appropriate, yet it can sometimes seem we are in a no-man’s land between one and the other.

 Stuck in the Middle, perhaps.

But we’re not.  Today is the fifth day of Christmas. 

We are in a wonderful time of the year – reminders of the past, nudges for the future.  Our service today touched on how we might use this time positively to take stock, and to celebrate, to remember and to prepare.  The words of the address are below, or an MP3 of it can be downloaded by clicking the link at the top of this post (it may take a minute or two to download).  

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I began my sermon last week with the words,

‘Well, we made it’

I wonder if perhaps that is more appropriate this week.  Certainly, after excess food, TV, travelling and visiting. And mince pies. I feel a sense of achievement.  I trust you all do too. 

‘Well, we made it’.

But this is of course just a resting period before the New Year celebrations.

The commercialisation of Christmas has now reached a point where Christmas appeared to be over before it had begun.  The shops began their sales ahead of the day itself – I was in Horsham on the last Saturday before Christmas, and the red sale banners were in the windows of the shops already.

On Christmas Day itself, the on-line sales began.  Bored of listening to Auntie Thirza?  Well, just get on-line and spend the afternoon in a personal journey of spending and consumerism.

Christmas Day.

Not even taken the time to wear all three pairs of socks you received in the morning before you are able to go on-line and buy some more.

From the commercial world, Christmas is over before it’s really begun.  And I think that’s a real shame, and a missed opportunity.

According to the Church calendar, Christmas is still with us.  It is here until the 6^th January, next Sunday.  The twelve nights of Christmas.  The long period of contemplation and celebration, a period of mystery and promise, of reflection and understanding. 

In the myths and stories of Christmas, this is the period immediately after the Christ-Child has been born, and covers the twelve days before the Kings arrived to present their gifts.  Christmas is of such importance in the Christian calendar, and is set at a time that has been held sacred by people in this part of the world for thousands of year, the turning of the year, the movement from darkness to light. 

From a spiritual perspective, as a waymark on the physical and the mental journeys in our lives, this time is very important.

In recent Services, we have reflected, if that’s the right word, we have reflected on the importance of darkness and light – of this period of light.

Well, know we’re here.  The Light has returned.  Light has come into our lives.  A precious, life-giving offer of renewal and replenishment.  How can we rush this one?  Can we really afford to allow this opportunity to pass us by?  Are we really more interested in looking for the next thrill, rather than welcoming and savouring the genuine thrill, the genuine and completely free opportunity that the turning of the Year, and the centuries old myths and stories provides for us?

I hope not.

Yet although we might try to bring the lessons of Christmas into our lives now, and even if we are explicit in our agreement that this is a twelve-day season of spiritual development, it can still seem like a period between two , or perhaps three, key points.  Christmas, New Year’s Day, and, perhaps, Twelfth Night.  We are, or might be, however you look at it, ‘Stuck in the Middle’.

But should we be? 

We are presented, at Christmas, with the notion of a rebirth for our lives – the coming into the world of salvation, however we might perceive that to be.  The turning of the year, the coming of a child, these things tell us of rebirth.

As Unitarians, with a theology that has consistently considered all humanity to be capable of bringing God’s love into the world, we might see the birth of Jesus the human, and the stories of the birth of a Christ-Child as reminders of the rebirth that is possible within ourselves.  The rebirth that we must each go through if we are to take full advantage of this season, and the rebirth we know we must take if we are to cleanse our souls of the things we know we must shed if we are to move forward, next year, with new resolution and determination to live our spiritual lives in the everyday.

Now, I doubt there are any here today that would see the birth of a child as a one-day wonder.  Once a baby is born we don’t, as parents, carers or friends, turn away as expect all to be fine now.  We do not expect each child to need some love and care on day one, and then be left to fend for itself for the rest of its life.

And the rebirth of the child within each of us, the birth of the Christ-Child in our lives, the return of the light, is perhaps not something that can be celebrated and thought about for one day and then left alone to fend for itself.

No, I believe we need to use this time after the birthday to contemplate what it means to each if us.  To use some time to really consider how we see this opportunity and light growing within each of us, right now.

And for each of us it will be different.  We are all at different points in our life stories.  We are, all of us, likely to reflect on different elements of our lives that might benefit from some cleansing and rebirth at this time.

In our first reading, the poem by Siegfried Sassoon, we are reminded of the opportunities this time of year can bring us for reflection. 

I shall read it again, since it can often be quite hard to remember in detail the readings.

December stillness, teach me through your trees

That loom along the west, one with the land,

The veiled evangel of your mysteries.

             While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the down

             Deepens, and dusk imbues me, where I stand,

             With grave diminishings of green and brown,

             Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words;

             And let me learn your secret from the sky,

             Following a flock of steadfast-journeying birds

             In lone remote migration beating by.

December stillness, crossed by twilight roads,

Teach me to travel far and bear my loads.

As I mentioned before, we did use this poem at our poetry and meditation gathering earlier this month.  And that, perhaps, is why the poem has stuck with me for so long, providing a base on which to build my own spiritual plans for this time.

Sassoon sees December as the month for reflection.  He sees, I believe, the apparent death of nature – the grave diminishings of green and brown – when coupled with the overwhelming awesomeness of Nature – as a God-given opportunity to reflect on our purpose and our connections to this world.  This stillness of which Sassoon writes is also, I suggest, the stillness that hangs in the time after Christmas and Yule – this time we are currently in.

We each of us have the opportunity to use the stillness of December, the simplicity of the natural world at this time, as an opportunity to reflect personally on how we see the coming time, the coming year perhaps, developing. 

Sassoon talks of following a flock of stead-fast journeying birds.  This imagery strikes me as a recognition that life continues.  We are forever following life and the natural cycle; we cannot control the passage of time. 

But we can control the impact we have on the world.  How we might be able to help bring love and wholeness to our family, our friends, our community and the world more broadly.

We are but a tiny part of this world, yet we are connected to it.  A tiny part yet each of us is an active part of it.  We can learn from this world, and we can contribute to it too.

The stillness of December co-incides so deliciously with the possibility for stillness in the post-Christmas time. 

So, it’s simple really.  We’ll just take a little time over these few days, put the world to rights, brace ourselves for the lives of pure love and righteousness we’re about to lead, and all will be well.

OK.  I guess that’s asking a little too much.

We can’t make ourselves perfect.  We cannot predict how this world will turn out.  We really don’t know what lies around the next corner.

But this doesn’t matter.

As Sassoon says, teach me to travel far, and bear my loads.

We may not know how and where we are travelling to, but we can prepare for the journey.

And let’s not forget that these twelve days, the days in which the Kings are said to have travelled to the stable in Bethlehem, these are days where we are thinking about the journeys, about destinations, but also uncertainty.

Elizabeth Tarbox, in our second reading, in thinking around the way she planned to make her resolutions for New Year concluded with the following:

This year I’m not making any resolutions, or asking God to resolve things for me.  This year, as I take my self-inventory, I’m aiming for the continued willingness to keep the doors of my feelings open, to participate in life as well as to observe it, to contribute more to the solutions and less to the problems, and to wish everyone, with all my heart, a happy and healthy new year.

This has a greater grounding in reality for me.  No resolutions.  Because we simply do not know for certain what specifics lie ahead.  However, the importance is in this notion of self-inventory.  This period of internal reflection and assessment.

Christmas, the return of the light, the Sun, has given us the reminder we need that we are able to renew and refresh ourselves.  We too can be reborn, we too can bring the innocence and potential of a new-born child to the world.

But we need time to prepare ourselves from this.  The rush of Christmas preparations and of the day itself can mean that our good intentions for personal renewal get left behind.

However, we are fortunate that the December stillness, and this time apparently between events, gives us that chance to still ourselves and to prepare for the coming year.

You may know there are certain things you look to do, to change, to continue.  You may alternatively see this time as a necessary recharge and redirection.  Like Elizabeth Tarbox, you might avoid the specifics and look instead to prepare to participate in life by contributing to the solutions, not the problems.

I said earlier that I had made a couple of changes to our usual Order of Service today.  The reason for that was to bring an opportunity, I hope, for some personal reflection and contemplation in the December stillness.

We have heard from Sassoon and Tarbox, and we have probably all sat thinking about the way we might begin to prepare for the future.  To cleanse our inner hearts and to prepare for the coming year.

I would like us now to come together in silence and stillness.  I suggest you settle into your chairs, relaxing, and thinking on your personal hopes and needs for the coming year. 

None of us can truly know what lies ahead, but each of us has the opportunity now to spend some time preparing.  This may be the first chance you’ve had.  It may be a part of a continuing piece.

But this is your time,

From Darkness to Light

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Now is the time of the coming of the light.  There are many religious festivals associated with the end of the longest night, and the return of the sun.  Or the Son.  Yule and Christmas provide us with a wonderful opportunity to explore the meaning of light for us in our spiritual lives today.  The address below seeks to help you on that exploration.  There is a guided meditation in the middle, where you might wish to focus on the words and join in.  The MP3 to download is available by clicking the link above (it may take a couple of minutes to download).  Alternatively, the words are set out below:

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Well, we made it.  The fear that the Mayan people had some strange perception that the world would end this week proved groundless.  We still have to pay the credit card bills, we still have to do the washing up.  All those things we did in the face of the end of the world now look a little silly.

Of course, it wasn’t the Mayans that said the world would end, it was the modern interpreters.  It was a misunderstanding, an attempt to declare a rigid interpretation without bringing the Mayan calendar into a modern context.

If you found a diary belonging to someone that appeared to run up to, say 20 June 2013.  Would you automatically assume that was proof the world would end on that day? 

No.  Thought not.

Yet there was a fear in some parts.  People were concerned and genuinely worried that the world would end.  We would be here no more.

It’s not a new fear.

This week, on the 21^st, last Friday, we experienced the Winter Solstice.  Yule.  The longest night, and the shortest day.

An ancient festival.  A festival for the coming of the light.  It’s easy to imagine how it started. 

A primitive people would be aware that after the long Summer, after the Harvest, as all the plants began to die away, and the weather got wetter and colder.  After all that, it was becoming very apparent that the Sun was appearing less and less in the sky.  Night-time was getting longer, and there will, I am sure, have been a very genuine fear that the Sun may disappear forever. That night would take over, a permanent, heat-free darkness in which nothing would grow.

The fear must have been very real.  This was a time when people lived directly with nature, with the Earth in all its forms.  The idea of a permanent darkness would be terrifying.  The end of the world, perhaps.

Yet, someone discovered, probably a clever pagan minister, that so long as you enacted a ritual event at certain point in the year, say every 92 days or so, then you were able to encourage the Sun, or the Moon, or whichever to do your bidding.

The Festival of the Winter Solstice is perhaps part encouragement to the Sun, part celebration of the turning of the year, and part recognition of the importance of dark and sleep, but the overriding necessity for the Sun.  For light and heat to keep the world alive.

The rebirth of the Sun.  The slow emergence of light once more into our lives.  Steadily, stealthily, a return of the Light.  Of the power over darkness.

Of course, light can overcome darkness.  But darkness can never overcome light.  Darkness does not exist – it is but the absence of light.

It is this wonderful welcome to the light that has been the seed for so many religious festivals at this time.  One of the oldest, of course, is Yule.  The ancient festival of the Winter Solstice itself.

But we also have Hannukah from the Jewish tradition, and the Hindu Diwali.

And, the most prominent here, is of course the Christian festival of Christmas.  The coming of the Son.  The birth of the Light of the World.

We celebrated our Carols by Candlelight last week, and we brought alive once more the tradition of candlelight. Bringing light to the world.

The lights of Christmas are a strong reminder of the power of the Light.  The way in which light, be it candle powered or sunlight, can bring us closer to our God.  Closer to the sacred.

Our first reading today, from the Wind in the Willows, although set in the morning on a spring or summer day, still brings for me some of the magic that seems to come from the appearance of the light in the morning.

In that reading, the Rat and the Mole are seeking the presence of Him.  The one who seems to make the dream music at the dawn, the one who heralds the new day.

And the two friends are overtaken by an astonishing sense of awe at the dawn.  They realise they are in the presence of something sacred.  The Mole in particular is very taken.  He knows the place as a holy place.  And as the light grows and grows, that sense of presence becomes stronger.  As the light ‘grew and grew’.

That connection, perhaps, to the Eternal Light.  The recognition of the sacred and truthful nature of the light.

That magical feeling when you actually step outside and experience the dawn for yourself.  Even at this time of year, to spend a little time focussing on the light as it grows is indescribable.

When you consider that this light is the some one that our ancestors welcomed back at this time of year, you can begin to understand the sense of awe, the joyous celebration, the wonder of the natural world and the realisation of the inter-connected nature of our world.

But the sun always does return.  Whether we celebrate, or encourage with ritual, or sit waiting for it.  The Sun will always return.  The natural rhythm will always bring the sun up in the morning, it will always shorten the nights from late December, and shorten the days from late June.  That great ball of fire will just keep on spinning for as long as we are around at least.

However, it is not just the presence of light that makes it sacred.  It is the way we experience it, the way we prepare ourselves for it, and in it.

We can all stand in the garden at dawn.  We can all light a candle.  But these are not necessarily sacred acts.  There is more to it than that.  The mindful approach to our whereabouts, our actions, our context.  It is this that brings us into contact with the Divine.  It is the recognition of what we are doing or experiencing that can make it more real.

I’d like now to take a short break in the sermon.  An interval perhaps.  But, I’d like to try and bring this notion of light a little closer to us all this morning.

What I would like is to take you on a short journey.  A short guided meditation. 

[Listen to the MP3 for the guided meditation - a meditation in which you visualise yourself filled with light]

Each of us will have reacted differently to that meditation, and I shall not presume to know how it felt to you.

However, I would hope that it has given you a sense of wellbeing, a sense of an inner light, still burning bright within you.  Strengthened, cleansed and protected.

 

This is I hope a way we might understand the difference between seeing light, and experiencing light.  Two very different things.  To become involved, to connect, to feel an alignment.

That is perhaps  a further aspect of the Winter Solstice.  We take the opportunity to welcome the light within us, as well as the light without.

And the same must be said, I guess about Christmas.

It is no co-incidence that we celebrate Christmas at this time of year.  The early Church leaders will have looked to align the celebration of Jesus’ birth with an existing celebration. 

The rights and wrongs of this are now, I suggest, immaterial.  They simply are.

The more important point is our approach to the Christmas message. 

Christmas is neither time nor season.  Christmas is a state of mind.

In our second reading this morning, Earl Holt described Christmas as:

“the promise that our emptiness will be filled, our hunger assuaged and a deep darkness be flooded with light.”

For me, this tells the story that Christmas is something to be experienced.  It is a sacred and holy time when light breaks in to the shadows of life.  Christmas is a time that can only happen if you are open and ready to accept it into your hearts.

But Earl Holt makes a further point, one on which I believe there is a need to reflect.

He suggests that Christmas cannot be forced.

“Christmas will come, but we cannot make it come”

Like the light, it will always come.  Yet it is more than just a tangible or even intangible thing.  It is all powerful, all pervading.

Christmas.  The promise of hope.  The realisation of light, and love and joy in a darkened world.

In the stories and legends of Christmas we have built so many of our heartfelt yearnings for light.  For many, the pure, giving life of Jesus is reason enough to open our hearts to love.  The birth of Jesus is a recognition and memory that love and light are borne into this world repeatedly.

Yet to combine the ancient mysteries of Solstice with the idea of perfect love in the form of a baby is to create a striking and mesmerising opportunity to reflect, to strengthen and to rekindle hope in ourselves and in the world around us.

 

The apocalypse never came this week. 

But the Sun did return.  Despite the current bad weather, we know that the circle of life continues to turn, the Sun is coming back, light is returning to our lives.

And, this week, as we celebrate Christmas, and the legends and stories around it, let us also celebrate the possibility of the return of the light to our hearts.  The rebirth and renewal of light in the promise of a child.

Let us be filled with light, and let us carry that light with us to lighten the darkened places.

296 - Creation, Liberation, Reconciliation

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This morning we celebrated the 296th Anniversary of our Meeting House here in Sevenoaks.  Built by the General Baptists in 1716, and evolving to Unitarianism in the early 1800s, the Meeting House is still as beautiful as ever.  However, as nice as buildings are, it is more important to recognise the Anniversary of the congregation; it is the congregation that have been fighting for love, freedom and justice for all those years.  The words below touch on the history, but focus on the importance of continuing this fight for liberation and reconciliation today.  An MP3 can be downloaded by clicking the link at the top of this post (it may take a minute or so to load).

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This is a Unitarian congregation.  But this was not built as a Unitarian Meeting House. 

The first Service held in this building, in December 1716, was held by a General Baptist meeting.  We know from the history that it was most likely led by John Calverly, who was the leading General Baptist Elder here at the time.  But even he wasn’t the first leader of the congregation. 

That honour falls to William Jeffery, who first led this congregation, this group of people with a continuous connection from today, this morning, all the way back to 1640.  Each of us knows, or knew, someone who was in this congregation before them.  And so did they, And so did they. 

All the way back to that first gathering in 1640.  And, on the way, here at the newly built Meeting House in 1716. 

I find that quite amazing really.

1716 was a time when non-conformity was, in many places, illegal.  By then tolerated, but still illegal.  In 1715, just one year before, at least 30 Dissenting chapels were destroyed in the ‘Church and King’ riots which were sparked by a continuing conspiracy of a connection of dissent to treason. 

As I mentioned before, the members of the congregation that met in 1716 were General Baptists – a liberal wing of the Baptist movement – too liberal to be tolerated by the growing hardline Calvinist Particular Baptists – and this congregation, like many other General Baptist congregations, turned toward Unitarianism around 100 years later.

These heretical people, as your predecessors undoubtedly were known, would have seen this building as a sanctuary for more than just Sunday worship.  This was, and is, their building – a second home for its members.  A place to meet like-minded souls for social time as well as worship.  Just as it remains today.

And we retain many links to our past.

We were, as I mentioned, a General Baptist Meeting House.  Now, the General Baptists were, as I also said, dreadful heretics.  They believed that it was appropriate for them to read the Bible in English, and interpret what they read there for themselves. 

Not necessarily agreeing with other authorities.  Thinking for themselves.  How terrible is that!

Even worse, most General Baptists determined that there was nothing in the Bible that indicated God would be selective in who was saved at the end of time, or after death.  They read God as a God of love.  So of course everyone would be saved.

This, again was not what the authorities liked to hear – everyone saved, all equal, no hierarchy, thinking for themselves.

Dreadful.

Eventually, General Baptism died out.  The Particular Baptists – with an authoritarian stance on the notion of salvation – became the dominant Baptist strand. 

But we retain some links to that wonderful piece of history.  As a General Baptist congregation, this congregation was a member of the General Baptist Assembly – an umbrella organisation, founded in 1648, bringing almost all General Baptist congregations together – providing support for ministry, community and solidarity in the face of oppression.

Astonishingly, the General Baptist Assembly is still around, and has been in continuous existence since 1648.  It still meets annually, in London, each May, and it still provides grants towards settled ministry in those remaining, former General Baptist congregations.

There are, sadly, just 15 member congregations to the Assembly now – and Bessels Green – here – is still a member.  Of course, as I mentioned, there are no practising General Baptist congregations left.  It is, in fact, the case that all 15 member congregations of the General Baptist Assembly are now Unitarian congregations – 15 of the 174.  It is not true to say that all General Baptist congregations across the country became Unitarian – but it is the case that many did.

And they still support each other.  Recognising the strength in numbers.  They still gather.  And what is more, they still agree to help the weakest.  The Assembly members have recently agreed a new policy whereby the largest grants it gives are to the congregations that have least money, and want to spend what little they have on ministry, in whatever form that takes.

Just as this congregation gathered to support one another in adversity and against oppression all those years ago, the Assembly still meets, and still looks out for the weaker members.  Those that need a bit more help than the others.

For me, this starts to explain how and why these congregations became Unitarian.  It’s a bit chicken-and-egg, but this sense of community and independence in matters of religion remains important to us today.

Unitarians, like the General Baptists, were considered heretics for many years.  Still are in some quarters.  Many Unitarians in the 1500s and before were killed for their beliefs.  And they were still being imprisoned in the 1600s.

Yet they persisted.  Why?  And in what way might we consider ourselves the natural heirs of this mantle of dissent?

Unitarians like to think for themselves.

Following in the footsteps of those dissenting Protestants who insisted in interpreting the Bible in a way that made sense to them, we continue to aspire to freedom of thought and freedom of belief.

That, for me, is what makes Unitarianism special – and it is why it can be so hard to explain to others exactly what we mean by Unitarianism.

As Cliff Reed’s book title says, 'Unitarian. What's That?'

Freedom to think.  Freedom to believe.

We are lucky.  We are, generally, people who are willing to listen to religious and philosophical ideas that will sometimes conflict with our previous thoughts.  We are prepared to change our view on religious matters.  And we are, usually, still welcome as Unitarians no matter what.  For Unitarians are allowed to explore, to test, to change, to draw their own conclusions.

I’m not saying for one minute that members of all other churches are unable to think for themselves.  That would be ridiculous.  But I am saying that the freedom to question the answers is a right that we must thank our predecessors for.

I went to St Paul’s Cathedral earlier this week, in London, to hear a speaker from the US.  Part of the Cathedral’s recent series of talks by ‘new Christian thinkers’, a series called 'The Case for God'.  The speaker this week was Brian McLaren.  Brian was raised as a fundamentalist Christian in the US, and was taught very clearly that the Bible supports all manner of repressive and unloving ways of life.  One of those extreme churches we all see and hear on the television and radio.

As a child, Brian believed it all.  Until he went to college to study English.  As an English student, he began instead to look at the Bible in an open and critical way.  He started to look for new interpretations.

He became more open.  He saw the Bible was not as clear-cut as his parents and his church had told him.

His talk this week, to a large (I guess) mostly Christian crowd, was on the need to read the Bible in a different way.  To stop reading and using the Bible to defend illiberal and repressive acts, but instead to read and use the Bible to support acts of loving kindness in the world.  To recognise the stories as images of creation, liberation and reconciliation.

To use the Bible to bring transformational change and justice to the world, in the form of loving kindness.

He was unashamedly Christian in his approach – but he did not mention once the notion of atonement of sin, nor the Resurrection, nor the idea that Christ died for us.  Nor did he believe any of the ‘rules’ in the Bible should be left unchallenged.  They were written in the context of the time.  If, in the modern day, we cannot see them as messages of creation, liberation or reconciliation, then lets just drop them and move on.  Brian was clear that, from his reading and interpretation of the Bible, there was nothing repressive or judgmental in Jesus’ actions and words.  How can anybody, therefore, use the Bible for repressive purposes.

This approach rang true for me.  Here was a man using sacred texts – the words of a people struggling to explain the purpose of life.  Yet he was prepared to read them in new, loving ways.  Freedom of thought.  Freedom to interpret.  Freedom of belief. 

I was able to speak to Mr McClaren after his talk.  I explained I was a Unitarian (and whispered he should keep it quiet lest I be ejected from St Paul’s).  He laughed, put his hand on my arm, and whispered back that the Unitarians were amongst his friends and supporters back in the US.

Well, this is all well and good.  We are able to interpret words for ourselves.  And we believe this is a right for all people.  And it is.  But what is the true value of this?

The commentator Morris Joseph put it well,

‘the test of a person’s worth is not their theology, but their life’

Another way of putting this, perhaps, is to say that we need not be concerned how others interpret things – we should be concerned only that people are doing the very best they can to live a life of loving kindness.

Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Pagan, Ba’hai, Humanist, Atheist, and so many, many more.  It matters not what the core text or scripture is – if there is one – rather it matters how these are interpreted in a loving and open way, to support participation in building a world more fair, and more just.

This then is how I believe we should celebrate the Anniversary of this Meeting House. 

We must recognise the value that those who stood up for freedom of belief and freedom of reason have brought to our world.  As I said before, we are the lucky ones.  We are able to gather and worship freely.  Our predecessors, General Baptist and Unitarian, have always supported the idea that God’s love is bestowed on all – in modern practical terms, there are no people that deserve to be shunned or treated unfairly by society.  For the General Baptists, God saves all.  For the early Unitarians, God is One, and we are all brothers and sisters in that single God.  For modern Unitarians, we have evolved our freedoms to encompass new ideas, new ways to live in the modern world, the worth of all people and all sacred beliefs.

We are celebrating today the 296^th Anniversary of this Meeting House.  Yet, as John Andrew Storey puts it so well in the final part of our second reading:

The church is me, the Church is you,

Not mortar, brick and stone;

It is with all who love the true,

And where true love is shown.

Mark Morrison-Reed picked this up too with the promise that it is the church that assures us that we are not struggling for justice on our own, but as members of a larger community.

We must surely honour all those who have gone before us here by continuing their loving approach to the community and to the world.  That is the living memorial we can hope to provide.  As Brian McClaren put it, let us create, liberate and reconcile with love.  Let us endeavor to ensure that all our actions, all our thoughts, words and deeds are carried out in a loving manner, without malice and with the aim of peace and togetherness.

    

I finish with a quote from Doug Pagitt, the author of a book called ‘Church in the Inventive Age’:

“The past is not our standard.  It is not the test of whether something is right or good.  But it's also not an albatross we need to shuck off as quickly as possible.  The past is our constant companion.  It is always with us.  The question is what do we do with it - return to it, let it rule, or take its best efforts with us into the future?”

Happy Anniversary.