December 2011
Dear Reader
On the wall above my desk I have a notice board. As well as the practical stuff for the administration of the 3 parishes -various rotas, lists and phone numbers — I have a few short poems and prose pieces that are important and helpful to me. One of them reads as follows:-
Journeys ended,
Journeys begun to go where we have never been,
to be beyond our past,
moments of lifting up transcending death,
rising in transparent light to the fullness of God's presence.
(From “Journeys ended, Journeys begun,” the Monks of Weston Priory.)
It is one of those pieces that I am not sure I understand but which resonates with me at various moments in my life—moments like now.
The Christmas-to-Epiphany story is all about journeys. There are the actual journeys made by Mary and Joseph and by the Wise Men. There are also the spiritual journeys that they all made, and the Shepherds too. The physical journeys would certainly have been risky and arduous—extremes of temperature between day and night—rough terrain, with danger lurking all around and all for an end that was far from clear. For Mary and Joseph the dangers of child birth and for the Wise Men the interpretation of stellar conjunctions. The shepherds had to risk abandoning their flocks in a hazardous environment. All going where they had never been …….
And for me/us contemplation of going “where we have never been” …. “beyond our past”. I’ve never been retired before—living outside the calendar and demands of parish life. I look forward (I think) “to the moments of lifting up transcending death” - the lesser deaths of leaving people we have come to love behind, of letting go of the ready-made access into people’s lives that comes as a privilege with being their parish priest, of living a life of “freedom” without the constraints that are part of a Rector’s life.
All those who were the main “players” in the Christmas-Epiphany story were able to see God at work in all that happened. We don’t know but I am convinced that none of them were the same again. I believe that the Christchild who was at the centre of their journeys touched their lives in profound and beautiful ways. I hope that you will join me one more time this Christmas in the journey that is Advent, Christmas and Epiphany so that all our lives may be touched afresh by this profound and beautiful story.
At this time too, when our journeys diverge onto different paths, I want to thank you for the time we have journeyed together. For some, our pilgrimage together has been a wholly happy and fulfilling time and I rejoice in that and thank you. I recognise too that some have found journeying with me to be not always comfortable—I hope you can now see that, despite the difficulty, God was there too.
Please pray for Angela and me, as we will continue to pray for all of you. It is only by prayer and in faith that “rising in transparent light to the fullness of God's presence” can be more than an aspiration or dream but a joyous and wonderful reality in this world and the next.
Best wishes, Graham Newton
Older letters have been archived, but remain available.