Tuesday, 14 January 2025

Seeing colours again



January this year has begun with snow and ice and an unsteady beginning. And then there’s the thought of Donald Trump taking over America on Monday! I loved the BBC interviews on the news the other night with the people of Greenland! 



We’ve seen day after day of white stuff, the worst winter weather this part of North Yorkshire has seen in 15 years. But today green started to emerge on the ground, the paths became less lethal and a farmer told me sheep have started moving about whereas they’ve been in a huddle to keep warm up to today. 



Also tonight as I drove to Pateley Bridge the colours ahead of me were red and orange. A contrast to the drabness we’ve had over the last few days. Then before I came home the moon was bright illuminating the darkness. 

This is the Christian hope fourteen days into January. The light shines and is seen again when the dullness and dark moments have done their worst and God breaks in again. 

I was reminded this afternoon of Kamala Harris’s concession speech in November.

“There is an adage: Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.

I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time. For the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But, America, if it is: Let us fill the sky with the light of a billion brilliant stars.”

Maybe our task this year is simply hope for colour and light to come. The icy ground, the drab skies and the fear of journeying and scary political rhetoric to come do not set the agenda.




Tuesday, 7 January 2025

A few days into January - Keep buggering on!



A few days into January and we are dominated by snow and now ice and Elon Musk. We aren’t even into a Trump presidency yet. How do we change the narrative that can easily make us fall? 

Lord Vishnu sat on Mount Chomolungma and wept. Along came Hanuman, the monkey god, and he said, 'What are you crying at? And what are all those ants down there shouting for?'
'They're not ants,' said Vishnu. 'They're people. I was holding the Jewel of Absolute Wisdom; and I dropped it; and it fell into the World and broke. Everybody has a splinter; but they each think they've got the whole thing, and they run around, screaming at each other; and no one listens.'

We need a different narrative seven days into 2025!



“A cold coming we had of it,
just the worst time of year
for a journey and such a journey.
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
the very dead of Winter”

“They came a long journey, and they came an uneasy journey. They came now, at the worst season of the year. And all but to do worship at Christ’s birth. They stayed not their coming till the opening of the year*, till they might have better weather and way, and have longer days, and so more seasonable and fit to travel in. So desirous were they to come with the first, and to be there as soon as possibly they might; broke through all these difficulties, and behold they did come.”

Lancelot Andrewes and T S Eliot communicate the urgency and immediacy of responding to the birth of Jesus for the Magi, despite all the difficulties. With snow and war and threats and worries 2025 hasn’t started well for some people. We need a story that will break in to people’s madness. It’s dangerous out there, not just with ice underfoot and temperatures tomorrow night of minus seven degrees, but there is a narrative that is threatening. 

In the week of Epiphany, let’s remember the magi were brave enough to follow a star and ignore the power mad Herod. They returned home by another road. In a world where people are screaming at each other to be top dog (or top ant as in the story) we need, like them to keep focussed on where God is calling us to journey. I have developed a pain in my right foot. The doctor calls it plantar fasciitis. Apparently rolling a tin of beans under my foot might alleviate the pain! I am struggling to walk long distances. It’s hard to keep going. But despite the discomfort of my foot and the ice under it I do keep going. Even though it’s hard. 

We are called to be faithful and to keep going and to seek help when it’s painful or we don’t know which way to go. I was very moved last night catching up with i player television watching John Betjeman’s 1974 programme A Passion for Churches, exploring the Diocese of Norwich. There was one bit showing a priest saying morning prayer and there was no one but him in the church. But, said Betjeman, the village knew the parson was interceding for them. 

My Superintendent, Gareth, in staff meeting devotions this morning asked us what biblical character we identify with at the beginning of a new year. I said Moses. There are ups and downs. There are times of wilderness wandering, exasperation and upset but a vision to journey on. We may not see the destination but we are called to follow. My prayer with so much uncertainty as 2025 is in its infancy is that we simply have enough in us to cope and keep on the path safely.

As Churchill famously put it: “Keep buggering on”! I wonder if the Magi were given that advice??!




Sunday, 5 January 2025

Changing plans



Well they did forecast snow! My phone rang at 8 this morning and it was the steward at Boroughbridge giving me the weather situation. We decided to cancel our covenant service. This took some phoning round as it was also a joint service with the Anglicans. But it was sensible to keep everyone safe. The steward at Allhallowgate then also rang to ask we cancel the evening service. So no services at all for me to take today! That sermon took ages to write :)



I put my walking shoes on and walked to Allhallowgate who still had a service this morning. 13 of us were led by Keith Phipps. We all sat on the front two rows. There was a convivial atmosphere and it was lovely to receive today unexpectedly. Keith led us with some reflections on Matthew chapter 1 and 2 of the coming of the Christ child and its setting in history, of a journey of the magi and the threat to Herod. It struck me as Keith shared the number of times in the story plans have to be changed. The magi have to follow a star to an unexpected place. Joseph has many dreams and has to respond. Herod is rattled by a rival king. The holy family can’t return home quickly and have to settle in a foreign country. 



Snow disrupts us. We look out of the window and it looks pretty. As we walk out in it, people speak to us. We share an event. And church this morning had a party atmosphere! There was a lot of laughter! Bethlehem was not where the story should have ended. And as we enter 2025 maybe major things will thwart our script. I never expected to have a preaching free Sunday even though the weather forecast for this area was dead right. We maybe even got more of the white stuff than was expected. 



The snow has come on the eve of the Epiphany. I was going to a service marking that this afternoon. Remember that story has an ending about a different road. Maybe having encountered God, like snow, we have to make different plans or let what has been meticulously prepared for go. 

A light is guiding our path— we need to set out upon a conscious spiritual journey. One that we never expected to take. We need to become the Magi. Load up our metaphorical camels and set out across the landscape of our soul to where it is that the light appears. 

Keep warm. There’s more snow coming overnight! 




Saturday, 4 January 2025

The first Sunday of a New Year



Here’s my sermon for tomorrow in case we are snowed in and need to read it instead…

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory…

 

On this first Sunday of 2025, let me put the mighty opening of the prologue to John’s Gospel into the present tense: the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us and we behold his glory – right now, in this moment, in this new year.

 

Friends, it’s said that seventeen per cent of people in this country give up on their New Year resolution within a month. Be that eating healthier or taking more exercise or giving one compliment a day or going a whole twenty four hours without checking your e mails or looking at your mobile phone, or refraining from gossip. That was the list of one of the writers in the Yorkshire Post towards the end of last week and it’s only day five and she’s struggling. The year hasn’t begun well for many people. There’s a lot of flu about, and other horrible viruses, the weather cancelled new year celebrations outside and there’s a threat of snow and ice and as for the world the sad and lowly plains are just as sad as they were before Christmas. And yet, we gather for worship and we confront that negative and gloomy narrative with the story of God’s care and concern. This is still Christmas and today I want to suggest we focus more on God and less on our not being able to keep to unrealistic goals which make us feel worse when we fail and we keep looking for hope. I want to explore that God breaks into time, that God believes in us and that God invites us to join him in whatever God is doing. John Wesley instituted his covenant service as a reminder of the providential care and grace of God despite ourselves and the world. 


Let us look for Christ wherever we go.

Let us never stop seekingBelieving that there is a light that shines in the darkness which the darkness shall not overcome.

 

First then, God breaks into our time. Has God a right time? We are ruled if we aren’t careful with that time we call chronos. Every second counts. In the watchnight service in the cathedral on New Years Eve, Canon Michael used this reflection on time in his sermon:

To realise the value of one year, ask a student who has failed in his exam.

To realise the value of one month, ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby.

To realise the value of one week, ask an editor of a weekly.

To realise the value of one day, ask someone who is given daily wages.

To realise the value of one hour, ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realise the value of one minute, ask the person who has missed the train.

To realise the value of one second, ask the person who has survived a car accident.

To realise the value of one milli second, ask the person who won the silver medal in the Olympics.

We live our lives by how much we can achieve in a course of time. Go to Aldi and watch the person on the till throw the stuff at us. It has to be quick. There are apps about how not to procrastinate. Some ministers brag that they never take a day off because they are too busy or are too busy to be adaptable. And yet, if we continue this obsession with the clock and productivity, we will all burn out by February. We will have no time to look for God breaking into time. God’s time is called kairos, time of opportunity. Galatians has it summed up:
“But when the time that God had decided arrived, he sent his Son into the world. A human mother gave birth to him. He was born a Jew, under the authority of God's Law.” The Christmas story is that God breaks in at the right time, when he’s exhausted every other idea to get through to us and he sends us part of himself. We sing of it incessantly before and during December and then we forget it! I think this year we need to look for those moments God breaks in. Where’s the good news? Where are the moments of grace? Where is the hope?

Someone sent me these words the other day:

“Hope has holes in its pockets. It leaves little crumb trails so we, when anxious, can follow it. Hope’s secret? It doesn’t know the destination. It only knows that all roads begin with one foot in front of the other.”

God breaks in.



Then God believes in us. Enough to invest in us. The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. Matt Haig in one of his writings suggests that as a New Year turns it isn’t good for us to be okay. He writes: The world is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-aging moisturiser? You make someone worry about aging. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.”

And yet, God loves us enough to send us Jesus. Not just as a guest but incarnate. Here with us always. We don’t wait until we are perfect, he comes as flesh to as Wesley would put it change our vileness into almost divinity. John tells us that the Word became flesh and lived among us. Became human. The whole character of God wrapped up in a baby who was born in poverty, was a refugee and lived fully in community. He did not cease to be fully God but he was God wrapped in our clay. How could this happen? Well we need to go back to John’s Gospel to complete the image.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 

Jesus emptied himself – one commentator says that meant he made himself vulnerable to the battering by evil forces that we face. But what he could never rid himself of was God’s nature which is grace and truth.

That’s why, at every turn in his public ministry, it is always grace that wins. In encounters with outsiders such as lepers, excluded women, even the dead, God’s grace and truth breaks through and reveals itself.

It’s why the hungry are fed, the sick are healed, the downtrodden are lifted up, the unjust are challenged, those who twist religion are taken to task … and why Jesus’ disciples are taught that their task is to do the same thing.

 

So maybe this year part of our promise back to God is to not just believe in him because he believes in us but convince others who are struggling in the darkness that they are held in his embrace too. The covenant God breaks in and believes in us and then invites us to join him in what he’s up to.

 

We have to take notice of him again. We need in our meetings in church to pause and ask what is God doing or saying?




We all get letters or e mails we have to respond to. And if we ignore God and we wonder why things aren’t going well then I think God looks at us and says I made it so easy all you had to do was turn to me and you did anything but…

 

Lancelot Andrewes’ Nativity sermon, preached for King James on Christmas Day 1622 is worth revisiting today. In that sermon, Andrewes said the Magi readily undertook “a wearisome, irksome, troublesome, dangerous, unseasonable journey” to follow the star to the Christ child. Then looking out on the royal court that formed his congregation, Andrewes said that people of his own day were so complacent in their faith that they would not likely travel to the manger if they were as close by as the shepherds, much less as far away as the Magi.

Andrewes went on to speak of his mid-seventeenth-century fellows, saying that they make great haste to other things, but not to worship God. If Christmas were to involve a long journey begun in December, Andrewes said, “Best get us a new Christmas in September; we are not like to come to Christ at this feast.” For Andrewes the travel, the journey, the seeking, amounted to nothing in themselves. The only motivation of the Magi was to find and worship the Christ with all their souls, their bodies, and their worldly goods. Andrewes said our goal should be the same.

We are encouraged to set out this year giving our best, keeping our eyes and hearts open, and trying not to be discouraged. Friends I can’t fix whatever a second Trump presidency will do or Syria or Ukraine but I can help you and others around me. I’ll end these thoughts then with the late Jimmy Carter. President Carter only did one term as President of the United States in the 1970’s. His Presidency was mostly about peace or lack of it. But he was a good Christian man from a Baptist background in Georgia. For decades, you could walk into Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, on some Sunday mornings and see hundreds of tourists from around the world crammed into the pews. And standing in front of them, asking with a wink if there were any visitors that morning, would be President Jimmy Carter – preparing to teach Sunday school, just like he had done for most of his adult life. And I noticed when they showed part of his inauguration in 1976 he quoted for all the world to hear this call of God from the prophet:

In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation.

As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: "We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles." 

Here before me is the Bible used in the inauguration of our first President, in 1789, and I have just taken the oath of office on the Bible my mother gave me a few years ago, opened to a timeless admonition from the ancient prophet Micah: 

"He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."

The first Sunday of another year of God’s grace invites us to remember the grace of God, his breaking in, his belief in us and our responsibility if we profess any faith at all to respond. If we remember and respond then I think whatever this year brings it can be a happy one. Friends, let’s start well and start with God. Amen.





Friday, 27 December 2024

What to do after Christmas Day…



What do we do with the days after Christmas? We’ve eaten too much and we clergy people are still absolutely done in. The Archdruid Eileen had it right in a post especially as my head is spinning and I’ve picked up an annoying cough from somewhere…

You've done 3 lots of carolling, umpteen assemblies, Christingles, Nativities, Advent Study Groups, crib Services, and written next month's "Thought" for the parish magazine.

You've eaten your own weight in mince pies and stollen. Drunk more coffee and mulled wine than would comfortably fit in Willen Lake.

You fitted in two weddings and six funerals.

Now you’ve just got three Midnight Masses, a dawn service, and a mid-morning service to go.

(And, quite likely, Christmas and Boxing Day meals to cook).

Then it's "you time". Time to relax. Let all the adrenaline go.

It's time to  go down with the 'flu.

Enjoy it. You've earned it.

We went out for Christmas dinner on Christmas Day which was a new experience and much enjoyed then we blobbed in front of Christmas telly. Gavin and Stacey gave us the happy ending we hoped for. Then I slept twelve and a half hours into Boxing Day and in the afternoon caught up with Wallace and Gromit and the evil Feathers McGraw. Superb!

There comes a point where the excess of Christmas becomes too much. I think this year more so because it’s been going on since mid November. We had lunch in Harrogate today and on the menu were chocolate orange pancakes. I was tempted, but I couldn’t do it! A lot of people will in these days have begun to take Christmas decorations down. There are crème eggs in the shops! 

But!!



We had a minister at home who came for a year from the Uniting Church of Australia. His name was Brian Whitlock. He was a very loud and lively Australian! He made us learn Advance Australia Fair and sing it at church socials. But what I remember most about Brian was that he tried to ban Christmas carols until the arrival of Christmas Day. There had to be a small compromise with the choir but I saw his point. This is now the Christmas season and it lasts at least until Epiphany on 6 January and actually until Candlemas, 2 February, 40 days after Jesus’ birth when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple. I’ll be thinking about that on Sunday. 



These days after Christmas are filled with a number of minor festivals, days which we seldom observe unless they happen to fall upon a Sunday. These festivals help us understand just what this birth in a manger means. 

The 26th, yesterday, was the feast of St. John the Apostle. He of course wrote the Gospel and other books in our New Testament. His life was one of lengthy and devoted service. He is the Apostle of Incarnation, struggling to get his people of his day to see that the enfleshment of God in Christmas was vital to the Christian faith. God really does love this physical world and by taking up the flesh of a broken humanity he has redeemed the whole of this physical world. The prologue to his Gospel is perhaps the most beautiful part of Scripture when read in the King James Version. 

The 27th, today, is the feast of St. Stephen, the traditional end of the big party that was Christmas. And when Advent was penitential and the celebration did not start until Christmas Eve, that party would go for several days. Of course, this festival really seems out of place for the fuzzy sentimentality which marks commercial Christmas. This is the tragic death of an innocent man, stoned outside the walls of Jerusalem. Yet, this baby who lies in a manger will come to a cross, and he calls all his followers to take up a cross and follow him on that dusty and dreary road to Calvary. Stephen did. 

The 28th is the feast of the Holy Innocents, the children who were murdered by Herod in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus birth. One commentator estimates that this was about 24 children considering the size of the community. This dark day also stands in stark contrast to the bright cheerfulness of Christmas but is quite necessary. The Saviour came because the world in which we live is so dark. The darkness has not overcome it, but the darkness can be very dark. By insisting that the world is bright and cheery, we often cause people whose lives are darkened by sin to despair. We need in this time of Christmas to remember that Jesus came because our lives are indeed in need of the very salvation which he wrought. 

So we travel through the season of Christmas, and we pray it be real. The froth and excess food cannot go on for ever but these days remind us of the implication of God coming. That coming has to be enough to get us through whatever we have to face ahead. And it will if we remember the gift abides in us when the decorations and excitement have long ended. 

This hymn, lost from our current book expresses to me what Christmas that is deep and pastoral really means… 

And art Thou come with us to dwell,
Our Prince, our Guide, our Love, our Lord?
And is Thy Name Emmanuel,
God present with His world restored?

The world is glad for Thee! the rude
Wild moor, the city's crowded pen;
Each waste, each peopled solitude,
Becomes a home for happy men.

Thou bringest all again; with Thee
Is light, is space, is breadth and room
For each thing fair, beloved, and free
To have its hour of life and bloom.

Thy reign eternal will not cease;
Thy years are sure, and glad, and slow;
Within thy mighty world of peac
The humblest flower hath leave to blow.

Then come to heal thy people's smart,
And with Thee bring thy captive train;
Come, Saviour of the world and heart,
Come, mighty Victor over pain,

And let our earth's wild story cease
Its broken tale of wrong and tears;
Come, Lord of Salem, Prince of Peace,
And bring again our vanished years.

The world is glad for Thee! the heart
Is glad for Thee! and all is well,
And fixed and sure, because Thou art,
Whose Name is called Emmanuel.





Tuesday, 24 December 2024

Christmas Eve - anticipating and hoping



I led a Christmas Eve communion in Bedale earlier. Here’s my Christmas Eve thoughts…

On Christmas Eve I offer you this prayer from Nite Blessings:

May you be reminded of the breathtaking love of God. Remember that He reached out to you before you reached out to Him. He found you before you were looking for Him. His embrace will hold you secure through every storm and every season. You are safe in Him always.

A man called J. B. Phillips wrote a book called: 'Your God Is Too Small'. What he addressed within that book was simply the attitude of people toward God. Not simply their attitude, but the imagination that they had about Him - whether it was a 'Father Christmas' figure that sat on a cloud and twanged at a harp, or whether it was a God of wrath who had no love or kindness, but just used us, the human race, as pawns in His big almighty plans.

And he said, We cannot understand God, and no matter how many schemes or systems or theologies we give birth to, God is beyond our understanding.”

I asked my congregation on Sunday morning whether we have to have Christmas to a script. I recalled with them Christmases growing up which were held at my Auntie Doris’s. Auntie Doris had Christmas dinner scripted. My mother was made to eat a sprout because it was Christmas and she would swallow one whole. If dinner wasn’t perfect, Auntie would burst into tears and it had to be cleared away by half past two so Auntie and mother could go upstairs to change before they saw the monarch at three. As if the Queen could see them!

I just worry this Christmas Eve, unlike children going to sleep later with big dreams of tomorrow, we grown ups have made Christmas small and stressy. There’s another sermon in me called “Ian went to M and S yesterday lunchtime and saw humanity at its worst.” Isn’t it time to rediscover the wonder of the story, the breathtaking love of God, the God who is beyond our understanding and yet chooses to break into his world and share life with all its complexity with us. Wow!

Let’s think for a moment about the initial reaction to Christmas. Mary asks “how can this be?” Joseph’s head spins. Zechariah is made mute. Elizabeth and Mary laugh. The shepherds are “sore afraid.” The magi are compelled to make a long journey. Herod is rattled. Simeon and Anna find peace. All the participants in the story find God suddenly at work in a wonderful and awesome way and life can never be the same again.

May you be reminded of the breathtaking love of God. Remember that He reached out to you before you reached out to Him. He found you before you were looking for Him. His embrace will hold you secure through every storm and every season. You are safe in Him always.

It isn’t Christmas for me until I hear the wonderful prologue to the Gospel of John, which I have included in my services tomorrow and I will read it myself in the glorious King James Version. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory,”. That’s what we’re about to celebrate – a great and mighty wonder.

God chose to humble Godself to the level of a poor, limited, human creature. And more than that—notice that John adds, “And we have seen his glory.” Jesus didn’t just become human for a minute or an hour or a day and then go right back to heaven. He lived among us for thirty-three years, enduring the messiness, the heartbreak, the inconvenience, the joy, and the pain of human life.

And he never walked out on that pain. He could have used his power at so many moments to ease his way. There was no reason for him to suffer the pain he went through, from getting sick, to getting in arguments,  to having clueless disciples, to having friends die, all the way up to the excruciating suffering he experienced on the cross. But he did it because he loves us, and he would never abandon us to suffer alone.

Let’s return briefly to those characters we know well. Mary said let it be to be according to your word. Joseph doesn’t have a speaking part but he stands by Mary and fathers the child and sorts things out after hearing angels. The shepherds declare let’s go and see. The magi follow the star. Elizabeth giggles about blessedness, Zechariah talks of the tender compassion of God and the dawn from on high breaking in upon us, Simeon can depart in peace having seen what he’d prayed for years to come and Anna found consolation and Herod – well he went berserk didn’t he threatened by what was occurring around him. And you dear people of Bedale and District Methodist Church this Christmas what is your response to all of this?

 I worked out from a week last Sunday to this afternoon I’ve had fourteen carol services or other Christmas worship. Two more in the morning. Every one of those has been special as I’ve watched people get caught up in the story again, from the lady with dementia in the nursing home shouting out one word from every carol we sang, to the whole school at Boroughbridge primary coming into church for their Christmas service which made the place rock, to people sharing a quiet blue Christmas with me at Allhallowgate as we lit candles and shared companionable silence, to the hoards that made their annual pilgrimage in the wind to Dallowgill on Sunday nightto sing their carols to their local wacky tunes and have great fun together.

There’s a lovely verse at the beginning of the book of Joshua where the people of God are about to enter the long hoped for promised land. And they are told “sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will work wonders among you.” This afternoon we come to quieten ourselves before the event, to remember and take in the wonderful fact that God is coming again. Don’t make your God too small this Christmas Eve.

And remember how and when God comes. I read this this morning:

Night was the time when the shepherds were used to being hounded by Roman soldiers, their lives threatened, chased off hillsides, living constantly with fear of attack, if not from soldiers, then wild animals that would circle their livestock. And it was their night that was pierced with light when the messenger from God came to the ones living on the very margins of society, ridiculed and shut out, and Divine glory shone around! It was night when the shepherds saw the messenger, the angel and heard the invitation.

We too can experience dark nights – even dark nights of the soul. Night.

Sometimes they are crushingly dark. Sometimes we are weary. Sometimes unbelievably empty and lonely. Sometimes we are weary and feel lost in the night. It’s then that we fear the most and feel most isolated. We may wonder if light and day will ever come.

But night is always there just before light and day kicks it firmly into touch.

Day always follows night. The light always comes. And today is no exception.

So - on this Christmas Eve may we look right into our night and know this….

That the day will soon be here. Hope is on its way. The Light of the whole world will pierce the darkness so that it bleeds with astounding, penetrating, inspiring, breath-taking, beautiful, radiant, glorious, eternal light and life.

 I don’t know how I ended up coming here this afternoon but I’m glad to be here to say to you find that breathtaking love of God for you, not just tonight or tomorrow but into the year ahead when life is hard and church isn’t joyful and it all feels so difficult. God comes, will come and incarnation is a reality every day – you are not alone.




Sunday, 22 December 2024

Advent - carolled out??



With only three days left to Christmas I think I’m all carolled out! I don’t think I’ve ever sung this many in such a short space of time. This last week has had services in church, nursing homes, schools, and schools in church. 

Boroughbridge Manor on Wednesday was very hot but lovely. Especially moving was a lady with severe dementia shouting out one word of each carol we had - hark, comfort, joy. Her brain obviously knew what we were singing and she could join in in her own way. Then there was my lovely lady from Darley who was as usual a verse behind so we had a solo! 



On Thursday morning, Allhallowgate had their annual coffee and carols morning with 70 people choosing their favourites. It was a fun time and the end of the year for the coffee morning which is an important outreach for our church. Then on Thursday afternoon I helped lead the carol service for Roecliffe School in the ancient church in the village. The children enjoyed the carols especially singing along to the Boney M version of Mary’s Boy Child. I didn’t tell them I bought that version on vinyl in 1978! 



Later on Thursday we went into Leeds to the Howard Assembly Rooms for an evening of Christmas music with Eliza Carthy and friends. It was a lovely time to receive for a change in this mad week! 



Friday saw the whole of Boroughbridge Primary School have their carol services in our church for the first time. The place was rocking and it was lovely to see the children having fun sharing the story with us and to see parents hanging over the balcony and to have our church full. 



Saturday had me leading a Blue Christmas service where we sang two carols and had a supportive space for those struggling. It was a peaceful and powerfully quiet time. Then in the evening I was glad to be at the village carols in the hall at Sawley. It was really good to be at a non church village event and just join in. Sixteen carols were sung in just over an hour. 



So to today. A morning service on Mary and Elizabeth, an afternoon carol service at Allhallowgate with over forty people there and then a full church at Dallowgill tonight where they come from near and far every year to sing some carols with local tunes and traditions. Dallowgill at Christmas is like a piece of elastic which pulls those who have been part of it in the past back. We filled an hour happily choosing our favourites and remembering those we sang when we went out singing in the community years ago and those requested on doorsteps every year. 

I’ve been reminded this week of the power of the carol. It tells the story and it evokes memories and it can be the only vehicle some share to hear the Gospel. A lot of people come and join in with them once a year. We sing the mightiest theology in them. How would it be if we had to explain some of the verses? Lo he abhors not the virgin’s womb anyone? After so many of them this week I’m nearly carolled out! They are great and they link church and the secular world like no other thing but please can I have one day without singing any tomorrow??!