New Year's Eve

There were a lot of people on the train from Ashford to Hastings earlier this afternoon, clearly travelling to get to parties. People were armed with bags of food, bottles of wine, large cases full of party clothes I guess, one man struggled on at Rye with an enormous set of golf clubs! 

I used to get worked up about tonight, especially if I was not invited to a party. In Storrington, the Rector had "New Year Bells" followed by "seasonal refreshments" - any excuse for the then Rector of Storrington to have "seasonal refreshments"! That little service where at 11.55 we went outside and were quiet together at the end of the year altered my needs for this night. Similar was New Year's Eve in 1999, where we were all invited to light millennium candles prior to the year 2000. I remember having boxes of them in every room in my house in Mossley and the vicar, Father Lindsay being obsessed with candles for months before we lit them! 
I did parties as a teenager with church youth group. I remember walking along Harpenden High Street with about ten others (you know who you are!) dressed as a hedge. No drink was involved!

But Malcolm Acheson's dear old New Year bells in Storrington and those millennium candles are more important in memory for me really. The end of a year is a chance to light a light to say thank you God for light shining through some pretty dark times in 2015. I guess most of my readers will have had some. I will light a candle here at 11.55 and remember you.

Perhaps you might do the same to remember others who need to know that light tonight. 2015 for me has largely been a very good year. Work (I think!) is going well, my Circuit (I think!) is in positive spirit; my four delightful churches (I think!) have strong foundations on which to move forward to in some cases exciting new possibilities in 2016. One will be worshipping elsewhere from the end of September, another will have some major refurbishment, the other two will have looked with me at some material for small churches doing rural ministry. Messy Churches, school work, some integration into the community will develop further. I have a delightful group of people to work with. Personally, my friendships have deepened, I thank God for them every day. I delight in the people who build me up and make me laugh and who walk with me when things are tough. My divorce is still not complete and I wish i were now, The passing of Molly hit me really hard. I loved that cat so much :) My Mum is not in a good place and that is hard. I have a problem also that doesn't seem to go away after nearly two years of it rumbling on and it is a dark shadow for me. But as I say, 2015 has been largely fab. 

2016 will at last bring my sabbatical, well overdue. I love my ministry here but to have a gift of three months doing something a bit different and having no phones ring or e-mails sent and no pastoral responsibility sounds good just for a bit. I then have to think hard about whether I am going to offer to stay here beyond 2017. The reinvitation process is not pleasant. I will not make the decision to offer or not offer until after my sabbatical. (I think some of you know what I would like to happen though. Hint - I am VERY HAPPY here!!)

So, what to do with tonight. I am very content, the introvert that I am to be here and to be quiet. Last year some of us enjoyed Facebooking and texting through Queen and Adam Lambert from Central Hall. I hope some of us in might join together that way later on. I read this though in today's Guardian:     
"We will turn the television on, and see in a heart-stopping moment of panic that BBC1 is literally spending the last half-hour of 2015 broadcasting a live Bryan Adams concert, even though nobody on Earth has wasted so much as a single thought about Bryan Adams for two full decades, and you all sit there watching it anyway, watching Bryan Poxy Adams sing the Robin Hood song over and over again on New Year’s Eve, wondering if this is how you wanted your life to turn out and if this is how it’s going to be for ever? The fireworks come on afterwards and you notice that the only thing worse than seeing a full-length firework display in person is watching a full-length firework display on television?"

Well, if you are joining me watching Bryan, come and join me in a virtual celebration. Light a candle and weep at that Robin Hood song. Has Bryan Adams enough hits to last over an hour? We shall see. Sir Tom Jones is on Jools Holland on the other side.     

I wish you whether you are quiet (introverts can do New Years Eve quite happily) or loud tonight, at a party, at a church, with family, or alone, with a glass, or without, a peace filled and hope filled 2016. Whatever 2015 has brought to us, we need to remember our blessings. Often the small things need celebrating. Without them, acts of kindness especially, life would be poorer. Thank you if you reading this for being you. 

Regular readers of this blog will know it is titled after a Bonhoeffer quote.  I end these thoughts with him. One of the last messages received from Dietrich Bonhoeffer before his execution was a poem entitled “New Year 1945.”  Written from a Gestapo-run prison during the air raids on Berlin, Bonhoeffer’s words speak as New Year 2016 dawns:

With every power for good to stay and guide me,
comforted and inspired beyond all fear,
I’ll live these days with you in thought beside me,
and pass, with you, into the coming year.

While all the powers of Good aid and attend us,
boldly we’ll face the future, be it what may.
At even, and at morn, God will befriend us,
and oh, most surely on each new year’s day

The old year still torments our hearts, unhastening:
the long days of our sorrow still endure.
Father, grant to the soul thou hast been chastening
that Thou hast promised—the healing and the cure.

Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving
even to the dregs of pain, at thy command,
we will not falter, thankfully receiving
all that is given by thy loving hand.

But, should it be thy will once more to release us
to life’s enjoyment and its good sunshine,
that we’ve learned from sorrow shall increase us
and all our life be dedicate as thine.

To-day, let candles shed their radiant greeting:
lo, on our darkness are they not thy light,
leading us haply to our longed-for meeting?
Thou canst illumine e’en our darkest night.

When now the silence deepens for our harkening,
grant we may hear thy children’s voices raise
from all the unseen world around us darkening
their universal paean, in thy praise.

While all the powers of Good aid and attend us,
boldy we’ll face the future, be it what way.
At even, and at morn, God will befriend us,
And oh, most surely on each new year’s day!