Latest Reflections
THE COMMON STREAM
Canon Edward Probert (Monday 1st March 2010)
I recently read what 30 years ago was a rather modish work of history. ‘Montaillou’ is an account of the life of a southern French village which draws upon the detailed records of an Inquisition conducted by an early 14th century bishop, the village of the title being then something of a nest of Albigensian heretics. The historian’s approach is sociological, so he doesn’t tell the story of the Inquisition or of the village, but rather describes different facets of life there at a particular point in its history.
One remarkable thing emerged from the margins of the book: that there is still someone with the surname of the village’s dominant peasant family living there 700 years later. I presume by now they might have moved or changed their name, because it’s not a family with very creditable ancestors! Even so, it’s striking that in a place with only a few hundred inhabitants, a family should continue through numerous wars, revolutions, and economic and social transformations. It’s a reminder of the continuity of community, which is a theme dramatised in a much lighter way in Rutherfurd’s ‘Sarum’.
Actually this should come as no surprise to anyone who has been part of a church. These communities have long memories, and often continue to be influenced by people who are long gone. There is often a prehistory undergirding present relationships and attitudes. The best analogy for this common life (pace St Paul, whose body analogy is rather better known) is a stream: it moves at all times, water is added to it from many sources and at many different stages in its progress, and is taken out of it likewise; it has a clear identity which begins in one place and finishes in another, but who knows exactly where on that course any constituent gallon of water came from or will end up? It doesn’t have the clear definition of a body, with its skin, but rather sloppy edges where it interacts with the surroundings. And of course it flows finally into a common destiny in the sea.
However you conceive our common life as Christians, however you experience it, it’s helpful to remember both that we are but small parts of this vast fluid movement, and also that any of us, like the Clergue family in their Pyrenean village, may play a much longer part than we expect.
THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD
Canon Jeremy Davies, Precentor (Monday 1st February 2010)
Christmas is long past - though I write this on the twelfth day of Christmas, the day when traditionally Christmas decorations come down and the tree is disposed of - but in the Cathedral at least, the presence of the crib until Candlemas (2 February) reminds us that the feast of our Lord's birth triggers forty days of celebration, giving us time not only to celebrate God's gift of himself - the Word made flesh and dwelling among us - but also to reflect on the implications of this mystery for our sense of God and the conduct of our lives.
Candlemas is the feast which formally brings the Christmas season to a close and as we recall the Presentation of Christ in the Temple and the old man Simeon's prophecy that the new Messiah would be a light to lighten the Gentiles and that his mother would share the pain of his Passion, so our thoughts move from incarnation to redemption, from Christ's birth to his death.
Most of you will know that the story of Jesus' Passion, his journey towards death and resurrection, will be retold in dramatic form on Good Friday, 2 April. Then the Churches in Salisbury, together with thousands of others from near and far, take to the streets as daylight fades to act out the greatest story ever told. At eleven stations around the city and the Close, the events of Jesus' Via Dolorosa will unfold and with Bishop Stephen Conway to guide us, we will remember the brutality and the courage of our human condition - both themes relevant in our world today. But the Christian claim is that the God who pitches his tent among us remains faithfully alongside in every painful exigency of human living and through his very presence transforms our experience of life and of what it means to be human.
This Way of the Cross - the fourth time it has been performed in Salisbury - is an opportunity for all of us to move out of the relative comfort of our Churches and with our fellow Christians of different traditions to get involved in proclaiming the reality of God's love for his world on the streets of our city. Everyone, of whatever age, can be involved and we will be very grateful for your help. And I think that you, despite the effort that will be required of all of us, will be glad to have been part of this great community drama.