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The year is going - let it go! | by Fr Andrew Mitcham SSC of St. Michael & All Angels |
| So wrote Alfred Lord Tennyson. The year in question was 1833, during which Arthur Hallam, Tennyson’s best friend, died suddenly while on holiday abroad. In similar fashion, many people will be glad to see the back of 2006. During the past 12 months we have continued to live under the threat of international terrorism and witnessed yet more loss of life in Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur - while the end of the year was dominated by the murder of five young women in Ipswich. 2006 was also far from easy for the village. When members of such a small and close-knit community, die, are bereaved, or suffer serious illness – everyone is affected. That is not, of course, to say that the last twelve months have been all “doom and gloom.” Alongside the ordinary pleasures of everyday life, the love of family and friends, the support of neighbours and the annual round of village gatherings. There have also been particular causes for celebration: babies have been born, marriages celebrated and new people made their home here. Yet, on balance, if there are “good” and “bad” years, 2006 probably falls, for most of us, into the latter category. What, we wonder, will 2007 bring (see Occold's Annus Horibilis). In one sense, when we wish people a “Happy New Year” it is a greeting based on hope rather than experience. Time flies, but there are things that never change, and most of them for the good of all. It is then perhaps particularly appropriate that this first issue of the Occold Oracle in 2007 should focus on agriculture and our relationship with the land and the changing seasons. | That great philosopher and preacher, the author of Ecclesiates assures us that: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven - a time to be born and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time for war and a time for peace.” He sees all this as part of the way Creation works “God has made everything suitable for its time; he says, Time, like space, is awesome, almost beyond understanding, but unlike space we can largely decide what we do with it. Time, a gift of God, is too precious to abuse or to waste. Michael Morpurgo said recently that the chief need of our children was our time. And it is not only children who need time spending on them. We all need to take time to care, time to talk, time to build relationships, time to listen – and this is true locally, nationally and internationally. One might struggle to reason why we mark the passing of one year and the dawn of a new one, but there is every reason to recognise that we too are part of a process, carried along by time’s tide but far from helpless because we are able to make choices. Some of those choices may change us, or our families, or our neighbours. Some may eventually change the world. Happy New Year |