YOURS FAITHFULLY
IT’S so easy to forget isn’t it? I know as the years roll on some of the memories, have are really clear, and others are getting mixed up!
I vividly recall aspects of my childhood, growing up in the New Forest and my bike being my independence.
We would often as friends go out all day together, a bottle of squash and a bag of peanut butter sandwiches to keep us going.
I know we were gone all day because the only rule was to be back for tea at 6pm! Often we would beg to be allowed out again. Happy days, happy memories.
Last week we marked Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday
– a collective time of remembering. It’s so important because as human beings we can easily forget, especially the details.
Apart from the services across the country, we hear stories each year of sacrifice, of pain, of the horror man can inflict on his fellow man.
We see the replay of these accounts in films and documentaries, they look back to what we must never recreate again. As time passes it seems longer ago in our corporate history.
History has been in the making in other ways through the Cop26 conference in Glasgow.
Never again will humanity have the chance to right the wrongs of its actions against the planet, our home, the Earth.
Clearly laid out, the science has now fully explained what we have done to warm up our precious home and habitat.
Two weeks for nations across the world to listen to the evidence, and to take action.
Whether it’s historic actions or current ones, the call is to do the right thing.
I remember a 1974 Blue Peter programme as if it was yesterday.
The piece was about aerosol sprays and how the elements that are released into the atmosphere had caused a hole in the ozone layer.
During that year these small documentaries told about how methane gas, factory farming, pesticides in agriculture all would add up to great harm for our environment.
To this day I have never forgotten those messages, and good on Blue Peter’s team for bringing them to the attention of the young.
We can only do our bit and my part was to become a vegetarian, not so radical these days!
Meanwhile, as Cop26 and Remembrance Day have pressed on in the news, I have recently lost friends like many others.
Ethney Ellwood, who was a bright light to me during my
There is no time to lose. Be the invitation to others
days in theological college. Peter Dixon, who suddenly died of covid last week, became a friend through a mutual love of monasticism. Then my dear friend Cynthia Firman, who has been a constant friend and support over the last 18 years.
I met Cynthia at our local church and she immediately invited me to her home for afternoon tea.
We quickly became friends. Age made no difference, she was 27 years ahead of me! We went out a lot to eat and have fun together.
Cynthia connected people up with an innate skill I am in awe of. There was her literature group, her oriental studies group, the walking group, the keep fit crew, and she was always ready to invite people to any of these depending on their interests.
During her lifetime she saw the birth of the NHS, and also the inception of the European Union, she had so many memories, stories and a context to share.
We say our final goodbyes on Thursday and my talk begins with this: “To have friends you have to know how to be a friend. This was what Cynthia personified.”
In our pandemic times there is no time to lose, be the invitation to others. Enjoy the here and now with friends, make the memories for
tomorrow today.