FROM REVEREND ROBIN
In April across our Benefice of 7 Churches we celebrated Holy week with a daily service in Church of either Compline, Evening Prayer, Maundy Thursday with the washing of feet, Good Friday with an hour at the cross, Holy Saturday which included an Easter Fire in Michaelstow Churchyard, and finally a Eucharistic service in every church across the Benefice on Easter Sunday.
I was exhausted. Leaving for Church on Easter Sunday at 07:00 and returning home at 19:00 I stumbled through the door, not due to the amount of communion wine I had consumed that day (I did have to pass on finishing the chalice at the last two churches due to fear of becoming inebriated). But because 12 hours takes its toll. As I was about to inform my family of the heroic undertaking, I had just performed, ready to be showered in praise and admiration from my little angels and darling wife, I remembered the time Emmy was a student nurse. Heavily pregnant with our eldest, walking forty-five minutes to the hospital to perform a 12-hour shift in A&E before walking back again as I was working in a different town and we only had one car. Choosing wisely, I think not to blow my own trumpet at how ‘not all heroes wear capes’ but they do sometimes wear cassocks. I decided to go into the lounge and join in the Easter fun the family were having while silently hoping someone would offer me a bit of the chocolate egg that I spied as soon as I got home.
I write all this to first and foremost offer my respect to everyone who has a proper job. That is, to the people that get up every day to clock in, work solidly until it’s time to go home, clock out and then do it all again the next day. Our country only survives because of what you all do. And to everyone who works those long days, farming, nursing, doctoring (I’m sure there is a better word), teaching, look after yourselves. I was exhausted doing it for one day, how you manage to keep going I will never know but know that you are all in my prayers.
May is now upon us, Christmas and Easter are behind us and Summer is around the corner. This means the weather should be getting warmer (although I will believe that when I see it), and with that comes Carnivals, Fetes, BBQs, beach trips, and picnics. When you live in the most beautiful part of the country and in the best villages in Cornwall it is easy to forget that most people are not so fortunate. As I write this JD Vance is in the air heading to Pakistan to talk peace with a country only a few days ago President Trump said he would exterminate, the conflict and resulting press releases of ‘he said this and they said that’ means no one really has any idea of what is going on and why. But then maybe that is the point. How can we say it failed if we don’t know what the objective was? Regardless, as I have written many times in these articles as conflict never ends it just changes aggressors and victims, I pray that by the time you read this it is done, that peace has been found, that relationships can be strengthened all round and that we will have gotten to a point in civilisation where we see how pointless all this killing and bombing and Tweeting in all capitals really is. We are all human beings, made in the image of God. And while we may disagree on things, have different faiths, different ideas, we do not need to kill each other over them.
Jesus never said ‘hate them’, he never said ‘fight’ he said ‘love your enemies and forgive them’ and I pray that that is what will happen, one day. Amen.
REVD ROBIN THWAITES
