Dear colleagues

This week we took down (without the assistance of the cherry picker we needed back in July!) the magnificent Triwonder Installation at Winchester Cathedral, that was featured on ITV and in The Times and The Telegraph! Sections of it are now en-route to a parish near you!! I’m delighted that the hangings will be installed in churches during this season of Creationtide, or having the individual animal cards with prayers used for interactive prayer and creative worship.

My team and cathedral colleagues were initially so happy to warmly laugh in joyful response, then to pause and think how meaningful this prayer, written by a child on a beautifully decorated crab, as part of the installation moved us. The pupil wrote : ‘Thank you God for all your vegetables, because I really love mashed potatoes’. Out of the mouths……….

Children and adults can express profound things. Another child’s contribution to the installation caught my interest, in the photo above : ‘Dear Lord, Thank you for the wonder of all animals, especially rats. Amen’. Again, shared happiness from the team at the Cathedral when they saw it. But we quickly realised the deep and meaningful message from a child. Out of the mouths……..

An internationally acclaimed and famous poet, whose poem is sung annually and globally by millions of people on New Year’s Eve prompted this Bulletin reflection from me. Time-related, he had an irregular education and school experience, and much of his education was with his father, who taught his children reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and history but also wrote for them A Manual of Christian Belief.

Robert Burns (1759-1796) is Scotland’s national poet and known as ‘The Ploughman Poet’, amongst many other nicknames. He was the oldest of seven children of a farmer who repeatedly moved and had an unsettled life himself, dying young with 12 children. ‘To a Mouse’ is an apology from Burns to a field mouse after disturbing its nest when out ploughing. He considers this act to be more broadly symbolic of humankind exerting their control over nature, and upsetting the balance of relationship between people, animals and our shared environment. The poem is written in the Scots dialect, and will be easier to understand if you read it aloud. You can read the poem here: To a Mouse by Robert Burns - Scottish Poetry Library

The poem clearly asks us to consider what Robbie Burns sees that he has in common with the mouse; and is “man’s dominion” a good or bad thing for the mouse and for nature more widely? Burns is truly sorry for destroying the mouse’s “wee bit housie”. So a question for us  -  Is there a time when we have inadvertently killed an animal or destroyed its home? How did it make us feel? When could a Christian justify this kind of act? How does nature and humanity share similar plights?

So, in a country where we are statistically only ever 3 metres away from a rat, and most of us don’t have pet mice, their presence in our eco-system as created by God offers us a moment to reflect. Out of the mouths…….?

With my thanks for all you do in our schools and parishes,  but importantly who you are when incarnationally present in your communities.

Best wishes for a good term ahead

Jeff