November 2005

Dear Friends,

It has been noted by many – including me – that November is a month of remembering. It begins with the feast All Souls, when we remember with thanksgiving those whom we love who have died; then there’s Guy Fawks, Remember, remember the 5^th of November ….; Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday; all these give November the feel of a month wrapped in memories as well as the usual November fog.

Fine and important as November’s memorials are (I dare not dispute it!) we do have a tendency as a species, I think, to be constantly looking over our shoulder at what has been: keeping the present enslaved to the past.

But in the Church’s year November is also known as The Kingdom Season. Beginning with the feast of All Saints and concluding with Christ the King, the last Sunday of the Church’s year, the Church collectively looks forward to the fulfilment of the Kingdom of God, which is to say the perfection of God’s reign.

In other words, the close of the church’s year is not primarily about looking back at what people have done, or even looking back at what God has done, but about looking forward to the Next Thing, about straining ever on, ever forward, until all is brought to completion.

How different would we be if we all based our expectations on our hope of the future rather than on our fears from the past; if we took the promise of future glory as the basis and motivation of our actions now? What would happen, if instead of worrying about what was, we strain forward to what could be?