Dear Friends
I can’t quite believe that I’m no longer going to look across to the organ buffet and see Margaret Harvey sitting there week by week! Margaret has faithfully served Menston Parish Church, week by week, for over 40 years offering her skills as a musician; principally as organist and choir leader. It is going to be quite a wrench for her and for us, but thankfully Margaret is not going to be leaving us.
On Sunday 7th November there will be a presentation to Margaret and a light lunch in the Parish Room, which will be our formal opportunity to say thank you to her for all that she has contributed over these years. We won’t be able to reflect all that Margaret has given, but we will be able to pay tribute to it. Personally I am deeply grateful to Margaret for being organist here when I arrived, for her support and understanding and for the example of her Christian faithfulness in all she has given.
As I contemplate what it might mean to serve in the same place for 40 years, I feel full of admiration and wonder if I am also a little envious! That might sound strange but then I have hardly been alive long enough to give 40 years to anything! The longest I have lived anywhere was my first nine years of life, which was 9 years in one place; probably because my parents were starting their married life and creating a family. This has never happened again for me and maybe I won’t have another opportunity for such physical stability.
People of my generation and the generations coming after me are now geared to so much change and movement, new developments and opportunities that it is unlikely we will be available to offer long spans of time to anything, anywhere. Pilgrimage is no longer purely a metaphor for a spiritual journey that you don’t need to make, but which for your motivation and the call of God you must make, but a reality in which the future may look different tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. Stability for younger generations cannot afford to be about what is fixed; especially connected to place, rather it is about networks; most crucially networks of relationships, hopefully with God and people, who are part of our journey and pilgrimage, with whom we share our story. We have to travel light; literally and metaphorically, if we are to survive. This was part of the situation the early church found itself in. Maybe in our time we will see the church face such challenges that return us to being the kind of church we read about in the New Testament. It survived then and it can survive and flourish now.
What the church most needs is people; faithful to God’s call to them, living life in the present as part of the people of God wherever that may be, prayerfully reflective, alert to making the most of God-given opportunities, developing and using the gifts and talents they have creatively and for the enrichment of others. Then, as with Margaret, we will have so much to be thankful for, to God and to one another.
Yours in Christ,
Ruth