My dear friends,

We have come to the dark time of year and it will draw different responses from all of us. For     children, and the child within us, there will be the excitement, the fear of going out and coming home in the dark, the thrill of night-skies lit up by fireworks, the half-ritualised fear of Halloween bogies. For some of us as adults there will be a sense of new warmth and community as we come closer together, do more indoors, gather around roaring fires, spend longer evenings at home with one another. For others there will be inward, as well as outward gloom a sense that the dark evenings, bleak days, the sun lost or formless behind hostile clouds, is more than just outer weather but an expression, perhaps a cause, of emotional and spiritual darkness too. We are taught as children to rhyme November and Remember though perhaps the more we really remember about Guy Fawkes and burnings in effigy the less comfortable we may feel with that act of remembrance. But November opens with other remembrances both more recent and more ancient. All Saints and All Soul's day ask us to remember those whom we call the dead, those whom we love but see no longer. But what we remember on these holy days is not just the brief burst of visible life they shared with us in this world of time and dimension, but the true life that was in them, the life that is light, a light kindled, and re-kindled, we believe, by the One who is light and whose light is the life of all people. His light shines in darkness and no darkness can overcome it.

It is right to begin the dark days of November with a celebration of the saints in light. On the 8th of November we will keep Remembrance Sunday and remember those who have fallen and continue to fall in our wars. What do we remember then? Courage certainly, and endurance in those who fought. Grief and loneliness in those bereaved. But also the folly and pride that lead to war, and the inhumanity into which war always descends. Can remembering war in this way be a part of preventing it? Those who instituted this remembrance certainly hoped so, but the ghosts of the fallen at Ypres would look on in horror at the trenches in Afghanistan, filled as their’s were, with English soldiers who hoped they might be home for Christmas.

Is there any act of remembrance that can encompass all these? Any way of remembering that would truly be for liberation and not for the perpetuation of old cycles of sin and suffering? Well there is the great act of remembrance that takes place Sunday by Sunday in the Vale Church, when we remember how God himself came to be part of history, part of our story, how he died once for all so that we and all our dead might have the hope of life. And at the heart of what we do in remembrance of Him is one clear truth, that He remembers us. God has not forgotten, He is engaged with us and our world. In November we remember the dead, but however fond the memory, they are still, for us, the dead. But when God remembers us, as he promised, then in that very moment we become the living. My prayer for myself and for us all in this dark season is the prayer of the thief on the cross: Jesus Remember me when you come into your Kingdom.

With my love and blessings,

Your Rector and friend,