Storm Eunice rages outside right now. The trees sway madly. Pigeons cluster for shelter on the limbs of the horse chestnut sheltered by the neighbour’s towering, dancing conifer. Down the lane a tree lies prostrate, roots skyward. The recycling bins hide wisely in the garage.
On an ancient mountain top, a man hears the wind scream around the rocky summit. Drained and depressed from life’s triumphs and tragedies, he stumbles from his cave to stand and take the full force. He feels nothing, just more numbness. As he did in the violent earthquake …
[Read more...]
Reverend Davids March 2022 Message – Wind, Earth and Fire
Reverend David’s February 2022 Message – Pictures, Memory & Stories
I’ve just finished putting together a digital photo album for 2021. It’s now with Snapfish, and next week a beautifully printed hard-back album should drop through the letter-box. 2020 was my first of these – lockdown year needed its unique memories preserved. 2021 felt like a diluted version: horizons broadened but not much – what photos of interest would I have? And yet so many memories surfaced when I looked back, many of them seemingly insignificant, yet miniature treasures. A butterfly. The Feniton train emerging from mist. A Zoom …
[Read more...]
Reverend David’s January 2022 Message – Guiding Light
“Hang on, folks – please!” It’s the Wise Men. “You’ve packed us away with your tinsel and crib, and we haven’t even got to Bethlehem yet! Caspar – how long does the SatNav say?” “Just recalculating, Melchior… here it comes, 3 months – that’s on Camel Setting”. “See what I mean, you good people of the future? You hurtle into the Christmas Sales like there’s no tomorrow and barrel into 2022, leaving us for dust (well, desert sand). S-l-o-w d-o-w-n! We didn’t get to our famed place in the Christmas story by rushing. No, we s-l-o-w-e-d, we looked …
[Read more...]
Reverend David’s December 2021 Message – Light Wins
The steaming Christmas pudding is placed ceremoniously on your dinner table. The brandy is sloshed over it (an extra one for luck). The lights are flicked off. A match is struck – and in the darkness the pudding flames dance with beautiful blue light.
The last day of last December, and I’m on Hembury Fort to bid farewell in the closing daylight to an extraordinary year. A surprise snow-shower sweeps in. The light turns momentarily magical and mysterious, vivid brightness battling the dark clouds.
December is a battleground. Light and dark – …
[Read more...]
Reverend David’s November 2021 Message – Hope in a climate crisis
Climate change challenges my faith. It would perhaps be surprising if it didn’t – our Planet’s problems seem overwhelming. As Government leaders gather in Glasgow for the pivotal COP26 climate conference, I find I have to go back to basics. Sometimes that’s the best way.
The reality of global warming has long been evident. Working in climate research 30 years ago made that clear – the basic physics is not ‘rocket science’. The global graphs of temperature would go up. A lot. How far and how fast, that was the question.
Covid-19 brought graphs …
[Read more...]
Reverend David’s September 2021 Message – Journeys, Archbishops and Planets
“A single ticket from Feniton, please. To errr… the South Pacific.” “The Pacific, sir?” checks the man at the counter, “that’s very adventurous, if I may be bold enough to say. Is that business, sir, or are we on holiday?” “Mmmm, you could call it God’s business, I suppose”. “My apologies, sir, I see you’re a man of the cloth. So I’m sure He will bring you back safely to us, sir. A Return ticket, then.” “I’m not so sure! Let’s stick with One-way.” “Well, have a nice trip, sir.”
It’s 1855, and John Coleridge Patteson leaves the Feniton family …
[Read more...]
Reverend David’s August 2021 Message – Becoming our true selves
I sat down last week at a low table in Feniton school hall. Nervously yet excitedly, individual children showed me in turn a portfolio they had compiled. It contained their evidence of activities they’d completed: active citizenship in the school, citizenship in the community, an active hobby and a non-active hobby, adventure training and charity work. This was their assessment for the Torbay and Devon Civic Award, rather like a Primary school Duke of Edinburgh Award. Us adults, socially-distanced across the hall, were their assessors. The …
[Read more...]
Reverend David’s July 2021 Message – Settledness
There is quiet celebration in the Carrington household this summer. Our house-moves over recent years fell strangely into a 3-year rhythm. This month we mark our 3rd anniversary of moving here – and we’ve no intention of going anywhere else. We are delighted at this more settled prospect. For you this may be for-better-or-for-worse!
In some walks of life, regular moves are of course the norm. In my former training life at the Met Office, we liaised with the Navy’s meteorological training centre in Plymouth; a strong relationship with my …
[Read more...]
Reverend David’s June 2021 Message – Summer of Grace
Summer – what a wonderful word! The days stretch and relax. The sun shines (or not!). Warmth fills our bodies – winter’s cold becomes hard to imagine. Memories of childhood summers, lying back on the grass with gloriously nothing to do but gaze up at the deep blue sky and pick out animal shapes in the drifting clouds. A pint in a pub garden. The smell of suncream. Of bar-b-ques.
What are you doing this summer? Less traveling than in others, perhaps. In whatever way Covid chooses to cramp our summer style, the season will still sing for us its …
[Read more...]
Reverend David’s May 2021 Message
Images of Service
It’s less than 24 hours since the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh as I write this. The images are raw. The military precision of the procession in the bright sunshine. The Royal family, grieving but together. Most of all, the Queen in the double pain of her husband’s funeral with Covid restrictions. The first glimpse of her seated in the limousine, face-masked. Then most poignantly of all, sat in the Chapel isolated from her family members. Vulnerable and frail, she walked the painful path so many others have done in these …
[Read more...]