Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 23rd March 2025

Dear Friends,

I was walking back from Meeting on Sunday, finding myself in a newly transformed world: suddenly spring had arrived. In the trees, the first blackbirds and thrush singing their hearts out; on the ground, snowdrops, primroses and above all daffodils. Knowing from experience that I can all too soon begin to take such sounds and sights for granted, I simply stopped to ponder and to marvel at the astonishing power of the life force of nature: those daffodils had been waiting underground for months and months, only to reappear now – a miraculous resurrection that often in fact coincides with Eastertime; and those birds instinctively knew exactly when to start singing. I used to keep a regular record of first sightings and sounds, and I can remember the thrill I felt when I opened Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selborne and found that his dates for the arrival of swifts each year, say, exactly coincided with mine, some 250 years later. I know that there is a totally rational explanation for such phenomena, but there is a part of me that remains open to the idea of a universe that has magic and mystery at its heart: soldiers taking part at the Battle of the Somme testified that they could hear skylarks singing overhead. At a time when the world seems to be ‘turning on its dark side’, to quote from the opening of Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, our planet has never seemed more precious. ‘We do not own the world, and its riches are not ours to dispose of at will… Work to ensure that our increasing power over nature is used responsibly, with reverence for life…’ [Advices and queries, No. 42]

Roger Cockrell

on behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (Patricia Cockrell, David Hitchin, Sharon Krummel, Tim Pitt-Payne, Caroline Pybus, Theresa Samms)