Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 29th January 2023

Dear Friends

In Spring 1994, the dramatist Dennis Potter was interviewed on TV by Melvyn Bragg.  Potter was gravely ill, with terminal cancer of the pancreas and liver, and died three months later.
To manage his pain during the interview, he had cigarettes, black coffee, a glass of champagne, and a hip flask full of liquid morphine.
The following passage from the interview was widely quoted.

At this season, the blossom is out in full now … and instead of saying ‘Oh that’s nice blossom’ … last week looking at it through the window when I’m writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. 
The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know. 
There’s no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance. Not that I’m interested in reassuring people.
The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.

At Meeting for Worship last Sunday, a passage was read from Advices and Queries (number 7), reminding of the inspiration that is to be found all around us. 
We can’t achieve the sort of intense, ecstatic experience that Potter was referring to by an effort of will.  It can only come as a gift.
But we can still try to find the times, places, practices – and they will be different for each one of us – that open us up to “the nowness of everything”.
 
Tim Pitt-Payne

On behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (David Hitchin, Chris Lawson, Tim Pitt-Payne, Theresa Samms, Nancy Wall)