From the September 2024 Parish Magazine
Dear friends,
I would like to begin by thanking you for your wonderful welcome to us – your cards, letters, flowers and produce have all been so beautiful and heart-warming. We are really beginning to settle in well and are looking forward to getting to know you all better. At the time of writing, I am eagerly anticipating being licensed and installed as Vicar of Finedon.
September is a month of new beginnings, and this September will be a new beginning for all of us as we get to know one another and begin to hear what God has in store for our journey and see where God is guiding us. This is a really important time for us all, a time to be attentive to one another, and to the Holy Spirit blowing where She wills.
September is also a new beginning in the school year and just before I am installed a new class of infants will be starting at our Infant School, the older infants will be moving up to the Junior School and our former year 6 pupils will be anticipating (perhaps with trepidation) that move to secondary school. There are also those in our parish who are preparing to move up to college for Further Education or to University study and are faced with embarking on a new adventure away from home, and finally studying subjects which make their hearts sing. I encourage you to hold all pupils and students in your prayers this month, as well as teachers, support staff, lecturers and academics who will be guiding these initial steps in school, college and university.
As well as remembering educational institutions in our prayers, I particularly wish to mention our Infant and Junior Schools; children and staff who will be involved in my installation service, but also who I am so looking forward to getting to know over the coming months as I become a regular presence in our schools. As a former teacher I find schools to be such inspiring places, and the energy and questions that our children have always keeps me on my toes!
In this month of new beginnings then, what is your focus going to be? Is God perhaps calling you into something new and different? Or perhaps it is an opportunity to take stock of your relationship with God, and how you meet with God each day. As a priest I pray for my people and my parish each day during the Daily Offices.
A very wise person once encouraged me to make sure I have my first cup of tea (or coffee) in the morning with God though…this is where I truly encounter God, as I sit watching the life in the garden begin to wake up, and contemplate the day. It is in those few moments in the morning where God feels incredibly close, and the space between the garden and heaven feels incredibly thin.
If you begin nothing else this month, I invite you to begin starting your day with God somehow; with a cup of tea in your favourite chair, resting in the knowledge that God is with you and will continue to be so as your day unfolds. I look forward to hearing how God affirms or strengthens your faith through this very simple act of putting aside a small amount of time each day to dwell with God!
Grace and Peace,
Morna
