The party’s over. You slump on the settee and survey the abandoned plates and dirty glasses
scattered across the room. The crumbs across the carpet. Clear up tonight, or leave ‘til morning? It’ll wait. Tomorrow’s an ordinary day.
The church parties are over. The year’s festivals are past: Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and all stops between, crammed into half the year. Then nothing for the second half. ‘Ordinary Time’ it’s labelled in the church. For months now, it will be, well, ordinary. All Saints Day (Nov 1st ) sounds a late blast of a party popper found down the back of the ecclesiastical sofa.
And yet all those festivals and what they represent are now part of us: we have patched their truths anew into ourselves for another year, like the glorious multi-coloured rug pictured. We need all their colours. We can draw from each in the ordinariness of life.
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We are always Advent people: We look forward in true hope
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We are always Christmas people: God chooses to live with us
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We are Lent people: less can be more
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We are Good Friday people: Christ carries our deepest sorrows
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We are Easter people: resurrection beckons beyond each dark shadow
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We are Pentecost people: God’s Spirit moves mysteriously among us – and turns life’s water into wine.
Probably not our washing-up water, though. But midst the daily dishes, may sips of the spirit from
those festival season’s parties sustain us all year round.
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Follow-up to February Rectory notes ‘Same-sex blessings’: Following discussion in PCCs and the
wider Mission Community, I am pleased to confirm that blessings of same-sex relationships can
now take place within existing Sunday services in our churches.
https://ottervalechurches.org/life- events/blessings
