As you know, the Chinese name their years after an animal.  We're just finishing the Year of the Pig, and from February will be in the Year of the Rat.  This set me thinking: if we did the same in our church and parish, what animal would we be looking forward to in 2008?

My immediate thought was that this year will be the Year of the Ant. 

Ants are renowned for their purposeful industry, and without a doubt we face a very busy year ahead of us in Hale with Badshot Lea.  The very early date of Easter on 23^rd March - you have to go back to the year 1818 to find an earlier one - means that we no sooner finish our Christmas and Epiphanytide celebrations with the Feast of Candlemas on Sunday 3^rd February, than we are plunged into Lent on Ash Wednesday, 6^th February.

We're allowed a bit of a breather after Easter, but Sunday 27^th April is St Mark's Day, and heralds the start of three months of celebration for the 125^th Anniversary of St Mark's Church.  At a joint parish service on that day, the Bishop of Guildford will preside and preach in St Mark's Church, and we hope that very many of you will be able to come and join in our celebrations that day.  And from then until the closing service on 13^th July (the Eve of St Swithun's Day, when the church was dedicated in 1883), we will be busy marking the occasion in a variety of ways, with a series of concerts and a Flower Festival both in the process of being planned.   Also, at many of our services in Hale during that time, we shall be welcoming back as preachers several former clergy from the parish (including the Rt Revd Humphrey Southern, who is now Bishop of Repton).  So, as spring turns into summer, 2008 becomes for a time the Year of the Lion, the symbol of St Mark.

One animal definitely isn't in the running for 2008, however.  This year is not going to be the Year of the Ostrich.  That animal is infamous for burying its head in the sand when faced with a situation it would rather not acknowledge.  This has always struck me as a bit dumb.  To start with, if the danger is real, then putting your head in a hole and pretending it's not there will obviously do you no good at all.  But if you face it, you may well find that the danger isn't really all that much of a threat after all, and discover that you can cope with it.  And of course, burying your head prevents your seeing, not just the unpleasant things, but all the good and beautiful sights around you.

Our parish enters 2008 facing some big challenges.  In the vanguard there is a financial challenge, but behind this lies the even greater challenge of how we can truly be the Church for our community.  What does it really mean to proclaim and personify the Good News of God in Hale and Badshot Lea in 2008?  We are not burying our heads in the sand about any of these challenges.  We have already begun a process of discernment in our churches, to explore the ways in which God is calling us to move forward in our joint task of ministry.  This will continue into the new year, and at the last Parochial Church Council of 2007, your representatives committed us all to a major initiative in 2008, culminating in September with a presentation which will ‘showcase' our church to the wider community, and invite us all to renew and deepen our commitment, personal and financial, to the mission and ministry of our church.   And as we face up to our challenges and turn them into opportunities to be embraced rather than threats to shun, so I believe, God will honour our courage and determination.

So, it's going to be a year of purposeful industry, and we will spend a great deal of time and energy scurrying round like busy little ants.  I'm sure this will all be very stimulating, exciting, and productive.  But there is a danger that we become too busy, over­ stimulated and excited, and if that happens, then our productivity will actually start to go down, and our health will suffer too. 

So, when we face a time of particularly intense busyness, as we do on the threshold of 2008, we should remind ourselves of the need for balance in our lives, both as individuals and as a church.  We will need, this year perhaps even more than others, to find opportunities to pray, to simply let ourselves be and rest in the presence of God.  So I wonder whether 2008 should be, not just the Year of the Ant, and the Year of the Lion, but the Year of the Sloth as well. 

The sloth has a pretty bad reputation, and even had its name stolen by one of the Seven Deadly Sins (though this may have been because the creature was too lazy to prevent the theft).  But the fact remains that the sloth is, from an evolutionary point of view, an extremely successful creature, and by and large lives a life of peace and harmony with its fellow jungle-dwellers.  Maybe it's on to something we more frenetic animals have overlooked?  Perhaps prayer is hanging upside-down in the Tree of God, not moving, not doing anything, just resting in God's presence?

So, as we start this new year, may I end this letter by wishing each one of you a productive and a peaceful, a busy and a blessed, a happy and a holy, 2008?