If you're someone who reads this magazine from cover to cover, you may recall a story in December's edition entitled A Girl with an Apple.  In his own words it told the remarkable story of Herman Rosenblat, a Polish Jew who, as a boy of 11, was sent to the concentration camp.  One day, walking near the perimeter fence, he saw a girl on the other side. She threw an apple over the fence to him, and from then on, every day she would come and bring him apples, until he was transferred to another camp.  He survived the war, and ended up in New York. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I wonder: when you greet someone with those words, where do you put the emphasis, the stress?  Partly, that may depend on your nationality:  I've noticed that American English-speakers stress ‘happy' or ‘new';  Brits tend to put the emphasis on ‘year'.   Few people, however, put equal stress on each and every word, thus wishing their hearers, quite literally, a ‘stress-free' new year.

We've just come back from a break in our touring caravan.  The children get so excited and love it when we go away.  The weather has been cold and wet and one night, because the gas ran out at nine o'clock, we had no heating (there was frost on the windscreens in the morning).  We stayed at a site with a swimming pool and indoor play facilities and the children were able to roam wherever they pleased in safety. 

November is a strange month.  For those of us who work with the calendar of the school year, it marks the start of the second half of the autumn term.  Whereas the first half is almost a continuation of summer - September often being better weather than August - by the time the second half begins, the clocks have gone back, making darkness fall early, the weather is generally dreich (what a lovely Scots word!), and there's no doubt that the summer is well and truly over, and we're into winter. 

Dear Friends,

    My five minutes of fame on national TV.......
    Christ's patient loving care over generations.......

We were on GMTV over the summer hols.  Did you see us?   There's no TV in our caravan so we've not seen ourselves, but others have, even someone from the Parish.  They remarked on my homemade kebabs: sumptuous, multicoloured layers of vegetables and chicken threaded together and cooked over red-hot, glowing charcoal.

           To dream the impossible dream...
           To reach the unreachable star....
           This is my quest -
           To follow that star...
           No matter how far

Do you remember that song?  It was written (for the musical Man of La Mancha) in the early 1960s, a time of great change in society and culture.  As we emerged from the long shadows of the Second World War, we began to envision alternative ways of living.  In society, religion, politics and morals, the old certainties were questioned and even overturned.  And the whole of our culture was shaken to its foundations as men and women of a new generation began to dream dreams of a new and better world.

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. 

Emmanuel:  God with us

God with us amongst the ‘pots and pans'

and in the disappointments and joys of our lives

When I was in conversation with a young man in his mid-thirties recently he told me this about Christianity: it is only for the elderly or ill, because it is like a wonderful box of chocolates which you can only open when you die.  To a committed Christian this seems an extraordinary suggestion - a view of faith as an insurance policy.