From the Vicarage - July & August

“The Rhythm of Life is a powerful beat”! The lyrics from the 1966 musical ‘Sweet Charity’ may be familiar to some of you. If so, they may have immediately set the music buzzing around in your head. Then very soon your foot may be tapping too – because unsurprisingly the rhythm is key! Rhythm usually is key and yet we don’t always give it the attention or credit it is due. Rhythm carries the melody; rhythm organises and orders the sounds and silences; rhythm gives the melody structure and flow, energy and expression.

I recently attended a re-imagined performance of Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’, arranged for just four musicians. One of those 4 was a percussionist (the other 3 played violin, accordion and double bass!). It is easy to relegate the percussionist to being that one at the back who adds a bit of background rhythm. The percussionist in this performance was centre-stage and played as much of the melody as her fellow instrumentalists – rhythmically beating out her part on numerous percussion instruments with energy and tenderness, flair and skill.

Speaking with some of our local school children earlier in the year, one child was puzzled to think about a God who ‘rested on the 7^th day’ in the bible story of Creation. Another struggled to even contemplate how it was possible that ‘once upon a time’ (and yes in my lifetime) we did not expect to find the shop open on a Sunday! 

Responding to both of their questions required some reference to ‘the rhythm of life...’

Despite rather liking the idea of a God who puts slippered-feet up and takes a well-earned 40 winks from the onerous responsibilities of holding the whole world in his hands, I think the message of that 7^th day rest takes us deeper than that.                                                                                             I understand it to be telling us that rest is part of the rhythm of a life and a creation which is good and that rest is in fact key to our protecting and nurturing that goodness.

Of course ‘in the old days’ (even if some of us like to think it was only yesterday), that rhythm was reflected in the closing of shops and other amenities one day a week – not to annoy us or inconvenience us, but to enable that day to be ‘spent’ differently and to give the people who provided those amenities a break too. Today, ironically, we have to work harder in order to ensure that our rhythm of life includes and embraces rest! 

The months of July and August tend to be associated with something of a change of pace –

a shifting of the beat and the rhythm.                     I imagine that for many of us the year-round rhythm of life can feel like a powerful, insistent, at times relentless beat…

I hope that in these summer weeks

there will be space to find a gentler beat,

a more tender rhythm and the time we each need

to rest in, and renew, the goodness.

Love & Prayers       

Carolyn         

The Reverend Carolyn A James