Pastoral Letter for the Month

   It’s early February, and my wife and I are staying in a holiday cottage on a farm in the Dales. In the garden red squirrels scamper about, performing acrobatics as they access cleverly designed feeders. We watch with delight as they run about, apparently oblivious to us. “I opened the door earlier,” I say, “and went outside. They didn’t care. They didn’t run away, just kept up the… what would you call it, scampering?” “I really like the little ear tufts,” my wife says. I

As we watch I remember that in our garden at home, a couple of grey squirrels like to make their presence felt, much to the annoyance of the local feline population who seem to feel this is a direct insult. “You know who would hate to see all these red squirrels having fun?” I say. My wife looks up from the window. “Who?” she asks. “The grumpy cat,” I say with certainty. “The grumpy cat would be fuming about this.” My wife nods. “The grumpy cat would be furious right now,” she agrees.

Recently we watched the grumpy cat try and stalk a grey squirrel. It slunk along, belly to the ground, being as stealthy as it could until, eventually, it made an ill-fated dive towards a hedge. Seconds later it ran back at about thirty miles an hour, it’s face a mask of horror and dread. “I wonder what happened in that hedge,” I said. “We will never know,” my wife replied. “Probably just as well,” I agreed.  

An hour or so later the grumpy cat emerged from a self imposed exile and walked, bad temperedly, across the garden, studiously ignoring the hedge. As we watch the small red squirrels, with their tufty ears, running around in the garden, their minds on the important business of gathering food, I feel a moment of pity for the grumpy cat – whose existence seems to be substantially less carefree than any squirrel I’ve ever met. Instead, worn down by whatever difficulties it has experienced, the grumpy cat prowls along discontentedly, apparently fed up with the whole business of life itself. It doesn’t seem to occur to squirrels, I think, to give up hope. Perhaps it’s part of the way they are built, perhaps it’s their tiny brains, or perhaps only the optimistic squirrels survive long enough to do some scampering. The grumpy cat, on the other hand, does not seem to be a hopeful creature. “Even when it had hope of catching a squirrel in the hedge,” I say, “it came to nothing.” “What are you talking about?” my wife says. “Oh… nothing,” I say.

It can certainly be hard to sustain hope, particularly when hopes are repeatedly, savagely, dashed. That’s the lesson of sport, of course, that you have to find a way to keep hoping even when it’s the hope that gets you. Having spent the last twenty five years worth of six nations Rugby Union championships thinking: ‘this could be Scotland’s year…’ I know what that feels like. But I also know the pain of more substantial hopes being dashed too – I know how that feels. And I am more and more convinced that if church means anything, it must have to do with being a place where we can find hope again, even when things have gone consistently against us. 

 Even when every straw we pull out seems to be shorter than the rest, even when life’s challenges come not in ones and twos but in their dozens, in their hordes, church should be a community where we can find some sense of hope again. 

 Not, perhaps, hope that everything will be fine, and that life will go on full of non-stop joys and laughter, but hope that things can change, that there is a point, and that ultimate meaning is there to be found. Perhaps to hope in that way is to dare to believe that love, which can’t compel us, can’t force us to do or think anything, is nonetheless the most powerful force in the universe. 

 Simon