Pastoral Letter for the Month

 I saw a video of someone pulling a guinea pig out of a tree recently, which means that this month I’ve seen more guinea pigs (one) than I have grumpy cats. 

 Yes, I’m afraid that the miserable moggy is missing in action. 

 I’ve not yet asked the neighbours if all is well with their bad tempered tabby, maybe because I don’t want to have to pass on any bad news in this letter. Hopefully some time soon I’ll look out of the window and a feline scowl will look back at me – trust me, I’ll let you know. 

 When I was a kid we had two cats, we also, at one point, had two guinea pigs. One of them was mine, he was called Gary, and he was ginger. He has long since retired to wherever guinea pigs go when they die. 

 The cats lasted longer than the guinea pigs – they were called Mitzi and Blitz– Mitzi was small, grey, cantankerous and full of mischief – if you made her wait too long before letting her into the house she would make her displeasure felt. It was clear that she felt we lived in her house, rather than the other way around. 

 Blitz on the other hand was a much more laid back animal, a very calm temperament and charismatic manner. 

 Mitzi was not terribly charismatic, but she was quite naughty – and would often find herself in trouble for one or other of her criminal enterprises. Back in those days a butcher’s van would sometimes visit the place where we 2 lived, and she was always keen to liberate some of it’s contents. The butcher did not look upon this activity with the sort of genial good humour that he might have. 

 Those days have gone now, of course, time passes quickly. It’s hard to believe that ten months have almost completely passed since the Peter’s House team arrived. But their time with us has, indeed, almost come to an end, and Jessica, Clara and Laura will each go their separate ways

The truth of life, of course, is that change is the only real constant. Nothing stays the same, everything is in the process of changing all the time. Every conversation we have, every thing we see, or hear, or do, changes us in some way. 

 “You never step into the same river twice,” is the most famous saying from Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher who had somehow grasped that even though the river might be called the same thing, it’s always being made new. 

 Gary the guinea pig lived in a hutch and spent most of his time munching on parts of our garden lawn. He was particularly partial to dandelion leaves maybe he knew that dandelions have got lots of vitamins and minerals in them, or perhaps he just liked the taste. I never thought to ask.

 My dad had made a run for him, so that he could be allowed to munch on grass and weeds, in return he’d provide a bit of soil enriching fertilizer every few days the run would have to be moved as he’d chomped his way through the bit of lawn it was placed on. I expect a guinea pig philosopher would have said that you never eat the same lawn twice. 

 As our volunteers go back home to their families and whatever comes next for them, we will get ready to welcome some new volunteers to spend time with us – I suppose you could say that Peter’s house, like the river, and like the lawn, and like our lives, is always changing. And that’s the way it should be. 

 Clara, Laura and Jessica will find their homes and families the same but different, and their loved ones will find them changed too – the same people, but older, maybe a bit wiser, certainly more used to British food. 

 Change comes whether we like it or not – sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. Sometimes it seems slow at the time, but then before we know it everything has changed. 

Simon