Team Rector’s Letter September 2020
I recently spent a day at Great Dixter near Rye, a garden created by the late Christopher Lloyd, whose home it was.
In a very free gardening style, ‘Christo’ as he was known by his many friends, massed all sorts of plants together, letting them grow in freedom and profusion with the flowers tumbling over each other and the foliage even encroaching on the pathways through the garden.
Looking out of my window at my own garden, I have watched the trees, heavy with green leaves, tossed by the strong winds that we have been having. I have watched the movement of the birds amongst the foliage, enjoyed the clouds scudding across the panorama of the sky. I love the richness of colour at this time of year, the sense of life bursting at the seams, all the glory of the summer come to maturity and the coming harvest.
But as August moves into September, with wet and windy weather, we move our minds to the future. In just a few months the trees will be bare of leaves, the plants will have faded, the flowers will be blackened by the first frosts of winter.
Yet all those trees and shrubs, and the perennial plants that we love, will have their roots securely in the good earth and when the spring comes again, will come into a new time of leaf and flowers.
So it is with human life.
Our span of years which will be lived (it is to be hoped) in good ways, and through that being a blessing to others. Years made up of days, hours, minutes which have been lived with sincerity and devotion, honour and service, care and kindness, hospitality and generosity, patience and prayerfulness, beauty and harmony.
A life held, not as our own possession to do with as we want, indulging every selfish whim.
But a life held ‘gently’ knowing that our very existence, and every moment we are granted to spend here on earth, comes from God, is rooted in the God who created us, and will return to God as our earthly life comes to its ending.
Reverend Ren Harding (Team Rector)
contact me at Joydens Wood Vicarage,
6 Tile Kiln Lane, Joydens Wood, Bexley, DA5 2BB
01322-528923 renharding@hotmail.co.uk