Easter Vestry 2021
Funny how things come to our minds; as I was sitting down to a few words for our meeting tonight, the words of that song by Louis Armstrong drifted into my mind; ‘What a wonderful world’
But of course this has been an awful year. Every sector of our society, every generation of our population has been affected. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to our health services, hospital and nursing home staff, GP’s, our front line workers, our Gardai and emergency workers, transport workers, the staff that have kept our supermarkets going, our undertakers, those who collected our bins – let us never take any of these for granted, ever again. Every generation has had to bear its share of the burden. I think of our young people who have lost so much of their education, our older people who have been confined to their homes. I for one, as I think of the freedom I had as a teenager and young student, am only now beginning to recognize the huge impact all this has had on that cohort, the loss of social interaction, the travel opportunities that we took for granted at that stage in our lives. Then of course the impact on employment, on those in the retail and hospitality sectors.
There has been a huge impact on the life of the Church. We have been shut down for longer than we have been open. We have lost Easter twice along with the many things that brought us together – the carol service, coffee after Church, the midweeks service and coffee; our Youth Club, Tuesday Club, Men’s Breakfast. Among the many deaths this year we lost stalwarts such as Anne Stanley, Dorrie MacCann and Fred Spendlove. We lost the Fete, the Christmas Concert, lovely community events that brought people together and of course the impact this has had on Parish finances.
But it has also been a wonderful year in that it has brought out a resilience in this Parish. I have been very aware of the care that people have shown to each other, the engagement I have seen with our online worship be it YouTube, Zoom or live streaming. The wonderful response to our financial appeals.
As we approach the end of lock down and our Church prepares to reopen for public worship, I am fundamentally optimistic about the future. But, and this is a big but, just as society will not be the same, commerce will be different, the work place will be different, so the Church will need to respond to these changed circumstances.
As I prepare to move on, I am more and more convinced that this is probably a very good time for a change in leadership. We’ve come through the crisis as well and probably better than most parishes having learned a lot over the last 12 months. Now is the time to build on that. Whoever comes after me will bring fresh vision, different perspectives, a different style. I wish you well, as under a new Rector, whoever she or he may be, you embark on the next chapter of the history of this Parish.