WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD - OR IS IT?

I've spent a lot of time out of doors this month; there was the parish outing to Hyde Hall Gardens, my birthday treat to the Historic Dockyard in Chatham, and a week away with Dad visiting the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall.

You may not think that the old Chatham Navy Base would have much in common with a Victorian country estate but both are just as much the work of man's hands, and we can learn a great deal about what is important to us by looking at what we put our time and our money into.

And in a sense we can measure our progress towards greater or less civilisation by comparing what was important to our grandparents with what is important to us today.

Both Chatham and Heligan were created at a time when independence was thought to be the peak of social, and national achievement. We built and maintained a great Navy because we could not rely on anyone else to defend our islands or our interests. We built great country houses with gardens which could supply their every need because the only way to enjoy the fruits of the earth in their season was to grow them ourselves. Heligan and places like it are a wonderful testimony to the ingenuity and sheer hard work needed to make that dream come true.

But there was a down-side. In order that the rich and powerful (nations as well as families) could maintain their independence others had to go without. Independence sucks in resources and often results in the poorer subsidising the richer - which is plainly not fair.

So more and more these days we are realising that "looking after number one", and "blow you Jack" lead people down paths which are not only not very pretty, but can be downright dangerous. Many people have argued that the violence we have seen in Ulster, New York and Zimbabwe is in part a backlash from those who have been held down for too long by other peoples' greed for independence.

Cain asked God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and God made it very clear that he was.
And so are we all.

In this wonderful world that God has given us there is plenty for all - if we share; and it's not just a case of cutting up the same cake more fairly. By putting our heads together and learning from each other, and sharing our own insights with others we can actually make the cake bigger. The world actually works better when we live in it as God intended.

Every year in May the Church celebrates the most fundamental belief that it has about God - that He is not One, but Three. This is not the place to go into the doctrine of the Trinity but one thing that doctrine tells us loud and clear is that for God, independence is not an option. God shares because God IS sharing.

And when he shares Himself with us it is not some grudging charitable effort on His behalf - it is because His life will be richer for being shared with us. Being who He is, He needs us every bit as much as we need Him. That is truly wonderful, and if anything will convince us that struggling to be independent will actually make us poorer, that should be it.

Christ opened wide His arms for us - let us open our arms to others for His sake.

God bless you all.

Alan
1st June 2002