Today, let us give thanks for the resilient earth that feeds us, even as the days grow short.

I wouldn’t normally call my greenhouse (or my green fingers) blessed, but I have a tomato that defies the calendar. I also still have apples clinging to my tree. Literally in one motion I can pick them, bring them to my mouth and taste them.  Rather than food miles (the distance between where food is grown and eaten), I think of food seconds. They may not be as sweet as a summer tomato, pea or strawberry. But the act of eating such freshness is a blessing. It is the taste of now. It is the taste of life persisting against the frost.

I feel privileged to eat from the source – an act of communion with the soil and nature itself. 

May your day be filled with fresh pickings…

Since leaving my beloved Malvern hills in a somewhat unplanned move to Cheltenham I have found new joys in exploring the Cotswolds.  At first, I thought that the hills were just a little too far away and that we would have to drive everywhere, but recently I have discovered that Cheltenham is a very good base for tackling the Cotswold Way (or at least the first bit of it) in 10-mile stages using public transport to start and finish each day.

Of course, as we all know, buses and trains can be an excellent way to travel but they can all to often let you down.  And so it was when it came to my planned walk from Dowdeswell to Birdlip.  Although I had carefully checked the bus timetables and picked a perfect Autumn day, it all went wrong when I asked the bus driver if he could drop me off at The Reservoir Inn.  “I’m not going anywhere near there, mate”!  What?!  Well, what I hadn’t realised, and the timetables hadn’t told me, was that the closure of the A40 at Charlton Kings meant that the bus was diverted miles away out to Seven Springs.  Grrrr!

But now for the blessing!  Dear reader, the day was not lost.  Fortunately, I had the right maps and timetables with me to get a later bus out to Painswick and do the next leg of the walk in reverse back to Birdlip.  A lovely walk on a beautiful day.  Blessed indeed.

Ed’s note: Here’s a piece of music that captures that sense of calm that can be found in walking in nature (with apologies for the inevitable ad at the beginning).

They say that ‘success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.’

On that basis, the phrase we looked at one of our recent ‘Thought for the Week’ sessions – that ‘The problem with the rat race is even if you win, you’re still a rat’ must have connected with those hearing it over the years – as there are several claims to it.

It is most commonly accredited to comedian Lily Tomlin, from a stand-up set in the 1970’s. But other mentions include a biography of Jackie Gleason in the 1950’s, a clip of commentary of a New York Yankees baseball game in the same decade and a reference in ‘Life’ magazine a decade later.

Pre-dating these references, I didn’t hear it in any of those places but in the Sunday evening Church youth group I attended as a teenager at my local Baptist Church.

At that age, seeing what is around you and what your peer group are doing is a powerful influence. The youth group leaders saw it as their role to encourage to consider less obvious or counter-cultural options, informed by their faith.

One week the discussion turned to what everyone wanted to do when they left education and became an adult, and the phrase was used in considering whether winning ‘the rat race’ of conventional success in life of jobs, titles and money, was a worthwhile endeavor. 

The question is still worth some thought now. Not to say that achieving things and working hard can’t be worthwhile, but sometimes we find some of the things we might to do to achieve success conflicting with other values we may hold dear.

Is it better to be what we consider to be a good person, living a good life, even at the expense of some measures of success? 

The question arises not just as individuals but as Unitarians.

How much and in which ways do we think that our movement should be different from those of wider society or of other religious or spiritual movements?

These thoughts are often particularly prevalent at this time of year.

There are a variety of traditions and events that loom large over the Christmas period.

For some Christmas is a Christian festival, the message of which could be seen as profoundly counter-cultural in this context, as Jesus is born in lowly surroundings far from the political and economic centre of gravity of the time – yet with a mission to convey a deeper truth.

The pressure to be a success is never far away at Christmas either though – with the focus on family and on gifts, there is a sense of trying to keep up, even if we are putting that pressure mostly onto ourselves.

There is a strong sense of an ideal Christmas we should be living up to, even if none of us have ever actually experienced such a thing.

 All in all, a time when a chance to strip back the trappings and consider what we think really matters, in the company of our fellow Unitarians, can be especially valuable.

I used to dread PE lessons at school. If it was football, the teacher always divided us into shirts and skins, and the skins had to take their shirts off for the duration, even though we had reversible tops. We’d be stood there, shivering in the cold and indignity of the situation, whilst the kids who were good at sports picked their teams and, of course, I was always one of the last picked.

The way I remember it is straight out of the classic film Kes. I would do everything I could do avoid contact with the ball and when put in goal I would wander off for a chat if I saw a friend passing by or hang off the goalposts whilst the ball dribbled in underneath my legs. “If you’re all that bothered about the ball not going in the back of the net,” I said one day, “why don’t you just board it up?’  That did not go down well.  I had no competitive spirit whatsoever, and the effect of a weekly double lesson of PE was exactly the reverse of what it ought to have been.

I wasn’t the only rebel in the school. For a while, we were allowed to choose unaccompanied cross-country running until the teacher worked out that we were running out of sight and then going to one of the lads’ houses for a cup of tea and a chat instead of a run. We would splash water on our faces and try to look out of breath, but I suspect we overacted and ultimately we were rumbled.

After leaving school I never had any interest in playing a sport or joining a gym and now here I am decades later working in a department at Oxford Brookes University where most of the team are ridiculously fit. In a sea of slim, trim and muscular people I am the Michelin man by comparison, and each winter I make the same joke about how underneath all of these layers of clothing I am wearing because of the cold weather is a 28 inch waist.

One of the things I am grateful for, this year, however, as the person who is aware that he is probably the least effective at physical self-care in my department, is that I work in a culture of gentle encouragement. We have a scheme that is called Green Impact, and at one level it is about taking better care of our planet by thinking about how we use resources, but there is also a lot in it that is about physical and mental self-care. People come up with little ideas that have a profound difference – we had a ‘leave your phone downstairs’ week, which was about promoting better sleep and good mental health by making us less stuck to our digital devices, we have had sustainability shared lunches, where people have shared food and recipes, and there have been challenges to gentle physical exercise – getting away from the desk for 10 minutes, doing hourly stretches, taking a walk outside.

I was on one of these Green Impact walks in late October, listening to a learning development podcast because that felt like the only way to justify not being at my desk. The guest on the podcast was asked about the need to pay attention – he said assume multi-tasking is not possible – stop what you are doing and pay attention to where you are, what is going on around you and how you feel.

So I did. I switched him off and noticed that I was breathless because of the pace I had been walking at. I noticed that it was a pretty nice day that I had been in a hurry to get back to work from and I hadn’t really taken the time to take in the details of it (I took the pictures below on the way back).

I was aware that it was the gentle persuasion of other people that was getting me outside in the open air.

And finally I noticed that refreshed feeling you get when you have been moderately exercising for a while.

Happily, there wasn’t a goalpost in sight.

On this tenth day of December, with Christmas Eve just two weeks away, let us pause to bless the waiting.

In a world that demands instant results, may we find the courage to slow down. Let us remember that the journey toward the light is just as sacred as the arrival. May we resist the urge to rush through these days, wishing them away in pursuit of the main event. Instead, let us inhabit this season of preparation with a full and grateful heart.

Blessed are the moments of anticipation: the quiet wrapping of a gift, the lighting of a candle against the dark, the feeding of the Christmas cake, the writing of a card to a distant friend. These are not merely tasks to be finished; they are acts of love in motion.

May you find joy in the build-up. May your waiting be active and alive, filled with the sweetness of looking forward. Let the excitement of what is to come warm you today, knowing that the best things in life—like love, like hope, like the return of the sun—are always worth the wait.

Go gently into this day, savouring the beautiful “not yet.”

Amen.

I found myself thinking this week of how so many people who I have spent very little time with indeed, have been a source of blessing in life. There have been people who took the time to say hello at conferences, when I have stood awkwardly next to the buffet table, desperately trying to avoid turning the food on my plate into a jacket fashion accessory. I thought of a specific and useful theological conversation I had with a stranger in a London pub fifteen years ago whose name I never learned, and the homeless man who made me feel very welcome in a Sunday evening service nearly 30 years ago. There are conversations we have in after-church coffees or train journeys, over a shop counter or in the street, with people we may not know well who, nevertheless, help us to feel a sense of belonging and mattering if we are open to them. With this theme in mind, today I want to include two submissions from Heather Matthews on the blessing that is to be found in interactions with people we might not know well:

The Postman

In Victorian days postmen were nicknamed robins because they wore red waistcoats. Robins were featured on Christmas cards to represent the postmen who delivered them.  Thank you today to my postman who, rain or shine, always has a smile and a friendly word.

Green Tea and walnuts

I thought I would make a difference and give a little kindness by teaching a refugee to speak English.  Nobody told me that I’d be the one receiving the kindness.  How much fun we have together! And especially so as we drink green tea and eat Afghan walnuts while we work.

The sight of Ivy covered walls gives me pleasure through the Autumn and into Winter. It is one of the last plants to flower providing  pollen and nectar for insects before winter, and now the flowers have grown into berries which provide a rich food source  for many birds in otherwise lean times.

Ivy grows in deep shade and very dry places providing a wildlife habitat where other plants struggle,  and as ground cover Ivy lessens the effect of frost letting creatures forage in cold weather. The dense growth gives roosts and nesting places for birds, insects and small mammals.

Many gardeners see Ivy as a weed and sedulously destroy it. It may need retaining, but for wildlife it is a blessing and where would we be without our wildlife? I give thanks for Ivy.

Growing old can feel quite depressing at times as the inevitable aches and pains and moments of forgetfulness start to build and begin to limit our activities.  But, as with so many things in life, there are compensations if we know where to find them.

Being retired and having more time on our hands allows us the opportunity to just observe more of the world around us in all it’s beauty and variety.  People-watching in the town centre or seeing the sun-lit autumn leaves glowing in the park all bring their own entertainment.  

I never thought I would be that old man on a bench watching the ducks for hours on end; but who knew what a blessing it can be?