"From the Vicarage" - October 2024

First of all, I wanted to say thank you again for the warm welcome I’ve received as I arrived in West Moor. If I listed all the flowers, choccies, cards and well wishes I have received I’d fill the whole parish magazine. I’m also very grateful to everyone who worked so hard to organise the installation on the 11th September, and the lovely reception afterwards. Thank you so much!

At the time of writing, I’ve been your vicar for just short of a week! There’s something special about being brand new to a role, or a place. Zen meditators call it “Beginner’s mind.”

What is beginner’s mind? It’s dropping our expectations and preconceived ideas about something, and seeing things with an open mind, fresh eyes, just like a beginner. If you’ve ever learned something new, you can remember what that’s like: you’re probably confused, because you don’t know how to do whatever you’re learning, but you’re also looking at everything as if it’s brand new, perhaps with curiosity and wonder. That’s beginner’s mind.

I think that it’s a similar thing that Jesus is referring to when he tells us that we must “receive the Kingdom of God like a child” (Mark 10:15) – that we must retain an optimistic, wondering and curious approach to the life of faith and not get too bogged down in the struggles, rules and bureaucracy that can come along.

When children meet each other, they often don’t have the baggage that we adults have. They take one another at face value, and immediately make a start on the important work of making friends!

In these first few weeks of getting to know one another we could do much worse than spending time wondering together, exploring and playing – finding the joy in a new chapter of life at St Mary’s!

I had the privilege of preaching at one of my best friends’ wedding a few weeks ago, and I spoke a little bit about meeting Jesus on the thresholds of life. When things change in a major way—whether it's a new home, a new job, a change in relationship status, or perhaps a new child or grandchild—we find ourselves on a threshold between the life we used to live and the person we used to be, and a new life, even potentially a new you and me!

Jesus was always found on thresholds. He was born in a stable, a lean-to with no locked doors or glazed windows. It’s a structure that’s half-inside and half-outside, a threshold between the warmth of a cost inn bed and the cold night where only the shepherds and animals dared to brave the dark.

Jesus met with people who didn’t quite fit into the usual constraints of society in first century Galilee. Matthew the tax-collector was born Jewish but colluded with the Roman occupiers – he probably wasn’t fully accepted by either community! The Samaritan woman at the well, who was so rejected by her community that she collected water in the blazing midday sun, rather than the cool of the morning or evening like all her neighbours. Jesus embraced them all, because he came to meet people on the thresholds.

We even celebrate Jesus’ birthday on a threshold! As the old year turns into the new, we celebrate the birth of a tiny baby (which was a big threshold moment for Mary!) into a threshold place, when he would come to proclaim God’s love to people who existed on the threshold of polite society.

I think you’ll agree, Jesus loves a threshold.

So, at the very beginning of this new chapter for all of us here at St Mary’s, remember that a threshold is a holy place. I hope we can make the most of it together!

With all blessings,

Rev Lizzie