Church letter

September 2024

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We must each tend to our garden

It’s been a summer of non-stop sport: football, tennis, cricket, cycling and then the Olympic Games with their amazing variety of sports and nationalities. As an Anglo-Dutch family we have sometimes felt quite confused when England and the Netherlands have been pitted against each other, notably, recently, in football, rowing and hockey. We could see it as a win-win situation, as whichever side triumphs we can claim the victory as our own - though I have to confess that the sight of a British medallist draped in a Union Jack does remind me that proud as I am to have a foot firmly in Dutch culture and society, my deepest roots are British.

In recent days it has not only been on the winners’ podium in Paris that we have seen people waving their national flag. Following the unspeakable horror of the events in Southport we have watched appalled the scenes of violence and destruction wreaked by rioting mobs in our major towns and cities. Brandishing Union Jacks, mindless thugs attack people of ‘foreign’ appearance, mosques and police stations, all in the name of maintaining our ‘British way of life’. God help us if this is what the British way of life has become.

Voltaire, the 18th-century French philosopher and satirist, was profoundly concerned with the injustice and morally wrong philosophies of his day. In his satirical novel ‘Candide’, a young man is taught that “All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds”. As he learns to think beyond philosophy and to see the world as it really is, he feels the frustration that many of us share at our inability to bring about change. What can he, a single individual, do about it?

The answer, the final ‘message’ of the novel, is surprising. “Il faut cultiver notre jardin” - we must tend our garden. This is by no means as simplistic as it appears. Does it mean burying our heads in the sand (or in our well-tended flower beds) and ignoring what is happening? Far from it. While we may feel powerless to influence the events we see unfurling on our television screen, we are reminded that we are personally responsible for the patch where each of us finds ourself. The ‘garden’ of our life is our home, our relationships, our community. Here we are challenged to practise kindness, compassion, generosity, patience and integrity.

This is what we can and must do. “You in your small corner,” as the old song says, “and I in mine.” The prophet Micah sums it up: “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” It was true then, some 750 years or so BC, and is still true now.

Happy gardening!

Revd Dr Rosemary Kobus van Wengen, Assistant Priest