Weekly Reflection – What’s in a Sign?

11 October 2024

It was as I was staring at a screen full of blank-looking faces the other evening that I realised that my passion for road and railway signage wasn’t shared by the wider population. I happened to be giving a lecture to younger people from our diocese who are exploring their vocation to ordained ministry and had been asked to talk to them about sacraments. And as I ‘zoomed’ (for everything is on Zoom these days) I realised that one can’t talk about sacraments without first mentioning signs and symbols. And, of course, I needed to illustrate what I was saying by giving a few examples. So it was that I began by talking about road signs and was about to branch out into the benefits of the Transport sans serif typeface developed in the late 1950s to aid clarity when conveying information to motorists (and the associated Rail Alphabet and Motorway typefaces that played a similar role) when I realised that one by one my students were turning their video feeds off and presumably taking an early break whilst I rambled on. More fool them, I say.

Signs are important. They are objects that convey information to us, and nothing more. And yet, we couldn’t function without them in our daily lives. How would we easily find the way out from a crowded railway platform, for example, or know not to touch live electricity cables? Or work out where the supermarket has put the eggs during the latest rearrangement of the store? When signs go missing or are changed we can be left very confused indeed. But there are signs that go far beyond conveying information; they’re what we call ‘symbols’, and symbols point far beyond what the sign alone can tell us. Symbols incorporate an emotional dimension; something that’s intangible.

We are coming up to that period in national and Christian life where both sign and symbol have real meaning to all of us. Soon, poppies will appear on peoples’ lapels – a sign that it’s Remembrance Sunday soon and a symbol that we remember the great sacrifice of the war dead over the last century and more. Soon we’ll be lighting candles as a sign and symbol of the memory of those we love but see no more. Christmas decorations appearing in the shops are a sign that Christmas is not too far away, and a symbol of the celebration of the birth of Christ.

I wonder if there are any signs and symbols that have particular meaning in your own lives? Next time you’re in the cathedral why not have a look around and see what symbols are hidden within the walls and ponder their meaning not only to those who worship and minister here but also to you.

In Christ,
Canon Kathryn

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