Weekly Reflection – What to Say

17 January 2025

What do you say to people in mid-January?  In December you can ask people about their Christmas plans (having complained in October that the shops are already selling mince pies!).  At the start of the month you can wish people a Happy New Year.  A few days after we could be excited / grumpy about the snow.  But now?  Perhaps there is some great family or work excitement, whizzing off for a winter holiday, or (less happily) some difficult time.  Or it may just be, well, mid-January.  Not much to say about that.

The song may ‘wish it could be Christmas every day’, but most of us don’t really feel like that.  I love Christmas, I enjoy seeing friends and relatives, I like pigs in blankets and twinkly lights, I’m glad about the thousands of people we welcome to your cathedral for all sorts of special events and services.  But we can’t live like that all the time, we’re not meant to be in any one mood or live in any one season for too long, even if it does give us something obvious to talk about.  The Precentor will (rightly) remind us that the Christmas season ends at Candlemas at the beginning of February; but not every day in the long weeks of Christmas and Epiphany has the same intensity or focus.

So whether you wanted to say ‘Happy Christmas!’ or ‘Bah humbug!’, whether you celebrated New Year or Hogmanay or Hannukah, the end of the festive season is a time for something different.  To draw breath, take stock, think about priorities.  And since it’s not now obvious what you say to people, why not have a think: is there someone you haven’t heard from our spoken with for a while?  Picking up the phone or pen, whizzing off a WhatsApp or an email, would be a really good thing to do now the festivities are over.  You’re almost guaranteed they’d be pleased to hear from you.

As would, perhaps, asking yourself: what do I want to say to God?  Doesn’t have to be fancy words.  You don’t have to write him a poem, essay, or short novel (though you can if that’s how your brain works!).  The most important thing is to say things to him, and to leave a bit of a gap to hear if he has anything to say back to you.  Even if you haven’t spoken with him in a while, whatever you have to say, God would be glad to hear from you.

With prayers and best wishes,
Philip

 

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