Thought for the Week

by Rev’d Peter Willox, Vicar of Ben Rhydding

HAS spring sprung for you?

I don’t know about you but I find the drear of late winter, starts to get me down and, although the weather has not been too bad this year, there seems to have been a darker sky hanging over me; an air of uncertainty about what the future might hold, perhaps. During such dark times, I just want to hunker down and hibernate for a while until the darkness goes, yet I know that this isn’t the answer, because loneliness can just make things worse.

Wordsworth, the poet, famously mused about feeling lonely as a single cloud might be in the sky, until he came upon a host of daffodils by the side of a lake. These daffodils were not lonely but in community, gathered together, dancing for joy.

It seems that a good place to start to break the cold isolation of winter is to spend some time with other people. As a Christian I seek inspiration from the Bible and I read scripture one of the big themes that jumps out of the pages again and again is that we are created as social animals. We are not meant to be alone, whether as a cloud or not, but rather in community, communicating with each other and with God.

The daffodils reminded the poet that he was not alone and that it was much better to be amongst the dancing daffodils than floating alone like a solitary cloud. He uses his words to describe his own feelings but also as an encouragement to us, his readers. His words remind us that it is as daffodils dancing together that we are most alive and human; a deeply theological truth.

Fortunately, I have the energy and the ability to go and seek out such company but some people don’t.

Sadly, there are many isolated people in our communities, many people who feel that they are stuck in a dark winter whilst the world around them is turning to spring, many who wander lonely as a cloud when what they really need is to be part of a host of daffodils.

One writer in the Bible gives us this practical wisdom. “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labour: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). Obvious, yes, but something that we need to be reminded of in these dark times.