Packing Up Memories

The next few days promise some frenzied activity on the 4th floor and above as I try to meet the deadline on next Friday when the removal firm arrives to collect all my worldly possessions and transport them to Walmer.



I marvel at quite how, as a single person with modest means, I have managed to accumulate so much stuff. Clearly my passion for new clothes needs to be curbed if any future move is to be achieved with less stress than the present one.



Hopefully the present encouragement we all face to move to a paperless environment might help too. Why on earth have I kept so many boxes of papers - bank statements, letters, governors minutes, deacons agendas, half used notebooks?



I suspect moving should afford an opportunity to have a radical review and a major throw out of some of this accumulation but each item has some memory attached to it and it is proving very difficult to consign any of it to my biodegradable black sacks.



Returning 'home', as I will be doing soon, is starting to rekindle memories too. Friends - I think that's what I still call them - have kindly produced a complilation of movie clips from the 1980's showing a much slimmer and youthful Seyan engaged in church activities in Walmer. Watching these has reminded me of the friends, fun and a thriving fellowship of which we were all part two or more decades ago.



Times have changed and people have moved on. The memories are good to treasure but new challenges lie ahead and although shaped by past experience they need to find their own direction and purpose.



As life here at Bloomsbury will continue without me and folk will from time to time doubtless recall memories of our activity together, so, in Walmer, life will go on too - differently from before - but now with me as Pastor creating memories for the future.



The Gospel we share and proclaim must surely be the same, unmistakably formed and shaped by events of the past but relavent and responsive to the needs and diversity of society of the present. Discerning our Godly response is often tricky and the easy option may often be to do so 'as we've always done' or 'as x or y did last time'.



As I'm packing my boxes now, I shall need to be careful what I choose to unpack later, and how best to us it. God is wanting to do something new and I (we) should allow this without the baggage of the past getting in the way.