It took me by surprise. I hadn’t been to Berwick for a little while. It’s a place that I love; where Shirley and I spent the first of three very happy years of married life. It’s where we were students at the Bible College; where I played for the local football team and where we worked during our holidays. Its beautiful setting along the banks of the Tweed and coastline, its Elizabethan walls. A delightful place where we have always felt very ‘at home’. So it came as a shock to walk through the town today. Whilst the south of England was deluged with rain and bad light stopped play for the cricket at Lords in London, we were basking up north under blue skies and sunshine. The glorious weather couldn’t, however, mask the change in Berwick’s High Street appearance. A stark visible reminder of the downturn in the economy, empty shop fronts and abundance of charity shops, as well as a growing stream of cheap and tacky shops with plastic garbage and the detritus of consumer culture.
Sadly, really grim, something beautiful made ugly. Driving back into Wooler, the contrast with Berwick was very evident; newer shops and businesses and abundance of cafes, an art gallery and tasteful gift shops reveal a bright spot, a local economy that has somehow, working very hard, managed for the time being to survive the challenges of economic recession. One high street tatty, unkempt and ugly; the other bright, creative, welcoming and colourful. As I was walking back to our house on Wooler High Street, one of the locals stopped and asked me how things were going with the Community and went on to say, what do you hope to do at your new Mother House? Given my experience of the last couple of hours I replied, “Well part of what we are doing is to bring life and colour, beauty and good things in a way that welcomes people, lifts their spirits and enables them to feel glad about being alive”.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn used to say that whatever the conditions of life there was still something indelible about beauty, truth and goodness. My prayer is that in the Community’s emerging new chapter, we will be creating yet another home and haven of hospitality, a place of encounter and creative space that honours the past but gives expression to a future where beauty, truth and goodness are clearly evidenced.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
