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Hallo again to all.

We call this our 'front-page letter' and we use it to write each week about something that we think deserves your attention. We usually wait to write till we've finished assembling the week's edition to see whether something in the news, some act or event or occasion, warrants some words—and your time reading them.

Sigh. This week there are already too many words. The world's Anglicans are bombarding each other with threats, press releases, condemnations, complaints, and demands. The theme of recent news seems to be 'you are wrong and we are right', and the topics are the same as ever.

Then we read the Christmas message from the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury and we realised that the best thing for us might be to follow his advice and be quiet.

Only when we are very quiet can we hear. Only when we stand still can we give him room. Faced with the fullness of God in the embryo, the baby, the tired wanderer in Galilee, the body on the cross, we have to look at ourselves hard, and ask what it is that makes us too massive and clumsy to go into the 'little space' where we meet God in Jesus Christ.

Just now, words seem 'too massive and clumsy' to help us move through the remainder of Advent towards that 'still point of the turning world', that little space in time, that once-upon-a-place (cave or stall, it doesn't matter), the end of Advent... So we shall leave room. And be quiet. Of course we have opinions; we're human. But this week we shall keep them to ourselves.

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild
Had Mary been filled with reason
There'd have been no room for the child.*

See you next week. Until then, ssssssssh, sub rosa. O Sapientia!

Cynthia McFarland cmcf@anglicansonline.org	Brian Reid reid@anglicansonline.org

Last updated: 15 December 2002
URL: http://anglicansonline.org/

*Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season.