MY VICARAGE is sited some ten metres from the Offa’s Dyke path, the 177-mile- long footpath that stretches along the Welsh borders from Chepstow, within the south, to Prestatyn, on the Irish Sea. A mile after stepping outside my front door, I’m on Hergest Ridge, and have gained 500 feet and spectacular views of the Black Mountains to at least one side and Hay Bluff to the opposite.
I actually have walked my stretch of the trail within the winter, when it’s wet and slippery with mud or snow and you’ve to make recent tracks to avoid falling over. I actually have walked it within the blazing hot sun, when it’s worthwhile to stop and rest within the shade of the bizarre group of monkey-puzzle trees at the highest before you tackle the remainder of the journey. I prefer it best within the spring, with the brand new growth just starting, and the trees within the valleys below covered with a green haze of young leaves.
And all the time there are the sheep: a whole bunch of them, dotted over the hills, silently sharing the landscape with me. These sheep never stray removed from their farms, as they’re hefted to the landscape. “Hefting” is the term used for the management of sheep on open land and hillsides. Originally made to maintain to their patch of ground by constant shepherding, over time a flock will learn where their boundaries lie, where the very best grazing could be found at different times of yr, and where to shelter during times of bad weather. The young lambs acquire this data by grazing alongside their moms, keeping inside their territory, only occasionally straying beyond the borders of their farm’s land.
MY ROUTE is all the time the identical and the landscape never changes — achingly beautiful fields and forests, gentle hills, and distant mountains. And yet the walk is all the time different. Different due to the seasons, adding tone and depth to the perpetual landscape. Different due to who I’m after I walk it, the mood I’m in, the experiences I’m having. Always the identical, all the time recent. And I finish where I began, on the door of the traditional church, before I am going in and offer some prayers. Like the landscape, this constructing is all the time the identical, but all the time recent in its offering of peace and shelter, respite and rest, soothing mind and soul.
The Christmas story is loads like this. Of course it’s all the time the identical: we all know the plot and, whilst we have fun birth, the Good Friday ending looms in our consciousness, the resurrection dawn already shedding beams of sunshine and hope through the darkness. But we hear it in another way each time.
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Again, just because the sheep are hefted to the landscape, so the Christmas story is hefted to our memory, our imagination, our very being. It is unchanging and yet ever-changing, a part of the soul-story of our lives. Just as different features of a well-known landscape strike us every time we walk it, so do the component parts of the story of Christ’s birth have an effect on us at different times in our lives, resonating with our experience, shining a recent light on the way in which things are.
SO, HOW will we inhabit the Christmas story? How do those of us with communities to take care of share the Christmas story with others? Our part within the Christmas event is a humble one: an invite constituted of the center to everyone locally. We offer those with whom we’d share the gospel the chance to take what they need from the nativity for his or her soul’s condition at this point of their spiritual lives.
It could be the instance of Joseph, trying so hard to live a faithful and righteous life, whatever God throws at him. It could be Mary, whose unconditional “Yes” triggered the entire thing. Some may empathise with the shepherds, who went to the stable not only since the angels told them to, but in addition, perhaps, because that they had nothing to lose by going.
In contrast, others could be struck by the actions of the clever men, who gave up every part for a journey with an unknown end. Or possibly it’s the flight of the family into the unfamiliar land of Egypt, forced to construct their lives from nothing; or the innkeeper in Bethlehem, whose creativity over space enabled the Messiah to be born within the shelter of a stable.
IN PRACTICAL terms, I believe this implies ensuring that we take the broadest possible take a look at what we provide by way of events and services — not only over the Christmas period, but through the entire of Advent and Epiphany as well. We can offer an interactive, sparkly Christmas to young families who cannot sit still for long, in addition to keep alive the tradition of carols and readings. We can provide an area for quiet reflection for individuals who cannot have fun, in addition to invite in the first school and the toddlers. Not necessarily everyone, all together, but something for everybody, wherever they find themselves on the journey.
And you, weary leader/volunteer/tinsel-frond gatherer — you, too, whatever this story says to you at once, take time to open your hearts over again to the infant Christ, whose birth into this world brought hope and a recent starting for us all.
The Revd Dr Sally Welch is Vicar of the Kington Group within the diocese of Hereford.
