From the Rector – November 2026

Light and Darkness

The month of November stirs up many memories from my childhood. Halloween was not celebrated here in those days, and as my family were not churchgoers, All Saints Day (November the 1st) and the Feast of All Souls (November the 2nd) came and went unnoticed. The real festival for me and my friends was Bonfire Night. Our neighbour would spend the autumn building a bonfire in his garden out of all the garden waste and bits of wood he could find, and my father would buy as many fireworks as he could justify. Dressed in woollen balaclavas and mittens against the 1960’s cold, we would gather in the garden for a spectacle of light in which rockets launched from milk bottles and catherine wheels stuck to the fence never disappointed. Best of all were the sparklers we waved around and the hot chocolate which followed (although this may be my memory getting carried away). Our childhood festival of light filled me with wonder and awe - not with any sense of another world, or anything spiritual, but with deep amazement about the beauty to be seen in the world we were actually living in. It has been a great joy to take our children to firework celebrations which were safer and much more spectacular, but I have never lost the feeling of excitement from my own childhood at seeing a rocket illuminate the sky with colour and light.

At this time of the year at special services of thanksgiving in the church we remember our loved ones who have died, who have been sources of wonder and light for us. We also mark All Saints Sunday as a celebration of God’s light and goodness in the lives of Christians who have gone before us. The secular celebrations of Halloween and Bonfire Night are for us an anticipation of the candles of Advent and Christmas soon to come, which announce the light of God’s presence in Christ. But as we get ready for our celebrations of light, I am conscious that for the people of Ukraine, and other lands too, the winter only brings deeper suffering. In Kiev and other cities, the rockets and lights overhead bring not joy, but death. Explosions there will not provoke gasps of wonder, but cries of anguish and loss. Many more brothers, mothers, sisters, children and friends will be added to the lists of the departed, through the depravity of human violence, greed, and the lust for power. It seems inconceivable that after years of fighting, the suffering is only increasing. I hope that the fireworks we see this year will increase our resolve to help and protect the innocent who suffer from the violence of others, wherever they may be. The opening words of the Lord’s Prayer express our longing so clearly: ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’.

Revd Ralph Williamson – Rector