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We’ll Meet Again, Don’t Know Where, Don’t Know When
One Christmastide a lady told me that she would not be attending church over the festival because it was a season for families and hers were being reunited at her home, so she had no time for religious observances. As I rarely see the greater part of my own extended and far-flung family, I am ashamed to say that my reply was couched in less than genteel terms. With hindsight, I admit that I was a little short of being understanding but her remarks did touch a raw spot.
2004! A new year and the past is even further away. Old acquaintances might not be forgot but they are beginning to fade into the subconscious. Where are the boys of the Old Brigade? Where are those eager deacons who tramped up the aisle of York Minster those many moons ago? Where are the spotty youths of the science sixth of 1961? Far from losing sight of them all, I am occasionally in touch with some of them still and they, unlike me, have become grumpy old men.
That miracle of modern transglobal electronics, the Internet, is full of sites for finding long lost friends and colleagues. Some I would not want to rediscover, some who I did meet, by accident, pretended not to know me and fled in confusion, which is hardly surprising, I may not really be Attila the Hun but the resemblance is striking. Nobody, as far as I know, has ever tried to find me. Having all my life been a shy and retiring person, my name will not stick in anybody's memory - their throat, maybe, but not their memory.
At this time of the year we remember with a feeling of thankfulness a group of men who did make an attempt to find somebody. For them, as in the words of John Henry Newman’s hymn; “The night is dark and I am far from home, lead thou me on”. Before the days of the Internet, Ceefax, telephone directories, or registers of electors, they set out to find the child who was born to be King of the Jews. It was needle in the haystack stuff but they left all behind to try to discover what the mysterious star foretold. We can look and look in the vain attempt to trawl through our past lives and dig up people who, like us, have moved on, but if we achieve what the Magi did and find Jesus then all other searches pale into insignificance. Happy Epiphany!
May God bless you all, Fr Allan
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