THE SILENT PASSING

Meeting my next door neighbour a few weeks ago as she put out the blue bin she remarked: “Where has it gone?” No, they had not lost the cat - they don't have one; her question concerned the swift passage of time which she had begun to feel. A recent birthday may have served as an unwelcome reminder.

During November a Book of Remembrance is at hand in our Church should anyone wish to enter a name(s) of a family member, a friend or anybody they have known and who had died during the year. In an age where a reminder of human mortality is seldom acknowledged such a gesture may be thought a bit morbid, however most appreciate this and very many of our Church community are in fact young parents.

The swift and silent passage of time concerns old and young alike as I have learnt from conversation and one reason might be our obsession with filling it with constant activity of some kind. This threatens to evaporate every waking moment and stifles any inclination that arises to ‘stop and stare’ as the poet wrote. Have we become so busy to fill every real or imagined vacuum within us that we scarcely notice time's passage until we're confronted one day with the unwelcome fact?

Attention to the immediate moment before it has gone may not only be important but even crucial. On 14^th April, 1912 a disaster shook the world with the sudden loss at sea of the SS Titanic. When it slid into the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean almost two thousand people lost their lives in a ship generally thought ‘unsinkable’.

A report in the Washington Post commented that three precious minutes may have divided the tragedy between its final fate and its salvation. A young officer too busy with some trivial task failed to answer promptly a telephone message from the ship's ‘crow's nest’. The call reported a huge iceberg dead ahead and to reverse engines at once. When the officer responded it was too late.

As 2010 fades into history next month I remember a French proverb: “All the treasures of the earth cannot recall one lost moment”.

Fr David

The Big Draw at Chedham’s page 4

Talents at Walton: see page 7.

Man Servant and Maid Part of the Kurt Tong exhibition at Compton Verney: see page 9.