Where your heart is, there your treasure shall be also

From Rev Angy Long, Chair of District

I have just come back from 4 days retreat with colleague Chairs of District. It was good to be away with them, to get to know them better and to be excellently led by Sister Rachel, in some thinking about what it means to be living in uncertain times and how we can know ourselves held by God.

It was also good to be back in my native North-East as the retreat was held at Slaley Hall, near Hexham in Northumberland. Slaley Hall is only a handful of miles away from Ministeracres, a Roman Catholic retreat house which was the venue for our retreats from the Darlington and Newcastle Districts. So driving some of the route I used to take to get there brought back all sorts of memories of times and people. I also decided that while I was so close I would absolutely have to go to Wheelbirks Ice Cream Parlour, a favoured destination with colleagues, friends and family over the years, and so I and 2 other Chairs had a happy hour there eating some very good ice cream, in spite of the less than clement weather. And I felt very proud of the good food, and the glorious rolling hills of the Tyne Valley, and the warmth of the welcome from the hotel staff who have been very good ambassadors for the place. It was comfortable and it was wonderful to be back.

Then, on the second full day Sister Rachel led us in a meditation/reflection by Anthony de Mello and something jumped out at me.

We were to reflect on the treasures that we hold, people and places and things, then came the lines:

In the measure that my heart is in past treasures
I am fossilised and dead,
For life is only in the present.
So to each of those past treasures,
Those golden yesterdays, I say good bye.
To each I speak, explaining that,
Grateful though I am that it came into my life,
It must now move out
Or my heart will never learn to love the present

De Mello invites us to consider too, all the future anxieties and wishful thinkings that can also clutter our minds and prevent us from living in this moment, asking us to lay these aside as well.The exercise was and is a specific, spiritual exercise in focussing on Christ; Where your heart is there your treasure shall be also. But I have found myself reflecting on it in light of the conversations begun at Synod and elsewhere about the shape of the Lincolnshire District and its Circuits, and some of the fears I heard about the continuation of individual chapels and, I some cases a recognisable idea of The Church as a whole.Many people are comfortable in the past, it is what we know and understand and we have had many blessings there. For many people the ideal future would be a return to what has been, for others there is much anxiety about what is unknown. Using de Mello as a starting point perhaps what we need to strive for is a balance where the weight of things rests in this moment, where we are now. Being real about what we can do and be now, not spending so much time and energy on either looking back or looking forward, although I would want to argue that we should spend some time doing both of these things. The task is to continually be aware of how much time.God is no longer in the past because that moment has gone, and God is not yet real in the future because we have not experienced God's presence there. God is here in the present. God has been with us through all that has led us to this place and God will help us be guided by the present into the future, with the things that need to be different and the things which we will continue to carry. Trust in God, let us listen for God in this moment, together.