April 8, 2015

Chris McDonnell, UK

April come she will

(Comments welcome here)

chris@mcdonnell83.freeserve.co.uk

The names of the months of the year are in themselves evocative of mood, climate, event and experience. Yet depending on where you live on our planet, the same month can have diametrically opposite associations.

One of my favourite Simon and Garfunkel tracks from the 60s has to be “April, come she will”, a simple four line, three verse song, whose lyrics are sung against the background of a single guitar. Quite beautiful. A Northern hemisphere song that traces a relationship through from April - “come she will, when streams are ripe and swelled with rain” , through the changing Summer months till a conclusion is reached, and in

The cyclic pattern of life is ever-present, it is part of our very experience on planet Earth. From a starting point to a conclusion, with its high points of joy and hope through the inevitable troughs of despair and disillusionment, each of us makes a journey. We have to learn to accommodate different points of view, to be tolerant when it would be easier to be otherwise. April to September is a short time in song lyrics but a much longer time considered as a life experience.

It is the short term / long term aspect of the Church that we sometimes forget. We are deeply instilled with the ethos, practice and social culture of the late 20^th, early 21^st centuries and our focus is on immediate problems. In many ways, rightly so, for it is our responsibility to meet the needs and challenges of our time, but to do so in the context of faith. Indeed it is easy to experience “A love once new has now grown old”. So we can look back on our experience and that of our fellow-travelers and gain sustenance from that to continue to live in the hope of the Resurrected Christ.

There will indeed be bumpy times this year as we approach the Synod, already groups are forming and opposing views are being expressed through the media and the net. Just recently nearly 500 priests in the

signed an open letter reported in the Tablet -see

which occasioned Cardinal Nichols to state in his homily: “It is wrong, in my view, to think or speak of this Synod as a battle, a battle between contesting sides.” “Battles have winners and losers,” he continued. “And often ‘collateral damage’ is the most tragic consequence of hostilities.

Let’s be careful in the coming months in the way we approach disputed questions remembering that an over-riding motif of this papacy is one of Mercy, not condemnation.

April come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain;
May, she will stay,
Resting in my arms again.

June, she'll change her tune,
In restless walks she'll prowl the night;
July, she will fly
And give no warning to her flight.

August, die she must,
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold;
September I'll remember
A love once new has now grown old.