So we have reached mid-August. The Summer months are almost gone and we are nearing the time that farmers often call the ‘back-end’. Some Native American tribes knew that the Sturgeon of the Great Lakes were most readily caught during this full Moon, so they called it the Sturgeon Moon. Others called it the Green Corn Moon.

 This year the full moon here in UK will occur on August 18th, next week.

 In the Northern hemisphere, it is the time of Summer holidays when schools are closed and families try to go away from their homes for a break, looking for warm weather and a rest. The news media use to call this the ‘silly season’ when not much was happening and so news of a silly sort had to be invented to fill the pages of the press.

I cannot help feeling that those days are long gone. We have been faced with political stories of high drama and the constant threat (and realisation) of terror attacks on innocents in our cities. It is only some three weeks since Fr Jacques Hamel was murdered at his altar in a church in northern France and both the Muslim and Christian world was shocked by the horror of the killing in his old age of a Christian priest. At a Mass in Rouen Cathedral celebrated on July 31^st, packed with around 2,000 people, the archbishop, Monsignor Dominique Lebrun, addressed a congregation that included local Muslims and three nuns who were at the church in St-Étienne-du-Rouvray when Fr. Hamel was so brutally murdered.

“Our world has proven united from one side of the planet to the other,” the archbishop told them. “Injustices between people have become intolerable. Faced with the horrible and unjust death of a simple priest, messages have come from around the world. Hope is on the march,” he said.

All over France, Muslims joined with Christians in expressing their sorrow for this unspeakable act and there lies the hope that the archbishop spoke of. This is not a religious war between faiths. We are witnessing a terror campaign that seeks to justify its grotesque activity in the name of the Muslim faith. We must not fall for that charade.

Faith is who we are, nationality is where we live. This was brought out so eloquently when Khizr Khan addressed the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia a few days back. There stood a man of Muslim faith, speaking of his son who died in the US armed forces in Afghanistan, a man of US nationality who made clear that his faith and nationality were not incompatible. Addressing the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, he remarked that the candidate was not capable of empathy.

Over the next few weeks we will hear much more vitriol and half-truths as the date of the election, Tuesday November 8^th, draws near. It will be hard at times to sift through the written and spoken word and come to a realistic conclusion. The consequences of that vote will not only be felt on the East Coast and the Southern states, the Mid-West and California, but world-wide. Like it or not we too will reap this harvest.

Paul Simon wrote that beautiful song April, the words of which take you through from April to September, the repeating cycle of the seasons.

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 remember a love once new has now grown old

 They are words about joy and loss, youth and age, the very pattern of life’s journey that all must make.

 Spiteful and vindictive words direct us into a cul-de-sac. Worse, before the arrival at the blank end of a passage going nowhere, they cause confusion and upheaval on the way, distress and tears.

 Our Christian faith at no time promises protection and avoidance of stones in the road. But it does offer hope that perseverance will be rewarded, that the companion walking beside us, is the Lord himself. That’s why the phrase from the American political scene – Yes, We Can – is essentially ours as well, a description of confidence, an expression of faith.

 These few words were written the day after Fr Jacque’s death. May he rest in peace.

Mid-week Eucharist

A single bell

calls

from the small

church tower,

a lost echo

of a Tuesday morning

                       terror

where sacrifice

stained the stone

of a sanctuary floor,

a shared Eucharist,

sunlit,

through an open door.

END

END

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