Dear Friends,
Keen readers of my weekly letters etc will notice something very different about this one. I’ll give you a moment…Got it yet? No? I’ll tell you. Up until now everything I have sent out has been ‘written’ using the font, ‘Comic Sans M S’ – often regarded as the marmite of the word processing world, (you love it or you hate it) – but this letter is composed using the font ‘Perpetua’. Yet now that I’ve started using it, I’m not sure I like it. Its just as easy to use as any other font. But it just doesn’t ‘look’ right…
…No, I’m going to change back to ‘Comic Sans M S’. There, I feel better now. It looks ‘right’. Not strange; but rather strangely familiar. Life can be a bit like this for all of us. How prepared are we to even try something new? How willing are we to explore the previously unknown, to experiment with the previously untried? We like to think we are, but when the opportunity presents itself, we all too readily retreat back into our already established comfort zone…But, should we be like that? Is that how life should be lived?…
…No, I’m not going to give in. I am going to persevere with the ‘new’. It may not be ‘for me’, but how will I know unless I give it an opportunity to impress itself upon me; to prove itself to me; to convince me that this is ‘for me’. And so, I press on with ‘Perpetua’. Why? Because, in reality, I have to be able to engage with that which is presently unfamiliar but which over time is likely to become what people are calling the ‘new normal’…
…Deep down, if I am honest, I want things to be as they were. I had hoped that what is happening would have been over more quickly. Difficult to live through of course, with a terrible price to pay in terms of lives and livelihoods, but nevertheless destined to be just ‘another footnote’ as far as human history is concerned. The longer it goes on the less likely that is. So, I have to accept that Comic Sans M S belongs to the past; a past interrupted abruptly by circumstances I never even contemplated. It falls to us to create a future that is every bit as life affirming, life enhancing, life fulfilling as it used to be…
…One of my favourite sayings is: ‘If things don’t alter, they are bound to stay the same’. What this present experience is teaching me is this: ‘If things can’t stay the same, they will have to alter’. This is true for us as individuals, for us as a Church, for us as a community – locally, nationally, globally…
…And so, for the final time, I get to sign off my Wednesday letter with Comic Sans M F… From now on, the future’s bright, the future’s Perpetua…