Dear Friends and Parishioners,

October!  A lovely month in the landscape; and a busy month on the farm; and if you are virtuous in the garden, with cutting down, clearing and planting.  These are weeks of taking and keeping, but also of planning and planting.  The two go together: it is naturally natural.  But then are applied the rules of Civilization: care for all, and especially the needy and vulnerable; justice with mercy applied to one and all; peace and plenty, and care for all.

God exists beyond ourselves. He is. He made us.  We reflect though and through His State and Glory.  It happens in our faces and friendly eyes.  It is reflected too through the Rainbow of Love.

At the beginning the Rainbow was the sign of God’s agreement with His people after tribulation.  The world had rebelled.  The world was quelled.  And new life was welcomed into a permanent Covenant with the Almighty, to be signed, sealed and ultimately delivered in our flesh, that of His Son.

Genesis IX. 8 – 13

‘ ⁸ And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,
⁹ And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;
¹⁰ And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you, from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.
¹¹ And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood: neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
¹² And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
¹³ I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.’
Yours truly,

Ian Whittle