Some people seem to find it extraordinarily difficult to produce offspring, whilst others seem to pop them out like pellets from a shotgun. Too few or too many. Most reproductive problems arise because in mammals like us, the embryo develops in the mother’s belly, whereas in other creatures development takes place in the outside world, or in an egg. In humans, the relationship between mother and fetus is complex and ill-understood, and the wonder is that it does not go wrong more often than it does. This is all fine and dandy from an academic point of view—and the evolution of reproductive biology is utterly fascinating, but when these events do not go according to plan, from a pastoral point of view the effects are devastating. The loss of a growing life, a hoped-for family member. The necessity to grieve for the much-loved though as yet unseen miniature boy or girl. The most difficult moments of my pastoral ministry have centred around such loss of life. There are no easy answers.

Then there’s the other end. How can you cope with the parent who to all intents and purposes has left this world, and yet whose heart and lungs continue to plug on? This is a real problem in dementia, when the person we knew was lost weeks or months or years ago, but yet the still breathing physical body houses someone we don’t know and who doesn’t know us. Coping physically is one thing, but coping emotionally and spiritually is an entirely different matter. There are no easy answers.

I am very moved by the agonies of those that have to cope. All I can offer is support and human comfort. I spent 30 years of my life using human corpses as teaching aids for medical students, so I acknowledge that I have an uncommon attitude to the physical realities of death. In a curious way, though, I think this helps me to cope better with the emotional and spiritual aspects. And if it helps me to cope, I hope it makes me better able to be of use to you in these awful circumstances.

Somewhere between the beginning and end of life is childhood. Below you’ll find some comments on child rearing. The thing that shocked me most was when I realised that I had not been as good a father as I used to think I had been. And that same phenomenon—the realisation of the extent of our self- deception—is the cause of most of the grief I encounter in my pastoral ministry: the regrets and shame that hits people, often when it’s too late. How do we deal with this? Christian doctrine deals with it in a lovely way. Try me some time.

I watched Chocolat on TV the other day. I’m not that keen on chocolate—I like salty things more, always have—but I liked the film. Profoundly spiritual, you might say it’s a story of redemption by chocolate. In case you don’t know, the story goes something like this. A freethinking woman arrives in a repressed French town and sets up a chocolate shop. A woman without a man, a woman from outside the community—that’s already enough to scandalise the locals, most of whom are of the ‘my family have lived in this village since 1568’ mindset. (Sound familiar?). She has—horror of horrors—an illegitimate daughter who is bright and cheerful. Can it get any worse? Yes it can, and it does: worst of all is that she is passionate and enjoys life. Some people just don’t like others having a good time. It comes as a big shock to the ladies in the film who enjoy ill health. It threatens the mayor’s power who does his best to ruin things for the newcomers, and who terrorises the parish priest into saying only what the Mayor approves. The newcomer uses her chocolaterie skills to make friends. She becomes a confidante. Over the delights of chocolate, people start talking to her and each other about their dreams and fears, joys and sorrows. Repression lifts, new life dawns. There’s a great moment near the end when the Mayor himself falls victim to his sensual humanity by pigging out on chocolate, falling asleep in the chocolate shop window. It’s reminiscent of the downfall of the odious killjoy Mr Bulstrode in Middlemarch, and quite as satisfying. Perhaps the best bit of the film is when the camera cuts from a scene in which the consecrated wafer at Mass is placed on the communicant’s tongue to the next scene when a chocolate delicacy is placed on the salivating tongue of a customer. That says it all, really.

The story is about liberation from small-mindedness, from ties that bind. It’s about allowing ourselves to be led into a place of wide vision where we take delight and create delight for others. This is Hebrew salvation: salve, save, salaam, shalom (the words are all related), wholeness, security, peace. Chocolate liberates the gutsy love of life in that French community, and this is what the Christian Gospel is all about. It’s what the consecrated wafer at Mass can do for us—if we let it, or maybe I should say if we stop preventing it. Why is it that so many people think the Christian message is all and only about ‘that shalt not’? This is a terrible reflection on churchgoers, some of whom in the past, and maybe in the present, do nothing but finger-wag and criticise others. I apologise for them. I pity them. I’ve said it before, and I say it again, paraphrasing early Churchmen, God became human so that humans might become divine. The glory of God is a human life lived to the full. Dumitru Staniloae, a 20th century Romanian theologian, writes: ‘the glory to which man is called is that he should grow more godlike by growing ever more human.’ And again, ‘Love for God, or more strictly, thought taken for God, represents a continuous contribution toward more and more authentic relations among humans.’ These authentic relations come from talking to one another about our dreams, our fears, our joys, our sorrows. In the words of the priest in Chocolat: ‘we can’t go around … measuring our goodness by what we don’t do, by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. We’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create … and who we include.’ Yes, yes, yes! As we prepare for Well dressings and carnivals and fairs and summer holidays, it’s good to remember that Our Lord came so that we might have life, and have it in abundance. Enjoy what the Divine Lord provides for you, and help others to do likewise. Sin is life unlived. What is your chocolat?

My favourite weather is cold and sunny—Scandinavian weather I call it, however inaccurate that may be. I like cool breezes, the nip in the air. I like the clear skies where ‘you can see clearly now the rain has gone’. Well actually, the rain hasn’t gone, and I don’t even mind that. When you’ve grown up around Penrith, and got soaked most mornings walking the mile or so from King Street bus stop to the Grammar School, you get used to rain, and you realise pretty soon that once you’re wet through (after about 20 seconds, I recall), you don’t get any wetter, and before long you dry out. Anyway, back to the plot. Cold and sunny, good views, a nip in the air, a call to action if you want to keep warm. And at this time of year, lovely colourful leaves. I prefer this to the sweaty heat and hazy, lazy days of summer. I like being able to see into the distance. This could be a cue for writing trite rubbish about how life is like a journey, but you can see that for yourselves, so I won’t.

What’s all this got to do with the sort of stuff the Rector should write in the monthly magazine? I’ve no idea: it’s stream-of-consciousness garbage that comes into my head. Although, maybe it does have something to do with the need for having some idea of where we’re headed. This is a need for hope. Not that things will get better, but that things might get better, and that we can do stuff to try and help things get better. It involves differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t (I find this difficult, railing on about the intractable). The need to try to manage as best we can, and help those who can’t. I hear people say ‘they should do something about ….’ Why leave it to others? Perhaps we should, not they should.

It involves, too, the need to take responsibility for ourselves. If I curl up in a corner and say ‘woe is me for nobody cares’, then perhaps it’s something do with the fact that I curled up in a corner, so what else can I expect? On the way to a meeting in Ashbourne the other day I heard someone telling the airwaves that s/he had been ‘attacked’, and because s/he was very drunk indeed, s/he’d been unable to resist. S/he said ‘I’ve a right to get very drunk if I want.’ Well, if we’ve the right to get incapably drunk, we’ve a duty to accept the consequences—the possibility of attack, alcoholic liver disease, and so on. To take responsibility for our actions. We, church and community, have a duty to tend those we find who need tending. The question is … where do our responsibilities stop? Are we justified in interfering in the lives of someone else, or some other country, on the basis of our own personal standards. Is there a universal standard we can use as a guide. Well, given that I’m the Vicar, you know what I’ll say, so I won’t say it. And what was Jesus’ message? There were lots, and they certainly include taking responsibility for yourself. The most challenging, partly because it involves not feeling sorry for yourself, is that we should love our …. neighbour? Well yes, but all the faiths say that. What did Jesus say? He said ‘love your enemies.