It was at the Watchnight Service on Tuesday night this week, that we pondered the reading from the Old Testament of Ecclesiastes;

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;…
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

I pointed out the comma in the middle of each couplet has to do a lot of heavy lifting. Just think, in the couplet “A time to be born, and a time to die;” there could be 70, 80 or even 90 and more years between the two, all that time is represented by a comma. Similarly in the phrase “a time for war, and a time for peace”, the comma does a lot of work because we know only too well, after 2024, how much hard work and diplomacy has to be expended to move from war to peace. The agreeing of a ceasefire, the learning to trust again, the rebuilding of all that has been damaged, the process of revealing truth, hearing from victims and the long hard road to reconciliation. All of that is contained in the ‘comma’. One of the smallest of punctuation marks, holds so much in linking in this case, war and peace. As you may have heard the Dean say on occasion, ‘nothing just happens’! So much work has to go on behind the scenes to ensure that things run smoothly and that the desire outcome is delivered.

This is no less so in the cathedral, with the hours of rehearsal time, behind closed doors, for musicians and choristers to produce the glorious music that has been heard over the last few weeks in the services and the concert. But everyone’s contribution is important and noticed in the Cathedral Community, for example, without the unacclaimed work of the chorister supervisors there would be no choir at all.

As we begin 2025, with all the hopes that the Christian faith brings, but also perhaps with some trepidation given the nature of so many conflicts across the globe, let us work together. Now is the time to celebrate a new year, and soon there will a time to reflect on it as we reach the cusp of 2026. And there is that ‘comma’ again! In 2025 that ‘comma’ gives us all the opportunity to make sure everything happens, to grow God’s kingdom in our own lives, the cathedral community across, Ripon, the region and the diocese.

Happy New Year

Canon Michael