Dear all

This is the last parish letter I am going to write before going off on maternity leave. I assume that in many ways, I will still be the same person when I write the next one in about a year’s time, but I also won’t be: I will be a different age, will have a new role and a new outlook on life.

From a purely biological perspective, none of us even need a significant experience like childbirth to become a different person on a regular basis. Apparently all of our skin cells are replaced every few weeks, our red blood cells last only around 4 months, and a half of all water molecules in our bodies are renewed in about 8 days. In fact, most of the atoms that make up our bodies are on a constant renewal cycle. Alongside this, however, there are things that never change: many neurons in our brains last throughout our lifetimes, some heart muscle cells and proteins in the lenses of our eyes remain the same too. And then there are of course our memories and experiences – they tend to stay with us as well.

It is fair to say that we are a mix of newness and continuity, and I think this is true spiritually as well as biologically. At the Confirmation service in Wolsingham church in the middle of October, Bishop Rick was preaching about this. Two truths are possible at the same time: we are made a certain way and remain as we are, but we also have a profound capacity for change. That latter, however, is not necessarily possible through our own strength and efforts. To effect meaningful and sustainable change in ourselves, we ought to turn to God. Some of us find that God changes us slowly, as we gradually figure out how to live our lives as Christians; others have a Damascus-road moment, when things just cannot be as they were anymore. But however this happens, in John 3.7 Jesus says that we ought to be born from above – born of the Spirit – to accept God’s work in us, to embrace the change that He is offering. In doing this, we do not cease to be ourselves but we become completely new. We can go from lost to happy and fulfilled, from being a slave to bad habits and addiction to freedom, from uncertainly to confidence, from despair to hope. And I think such spiritual new birth is as miraculous as the birth of a baby!

Ana