Travelling light

Are you ready for the midweek heatwave? Tough if you are stuck in the office or other workplace, and spare a thought for those who need to do hard physical work in 35 degree temperatures.

If you are lucky enough to be on holiday, or about to go, you will have thought about what to pack, and if you are like me, how light you can get the luggage. This time of year trains and buses can be full of people with outsize suitcases, mega backpacks and sports equipment. Is it all necessary I wonder?

At church we often sing ‘Don’t carry a load in your pack; you don’t need two shirts on your back’. But despite this liberating theological idea, we can still feel bogged down, not only with all our physical possessions and personal issues, but in safeguarding, with all the baggage of knowledge and responsibility we have to carry with us. If you have recently received a request for information required by the Connexion to inform its response to the IICSA, with a pretty sharp turnaround time, you may be feeling equally overburdened just now, especially if you have been personally assigned to supply the data.

I’m afraid I can’t offer too much immediate relief, but hopefully it will shortly feel like when you check in your luggage at the airport, and free of encumbers, you can discover the highlights of duty free and the departure lounge and look forward to the flight. All in anticipation of a great time ahead.

We think the Methodist Church has a reasonably good story to tell about how it has responded to abuse in the church over the last 25 years and we hope that in due course the IICSA will realise that too. But to get there, there is some fetching and carrying to be done. We have just to get on with the doing, so that we can show the public, through the Inquiry, how seriously we as a church take child sexual abuse in particular. I can’t guarantee that holiday feeling when next March we conclude our hearing, but I’m sure the hard work now will pay off in due course. We invest time and energy in planning our own rewards so please support the church, as best as you are able, as it aims to answer the 50 plus questions that the Inquiry has suddenly passed our way.

If you are beach-bound, or in search of a rural idyll, or planning a city break, or simply enjoying some down time at home, just enjoy the change to your routine.