Malorie Blackman is on board for 500 Words. Are you?

Pause for Thought

From Canon Ann Easter, Chief Executive of a Charity and Chaplain to the Queen.

I’m one of thirty six Chaplains to Her Majesty the Queen and, a couple of months ago, some of us went on a jolly to visit Her Majesty’s country residence at Sandringham, in Norfolk. The estate is amazingly beautiful and I think they cut the hedges with nail scissors, they’re so immaculately trimmed! Anyone can visit – there’s a restaurant and a little shop where you can buy produce – we got apples and tomatoes – from the estate and I would thoroughly recommend it for a day out.

We went into the house which is beautiful but it is obvious how, although it’s majestic and magnificent, it’s also very much a place to live and to enjoy for the Royal family. We saw the desk where our Queen sits to write letters but I think the bit I liked best was Her Majesty’s jigsaw table!

Somehow, the idea that the Queen, having looked at serious and terribly important international papers, could then wander over and do a bit of a jigsaw puzzle showed me a side of that dear lady that I’d not seen before. A side that’s ordinary and homely and somehow a place where her story and mine coincide; where our pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of life fit together.

It’s said that we read the books whose stories we already know and I think we like and feel comfortable with the people whose stories somehow echo ours; when I met Christopher I felt as though I’d known him for ever, although in many ways our backgrounds are very different. I think that it’s in telling and sharing our stories with other people that we learn how to love one another and how to love ourselves too and I hope that that’s something that our youngsters are learning as they write their 500 words.

Our life story can seem not to mean much on its own. A half-done jigsaw looks messy and makes no sense but, as the pieces come together to reveal the picture, we catch sight of the plan, God’s plan, I reckon.