Thought for the Day, 20 August 2005

Rt. Rev. William Ind

What a difference a year makes.

On Wednesday of this week I received an unexpected and unusual present. I've brought it with me to Padstow so that the audience here at least can see it. It's a carrot in a flower pot filled with fine black earth. It isn't magical or unusual in any way but to me it's very special.

On Tuesday 17th August last year I visited the village of Boscastle which the day before had been devastated by flood. The damage was enormous and I spent much of the day just being there, listening to peoples' stories. The village was full of emergency services of all kinds and, of course, representatives of the national media were there in strength.

A television crew followed me into the terraced cottage of someone I knew. Downstairs was wrecked. The man who lives there is an artist and fortunately he'd been able to get nearly all of his pictures upstairs. But the smell and the mud was everywhere. I said how awful it was. He urged me then to look out on to the back garden. It was deeply covered with evil smelling black silt from the flooded river. Then he said, "It's not all bad; at least I shall be able to grow good carrots for the first time".

I went back to see him a few weeks later. He opened the door and said "Oh it's you, you haven't brought the television crew with you have you?" "No", I said, "Why?" "I'll show you" he said and pointed to his mantelpiece. It was covered with packets of carrot seeds which viewers had sent.

And a year to the day, on Wednesday of this week, he sent me the first fruits of his carrot harvest. And at that moment I remembered a modern parable that Bishop Leslie Hunter had told years ago.

He said - "As the threats of war and the cries of the dispossessed were sounding in his ears, Western man fell into an uneasy sleep. In his sleep he dreamed that he entered a spacious store in which the gifts of God to men are kept, and addressed the angel behind the counter, saying, "I've run out of the fruits of the Spirit, can you restock me?" When the angel seemed about to say no, he burst out, "In place of war, afflictions, injustice, lying and lust, I need love, joy, peace, integrity, discipline. Without these I shall be lost." And the angel behind the counter replied, "We don't stock fruits, only seeds."

Boscastle this past year has been full of seeds. Carrot seeds, yes, but those other seeds that are growing into the fruits of the Spirit.