This morning was our covenant service - it seemed to be well received and to be an appropriate start of the 'new year' after the stresses of the last one.  As ever there were several visitors - from Germany and Australia - as well as our regular multi-national, multi-ethnic mix.  It was good to be together, to remember how we are interconnected, to pray for one another's home nations, to break bread and drink wine.  It was good to remember that we are in this together and that everyone has something unique and valuable to contribute.

In the course of the service we said 'farewell' to one of our overseas students and remembered another who had had to leave without saying 'goodbye' to return to work.  Next week we welcome a baby and farewell a number of folk leaving the UK.  Yet the interconnectedness remains.  We become part of one another in some mysterious, mystic perhaps, way.

My memorialist view of communion takes a lot of stick from some of my more sacramental friends.  Memorialism does not preclude mystery... for me there is a mystery that unites us as we remember past communion services in other places with other people and through them become linked to all times and places in a continuity of remembrance - or re-membering, putting back together that which has been broken and scattered.

For better, for worse

For richer, for poorer

In sickness, in health

In faith, in doubt

In hope, in fear

And embraced in love

We walk together, with God, in ways known and to be made known.

Amen