Taking stock of life is something we should all do
In many ways we’re in a season of taking stock.
There’s a need to consider keeping homes warm and bright in colder months. Those of us with oil tanks and woodsheds check levels. Hearing rising energy prices, all of us look at finances.
If you’re at all worried about being able to pay energy or other bills, seek help. Ask for advice from your local Citizens Advice Bureau or www.citizensadvice.org.uk/scotland. Speak to someone you trust to help work things out. Speak to the companies whose bills you’re struggling with. Please get advice.
There may be other domestic things to take stock of. Visits from far-flung children have meant moving and making beds for us. Time off hopefully means that by the time you read this I might have tidied unruly hedges in our rampaging garden.
As a society, we’re taking stock of where we are and how we got here. With the climate emergency, the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere means enormous changes are needed urgently.
I make no apology for mentioning the crucial COP climate summit again, and the need for our politicians to take action. The burden of action should fall most on richer nations like ours, who have benefited most from use of fossil fuels to build our society, industry and wealth.
I was also really struck by last week’s Northern Scot cover story, as local councillors look back to the transatlantic slave trade and recognise how much inherited wealth was generated from that terrible human suffering.
While there are no simple resolutions, I applaud them for being willing to discuss past and modern slavery, considering the impact on other people and places in the past, present and future.
Taking stock can be quite uncomfortable. We may look back with regret. We may look around now and feel overwhelmed. We may look to the future with uncertainty and fears as well as hope.
I’m very aware of that in the church just now. The Church of Scotland is planning for a one-third reduction in the number of paid posts – that includes local ministers like me. Yet while taking financial stock leads to that difficult outcome, in Moray our planning process is also listening to the bigger picture of each church’s life, which is hugely hopeful and encouraging.
Our local church families, like all our local communities, have been and are amazing. People have supported each other in old and new ways through the pandemic.
Having embraced online, telephone and postal connections, groups are now considering what to build on, how to safely restart activities, and what may have had its time.
Love has been, is and will be shared. God is at work in all our communities, through so many people.
Amongst all this, what do you see if you take stock? What are your hopes and fears?
What can you do – at home, in communities, as a society – to make things better in the months ahead?
And how can we help each other do it together?
n Jenny Adams is minister of Hopeman, Duffus and Spynie Church of Scotland. She started this column at the outset of the pandemic. If you would like to send comments or feedback to Jenny about any of the topics she discusses in this exclusive fortnightly column then send them to newsdesk@northern-scot.co.uk
