Letter from John Peck
Happy New Year! So we greet each other hopefully, perhaps review the past and future doubtfully, and make our resolutions perhaps rather cynically. Increasingly the rising generation of the western world find it hard to see purpose and meaning to it all (the suicide rate is frightening); those bright hopes of contributing to a better life for all which motivated most of us in our twenties, now, in the light of Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan, Malaysia, disturbing political developments at home, and so much else, make them seem unrealistically naive. But then, if you go back to that Child as a refugee, that innocent Man crucified on a framed charge of sedition, and the strange triumph of His vision that followed, perhaps there is a way of hope,
And so to another year, a chance
To make fresh start to our resolution.
Even so we rise to another day, an entrance
To worlds made new by sleep’s oblivion.
Even so new possibilities in attendance
Offer renewed hope in another generation.
Yet in every new moment there are quirks
Of fate to mock our bright confidences;
And the follies of our past works
Enslave our efforts to make dreams come true:
But… Those cruel cussednesses - what if Someone knew?
What if Someone came to make all spoiled things new?
John Peck