September 2009

The holidays are over and it is back to school and college for many. Perhaps you were able to go away, or may be you've had a holiday at home, or may be you still have a holiday to which to look forward. "The thing that I remember especially", someone said to me, "was sitting still for twenty minutes just watching a flock of birds in a tree."

On holiday, we give ourselves time (and permission?) to do things differently. When we are less busy, we can value the "being" more than the "doing", the "looking" more than the "activity", the enjoying and delight. So often what remains after a holiday is the memory of sitting still and other experiences of being, rather than what we've done or achieved.

Our word "holiday" does of course come from "holy day", when, in the past, people only stopped work on the holy days of the Church year. The meaning and derivation of the word "holiday" encourages us to give space, delight, and enjoyment to things beyond ourselves, to make the connection with our inner and spiritual needs. There is a proper blurring of sacred and secular. They are not separate realms! God our Creator has left his print on all that he has made. The book of Genesis tells us, "God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good." Holidays enable us to delight in that goodness of creation.

As I write this, we are in the midst of hosting the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford. So much of the music played during that week, like so much of the music heard on Radio 3 and Classic FM, is "sacred", written for use in worship. Whether heard in that context or not, music is able to take us closer into the presence of God.

Music, like the stillness and rest on holiday, enables us to be in touch with the deeper parts of our own being, which also include the pains, worries, hurts, cares and anxieties, as well as the delight and enjoyment. Like sacred music, these have their truest place in worship and prayer, where they can be brought to God and laid before him. Holiday blurs with holy day, secular blurs with sacred, and we are enriched to go into the new term, new school year, and all that lies ahead.