Anchors

I have several 'anchors' dotted through the year, and this year I have missed a number of them in succession. I missed being 'ashed' on Ash Wednesday- I was flying back from Cyprus that day, and the words in the liturgy for Ash Wednesday are important to me in setting a direction and a purpose for the forty days of Lent. After that, I missed the renewal of my ordination vows- an annual event at York Minster which takes place every Maundy Thursday; I was chief cook and bottlewasher after my wife's discharge from hospital a few days before this. Palm Sunday and Easter day were hurried and cramped because of caring duties.

So a drive over the wolds last Tuesday evening in glorious weather and balmy air, to a friend's installation as vicar in a benefice there, snuck up on me as a significant but unexpected anchor to replace the something of what I had missed. The promises she made in the service, the expectations she was now living under, the responsibilities she now had- most of these were mine as a priest. I could assent to all that she was saying- for myself. And did ; it was for me my Maundy Thursday Renewal of Vows service, except a month or so later.

Anchors; they prevent us drifting. Keep us in a safe place. Help us ride out the storm. It's only when they are not there that we miss them- and then not always. Here is one who is glad he found an anchor on a lovely spring evening, which deepened the gladness of the occasion in quite an unlooked-for way.