As I write the weather is superb – beautiful and sunny and everything is growing well – weeds too!

The Open Gardens weekend will shortly be upon us and I do hope you will all take part through visiting and coming to the Vicarage for refreshments.  I should be around for most of the time and would love to meet you at the Vicarage.

So much effort goes into these events by the organisers and those that ‘do’.  The Flower Guild have been planning their arrangements for weeks, the refreshments have been worked out in detail, cups, saucers, what to do if the weather is poor etc… So it is wonderful if the hard work can be recognised and the community turns up to appreciate what has been laid on for them.

Sometimes, we don’t recognise how important it is to support each other’s efforts in the community.  It is easy to put off going to the Open Gardens or the Fete or whatever because something else crops up.  But it is these events that are central to building up the community spirit.  Through coming together we share our experiences and we begin to find we are not alone in our thinking but that there are others who share in the same thoughts and views.  We can then work together to further our community life together with confidence and in a way that makes for shared responsibility for the place that we live in.  It builds up our feeling of ‘belonging’ – and we all need to have that feeling of ‘belonging’.  It is through ‘belonging’ that we know ourselves to be an integral part of the community life.  It is through ‘belonging’ that we know we are accepted and loved.  Sharing together also gives us strength to move forwards in community life as the relationships between our families strengthen and find a voice.

Much is going on in the life of Derry Hill with Studley; I do hope that if you weren’t going to come along to the village events this summer that you will think again if you don’t have a special engagement elsewhere.  After all God made us to be a community.  As Paul said to the Thessalonians “So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing”.

With love, Reverend Ann