Previous Reflections

Home > Services & Events > Previous Reflections

THE COMMON STREAM

Canon Edward Probert (Monday 1st March 2010)

I recently read what 30 years ago was a rather modish work of history. ‘Montaillou’ is an account of the life of a southern French village which draws upon the detailed records of an Inquisition conducted by an early 14th century bishop, the village of the title being then something of a nest of Albigensian heretics. The historian’s approach is sociological, so he doesn’t tell the story of the Inquisition or of the village, but rather describes different facets of life there at a particular point in its history.

One remarkable thing emerged from the margins of the book: that there is still someone with the surname of the village’s dominant peasant family living there 700 years later. I presume by now they might have moved or changed their name, because it’s not a family with very creditable ancestors! Even so, it’s striking that in a place with only a few hundred inhabitants, a family should continue through numerous wars, revolutions, and economic and social transformations. It’s a reminder of the continuity of community, which is a theme dramatised in a much lighter way in Rutherfurd’s ‘Sarum’.

Actually this should come as no surprise to anyone who has been part of a church. These communities have long memories, and often continue to be influenced by people who are long gone. There is often a prehistory undergirding present relationships and attitudes. The best analogy for this common life (pace St Paul, whose body analogy is rather better known) is a stream: it moves at all times, water is added to it from many sources and at many different stages in its progress, and is taken out of it likewise; it has a clear identity which begins in one place and finishes in another, but who knows exactly where on that course any constituent gallon of water came from or will end up? It doesn’t have the clear definition of a body, with its skin, but rather sloppy edges where it interacts with the surroundings. And of course it flows finally into a common destiny in the sea.

However you conceive our common life as Christians, however you experience it, it’s helpful to remember both that we are but small parts of this vast fluid movement, and also that any of us, like the Clergue family in their Pyrenean village, may play a much longer part than we expect.

OTHER REFLECTIONS

Site Map

site design by datasouthuklimited