Farming & Agape

Cycling through delightful villages on the way to Amelia farm for what was to be one of the last visits I will make this year – never say you won’t return! – was strangely nostalgic for the past year.
Although the majority of the time was over the winter, my early morning struggle up the aptly named hill ‘Tumble’ had been a largely dry affair. Those morning soakings I did endure were now being looked upon with affection. I don’t recall any affection to the weather, as I look back on those occasions.
However, it was still a nostalgic ride, useful, as it took my mind of the aching limbs and speeding cars.
The service that evening was one of Agape. Back in Cardiff with the college community, mostly ordinands, sat round our dining tables in the common space where we normally share our meals. It wasn’t nostalgia this time which I felt, it was rather a disturbing sense of rightness. To be in this small diverse community sharing a meal around a table. Firstly a symbolic meal of oatcakes and honey, then our evening meal together.
How do these two things link together?
In what they are for, or what comes after. Struggling up a hill and sitting down together in community may be an apt comparison, more so in Northern Ireland right now than Cardiff! But if we don’t struggle with one another, wrestling the issues, we will never get to the goods. If we don’t sit down and share the basic necessity of food and water with those around us, how are we to share it with those outside our small world.