by Rev. Antony W. Ball
Before writing my newsletter article each month, I routinely check what I wrote that month on the previous three years – trying to avoid, of course, repeating myself too often, which is a particular danger around the time of ‘annual’ events like harvest or advent.
Last year I wrote…
- The long, hot, dry summer will result in a drastically reduced harvest for us this year.
- Global warming predicts that such summers will occur more frequently in the future.
- Vladimir Putin’s invasion into Ukraine has decimated that country’s grain exports.
…to which this year we could presumably add the wild-fires in Canada, Greece and elsewhere, but not much else seems to have changed. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve made no progress. As most parents and teachers will confirm, repetition reinforces retention. Whether it’s something as simple as tying shoe-laces or as complicated as brain-surgery, just doing something over and over again increases our skill-set. How many more years before we ‘get the message’ on global warming?