Canals and Rivers

Whilst away on a nice little break Caroline and I were walking along a canal bank.

It struck me that the British church is very much like a canal. There’s life in there, but you’re not always sure how it survives. It supports great boats that move swiftly and serenely held up it. In the past it supported massive heavy industry but now just the odd pleasure cruise.

It is immovable, fixed, easy to get into, very hard to get out of, you can easily drown in it.

Alongside the canal was a powerful, free flowing river, with a life of it’s own, running free and clear, cutting out a new path with every year and every generation. It’s shallower, but much more life giving, more fragile but more powerful, more dangerous and more productive, necessary to every generation,

As we walked we saw where the river could flow in to fill the canal and where the canal could overflow into the river. River water goes into the canal and stagnates, canal water went not the river and was cleaned and freed.