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MY FAVOURITE MONTH

The Very Revd June Osborne, Dean (Tuesday 1st May 2007)

May is my favourite month of the year and I would happily spend this month watching the world blossom. It causes me considerable sadness that all our children (and their teachers) are trapped these days into the interminable treadmill of public examinations at a time of the year where I’d like them to be experiencing the exuberance of God’s creation and enjoying the extraordinary power of the natural order not just to recreate itself but to do so with such disregard for thrift and tidiness. God’s world is profligate and there for our pleasure and his glory. Which is perhaps why the Cathedral celebrates no less than three Festivals in the month of May. We begin with our own Cathedral Festival on Sunday 20th May when the Dean of Windsor is our guest. We give thanks for the dedication of the Cathedral to the Blessed Virgin Mary, hear a sermon preached by our Dean’s Chorister, and if the weather is kind enjoy a celebratory picnic. The imagination and innovation which established this Cathedral and which still informs its life is worth commemorating and so we have created our own red letter day of thanksgiving. Close on its heels there is the Salisbury International Festival which again this year has a feast of events on offer. The programme is constructed around an artistic, cultural and environmental theme and this year these are movement, Latin America, and water. That’s a wonderful combination of superabundant elements. The Cathedral is proud to be a partner and sponsor of the Festival, and it is through these artistic moments that we can truly resonate with all that we are and all that makes human life want to praise its Maker. The third Festival is the Christian festival of Pentecost. On the great day of Pentecost, a mighty wind surged from heaven pushing the followers of Jesus out of the places where they had been hiding. The Spirit of God who had brooded over the waters of creation to breathe life into our world now promises to gently and powerfully work in our history. So we celebrate the gift of Holy Wisdom and the freedom she brings. Festivals are about dancing with delight, laughing at joyful possibilities, rejoicing at the unexpected and spontaneous. There’s an air of celebration around May for God’s world is recklessly extravagant.

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