The chimney rises far over this earthly clamour — into a purer air. Reaching to earth’s ageless rhythm far removed from the wars and pollution of our destructive human species. Likewise in meeting we feel refreshed by a sense of mystery beyond our finite minds, to clutch an idea of a larger life beyond that of the petty, blinkered self; to deep listening beyond the hindrance of words, beyond the ravages of gender, race, age, intolerance, towards a pure creativity: to what, deep within, is trying to speak to us. This is everlasting goodness, the Spirit, God.

New insights, new angles, new purpose can come to us in that realm, paradoxically reached by looking inward. It is the place where we see a wider vista, where life may appear in better perspective.

The real chimney , of course, creates pollution. Hopefully, our chimney creates a little cheer, goodness, and the wholesomeness that this world so desperately needs.

.Sometimes the chimney is lashed by thunder, lightning, a raging storm. Likewise we are aghast at the madness of the human species embedded in Palestine, Ukraine and elsewhere. We are left in anguish by government and its magician’s hat trick that would make the increased fossil fuel look like a virtue. We face the stark possibility of destruction of even humankind , or, is it futile to hope, of the possibility of a higher stage of human development?

At other times the chimney is blanketed in dreary fog, those clouded hours benumbed of inspiration — until a fertilising downpour grips us.

As a l new attender it was suggested to me that, at its best, a meeting for worship is healing. “Then , oh then, I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition’ “. Three hundred and fifty years later we have a more enlightened world view, so would say it differently. The essence is the same though: out of a deep inward silence one can reach a place of healing as well as answer to distress.

 Are these thoughts delusional imagination? As fanciful as the chimney that has become defunct in this modern age? Yet, as the chimney is so clearly visible from the meeting house window, so hopefully my thoughts do give meaning to life.

At the bottom of the chimney lies Isaac Penington’s bemused description of meeting for worship :

“like an heap of fresh and living coals, warming one another, insomuch as a great strength, freshness, and vigor of life flows into all.”

Just as a fire sometimes burns cheerfully, at other times the fire is what my grandmother called ‘temperamental’, so with meeting for worship: I might sit there with nothing more than “did I turn off the gas, what else do I need buy at the supermarket … ?“ At other times the mind is creative, the ministry profound. And I find that I soared up through that sturdy chimney to be oxygenated by a purer air, a sense of something more than myself.

All this was ever so succinctly said by the psalmist of long ago: “Create in me a clean heart O God; and renew a right spirit within me”.