I love this time of year when we experience the abundance of harvest. I have picked loads of pears, but there have not been many apples. Hopefully I can share what I have and enjoy what others have to offer at the harvest supper in our village. I hope that you will be able to take part in this season of gratitude for abundance and create the opportunities in school to celebrate and share.

Harvest signals a change of season – knowing we have enough to get through, and people to it share with, helps us to face the signs of winter creeping up on us. I love shuffling in leaves before they get mushed up and I will need to sweep them away, clearing a path so that no one slips over.

In school the year is now set up, routines established, children settled in. You have provided that for each other and the sowing of a good start will mean you will reap good things over the whole year. Before we get to half term, though, no doubt you will look ahead to the weeks after it. So I invite you to clear a path amidst the swirling and twirling of leaves and children, an inner path which enables you to let go gratefully of this season of beginnings and enables you to embrace what comes next.

If you have seen the TV programme Tidying Up with Marie Kondo or read her bestseller The Life Changing Magic of Tidying up: the Japanese art of decluttering and organising, you will know the importance of getting rid of things, but of being grateful. Marie Kondo advises you to pick up that jumper or sandwich toaster with gratitude for what it has been to you, but to pass it on if it does not spark joy in you. If joy is sparked in you she recommends that you put it in the place where it is to be kept, that you give it a home, folding it, if you can, with thankfulness. The purpose of all this is to enable a house to become a home, a place where there is gratitude for what you have and joy. It’s not bad advice for a classroom or a heart.

People talk a lot about letting go, but the wisdom which emerges from the bible is more direct: ‘Repent’ is what John the Baptist invited us to do, proclaiming now as the time to change and turn to God. Centuries before John the Baptist the prophet Isaiah called upon God’s people to, ‘Make a straight path through the desert’.

As the season turns I know I need to set a new pattern for rest and reflection if I’m to get through til Christmas. I will enjoy shuffling and sweep up leaves to clear a path. The physical activity will help me mull, pray, let go and pledge myself to let go of what I don’t need and prevents me from living well. I can start the work to clear an inner path so that I can be at grateful for what has been accomplished and let go of what doesn’t spark joy. Will you?

The Ven Dr Justine Allain Chapman

Archdeacon of Boston, Chair of LDBE