Today is St Francis Day

Banner in South Kelsey Church

 I think Saint Francis of Assisi has always been a popular saint.  We’re all familiar with rather sentimental pictures of him talking to birds and animals.  It’s reckoned he’s responsible for nativity sets when he created a nativity tableau with real people and real animals.  He gave himself wholly to God and saw God everywhere.

Francis seemed to understand something that we sometimes forget: the world is full of small things worth noticing.  A bird singing.  The sun coming through the window.  A tree moving in the wind.

Francis also embraced a life of simplicity. This is where I feel rather challenged.  He managed to live simply without accumulating cupboards full of things that might come in useful one day.

For me, and maybe you too, simplicity is a work in progress.

Francis didn’t want to possess “things”.  He could look at a bird, a flower, the moon or a humble patch of earth and simply be glad that it was there.

Perhaps growing older is partly about learning to notice more and chase less.  To enjoy things without the need to possess them.  To watch the birds without knowing their names.  To sit quietly without feeling that you ought to be doing something.  And perhaps, if we are lucky, we learn to become a little more like Francis — not by doing anything extraordinary, but simply by noticing the ordinary with a little more wonder and thanking God for it.

That seems to me a rather lovely way to spend a life.