VICAR
Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, there is a particular gift in the quiet moments of rural life that so often pass us by. Not the showy ones—not the blazing sunsets or the dramatic thunderstorms—but the quiet, steady ones. The countryside does not rush. It has its rhythms, its seasons, its own unhurried pace.
But I have also been thinking, this week, about the treasure we are letting slip through our fingers. The old men who sit on the bench outside the pub, watching the world go by with eyes that have seen a hundred harvests. The women who still know the names of every wildflower in the hedgerow, and which ones cure a fever and which ones ease a cough. The hands that can still thatch a roof, lay a hedge, mend a bridle, or whistle up a sheepdog with a tune passed down from their grandfathers. These are the living libraries of the countryside—and when they go, the books are burned.
There is no app for what they know. No YouTube tutorial for the feel of a well-balanced scythe or the right angle to sharpen a billhook. Their wisdom is not written down; it is carried in the bones, remembered in the muscles, whispered in the quiet of a long winter evening. And it is our sacred duty, I think, to listen before the words grow faint.
So today, a prayer for the elders among us—for their wisdom, their patience, and for the grace to sit at their feet and learn.
Dear Lord,
We thank You for the gift of age. For the silver hair and the lined faces that tell the story of a life fully lived. For the hands that have known hard work and gentle care. For the eyes that have seen both hardship and blessing, and that still find wonder in the flight of a swallow or the first blossom on the hawthorn.
We thank You for the stories they carry. For the tales of wartime and peacetime, of droughts and floods and golden summers. For the memories of village life before the motorcar, before the tractor, before the world grew so loud. Let us treasure these stories, Lord. Let us write them down, record them, pass them on—so that the generations to come will know what it meant to live close to the land.
We pray for the farmers of a certain age, whose bones ache and whose backs bend, but whose knowledge of the soil is deeper than any textbook. Let us learn from them. Let us sit with them in the kitchen and ask about drainage and crop rotation, about the breeds that thrive and the ones that fade, about the signs in the sky that foretell a harsh winter or a mild one. Their wisdom is gold, and we have been poor stewards of it.
We pray for the gardeners, whose green fingers have coaxed life from the earth for eighty seasons. Let us watch them plant, and let us ask why they plant in that particular spot at that particular time. Let us learn the difference between good soil and poor, and the secret of a tomato that actually tastes of something.
We pray for the keepers of memory. The women who know the old songs and the old recipes, the remedies and the rhymes. The ones who can still name the wild herbs and their uses, the ones who remember when the village feast was a holy day and not just a bank holiday. Let us ask them before it is too late. Let us record their voices. Let us honour their knowledge.
And finally, Lord, we thank You for the great chain of knowledge that stretches back through the generations—from the first sower of seed to the hands that gather the harvest today. Let us not break that chain. Let us hold it fast, repair it where it frays, and pass it on, stronger than we found it, to those who will come after us. For the wisdom of the elders is the soil in which the future grows.
Amen.
God Bless You All.
Photo: Church of St Peter ad Vincula, Colemore