Berwick Thought for the Week special: The Coronation of King Charles

TVs then were pretty scarce and were wonderful new things, and many of us may remember piling in to a neighbour’s front room or borrowed hall or similar.

Today life is a lot different and we may not be as excited as then, but look with trepidation as to what is to come. When the Queen died it brought sadness, nostalgia and tears to many as we looked back on our own lives.

A lot of us have, like she did, had a time of forgiveness and a time of correcting the mistakes we have made or accepting that we cannot revisit the past, but only face the future and put these mistakes behind us or look upon well-intentioned learning outcomes for our future relationships.

This is probably true as our new monarch faces the future and learns like many of us have had to do that some things can’t change and some things have to be accepted.

We have a new King and Queen Consort, something which would not have happened or been accepted less than 100 years ago when the late Queen’s Uncle abdicated the throne for the love of Wallis Simpson.

Isn’t Charles like many others in families now faced with doubts and uncertainties, and working with huge responsibilities of trying to bring his own family together who also are a mixed blended family with children and grandchildren of mixed race and origins who also are trying to support him as we do sometimes with a very mixed reaction.

Sometimes it is just better to get on with it and stay tight lipped rather than give our own views or opinions or advice, only to be met with a further widening gap between those we love or feel bound to accept as they have married into the family or partnered with those we would love to explode and tell them what we really think of them or tell them something we would regret much later in life and find that we were right in the end and should have been more gracious to them in the first place and made what we would have accepted as the best of a bad job.

Perhaps this is what we now have to do as we see a new monarch on the throne of his own mother, who from the beginning of her reign and in her own life tried to follow Christ’s teaching.

Christ would approach situations with great compassion and understanding, but always with the truth and we all have different ways of dealing it.

For example, if Jesus would have slapped a person in hysterics to calm them down, especially if that person was totally out of control and faced a life- threatening situation. Maybe, maybe not, but we know for certain that He would have found calm and understanding to deal with it.

We all move and breathe in different ways, but also finding a way in which we can love and accept and care for each other so that each of us feel we are loved and cared for. Drawing on her faith is what the late Queen did. Are we hoping that our new monarch about to be crowned will follow this example?

Are we as a nation about to support him and follow this example whether or not we agree with him or not? Can we use this example in our own communities? Can we find a way of coming together as we share the joys, hardships, changes that lie ahead?

Never rejecting anyone or being able to point them in the right direction. But embracing those who feel unloved, or uncared for, lonely, needing a smile or embracing a new policy without actually seeing its outcomes for ourselves.

Christ did this and so did our late Queen as did many before her; they may not have held a crown be it of a monarch or a crown of glory, but the example they set lives with us today.

“Let us greet each other with a smile, for a smile is the beginning of love”, Quoted from Mother Teresa and she made it work.

It says you are needed, you are wanted. Can we try to do something practical and possible which shows this? Or we can shrug our shoulders and walk away and feel the consequences later.

Whether or not we agree with our new King to be crowned or if we agree with the monarchy or not. We can hope that he can follow his own mother’s example, who followed Christ in being both outright in truth but at the same diplomatic.

Can we say ‘God bless the King’ with hand on heart no matter what faith we follow or policy, but knowing he is in the hands of the one who guides us all if we let him.