I brought a perfect specimen of rose from the garden into the house the other day; a lovely deep pink colour, with a powerful scent. Perhaps I should have left it to bloom outside, but having flowers around the house makes it seem brighter and more welcoming; in exactly the same way that flowers in church add liveliness and beauty for worshipper and visitor alike.

Thank you, therefore, all who decorate our churches so beautifully with flower arrangements: without them our places of worship would be much poorer.  It is with particular joy that I anticipate the Flower Festival in St Andrew’s in September, called “Let us garlands bring”. The title is taken from a line in Shakespeare’s song to “Silvia” from the play “Two Gentlemen of Verona”. It is also the title of a set of five such songs set to music by Gerald Finzi, and being performed, along with other pieces, by the Brocket Consort on Saturday 15th as part of the Festival. The garlands will not be for Silvia this time, but for the church of St Andrew with Holy Cross, to celebrate her beauty and place in our hearts.

I hope that visitors from all the parishes will come and see the results of much hard work by a dedicated team of volunteers.  Flower Festivals are beautiful and ephemeral. They are at once a reminder of the glorious splendour of life and of its transience. All beauty is transient, either because the flowering is brief or because our appreciation is limited and sometimes changes: yet it remains a vital ingredient in our lives. Shakespeare wrote of Silvia that “beauty lives with kindness”. The enigma of beauty is that we find it in many different ways and see it with different eyes. Most would probably agree that a rose is beautiful; but some entomologists might find beauty even in the invisible worm that flies in the night and finds a bed of crimson joy in the heart of the rose to destroy it! Christians sing that they worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Others might find no such beauty except in the natural world.

Beauty alone is not enough to make the world a better place. Appreciation of beauty can live in the heart of a cruel tyrant; and the beautiful can exist in an immoral society. Amon Goeth could listen to Natalia Carp play Chopin in the Polish Concentration Camp and feel the beauty of the music, but he still went out and ordered the slaughter of thousands of Jews, gays and gypsies.

So we reserve the term for those things, living and inanimate, that evoke in us a profound response. There can be no stereotype of beauty. Yet for me, something or someone is morally or spiritually beautiful only when it/they represent what is good, kind or true.

To such a person or place we can indeed bring our garlands.

Chris Boulton