Sunday 4th December - Pause in Advent 2; Love

The different Sundays in Advent each have their own theme, depending on which scheme you are following. One sequence, but probably not in this order, is Peace, Love, Joy, Hope.

My mother took us two children to Slough in the car - we must have been about 6 (me) and 4 (my brother) years old.

Slough was a great shopping centre, not too far away, and I vaguely remember a department store called 'Suter's; Oh my word - my memory has not played tricks on me! 

http://www.philipsuter.co.uk/Suters_Ltd.htm

This was about the time when Slough was rapidly turning into a dormitory town, full of 'ticky-tacky' boxes, and John Betjeman was writing poems with lines like

'Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough,

it isn't fit for humans now' 

We always used to say the name of the town to rhyme with 'enough' rather than rhyming with 'bough'

(Bear with me, I'll get to the point soon)

So, we were being taken to go shopping in 'Sluff'.

I'm told that I piped up from the back of the car and announced that I knew a song about Slough, taught to me by the nuns at the convent school I went to, and sang in all seriousness;

'Come ye, come ye, all ye little children,

God is Slough, God is Slough'

It's funny little incidents like these, early in childhood, that remain imprinted in your memory when all the details have disappeared.  

Therefore, thanks to the nuns at the convent, and this almost forgotten shopping trip, I have written right through me like letters in a stick of rock, that 'God is Love, God is Love'.

scroll down for the words, a poem by Christina Rossetti

Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love divine; Love was born at Christmas, Star and angels gave the sign. Worship we the Godhead, Love incarnate, Love divine; Worship we our Jesus: But wherewith for sacred sign? Love shall be our token, Love be yours and love be mine; Love to God and all men, Love for plea, and gift, and sign.