From The Editor

BY the time we read this, summer (or what passes for summer in Scotland) will be with us.

One of my great pleasures in life is walking – and summertime off ers the opportunity to do more and to appreciate the changing sounds and sights of the world around me.

In recent months, I have been privileged to witness fantastic vistas of colour from dramatic sunsets, growing families of ducks and swans (with suitably cute ducklings and cygnets) and at one point even managed to spot a family of Sika deer in a farm field near our home. Summertime brings beauty and colour to a landscape that in winter can be cold, grey and drab.

As a family we are blessed to live only five minutes from an area which commands breathtaking views of three of the bridges spanning the Firth of Forth along with occasional views of the impressive cruise ships that come to visit every week of the summer, bringing excited tourists to our local towns and cities. The sights can be viewed from a trail around a small pond that is becoming a haven for wildlife, including ducks and swans.

A small castle is also nearby (now flats) and a cairn to an historic 17th century battle. Our home sits on an area that was once a bustling rural village, long gone, to serve a country house estate.

The landscape has changed beyond recognition in the 21st century. Yet with the change has come fresh growth. The cottages that once stood where our home was built were long gone: the area had reverted to fields.

But change has brought new life and fresh seeds of growth. Empty fields, once home to many farmworkers, who had long since disappeared as agriculture became increasingly mechanised have been repopulated and renewed.

The landscape has changed beyond recognition in the 21st century. Yet with the change has come fresh growth.

A walk around the neighbouring area also off ers evidence of its past life as an RAF base, with roads and footpaths no longer in use, but also of its future, with new offices and business units built. The past is still visible (if you know where to look), but new life and development has changed the area.

The changing seasons and the beauty of those colours and the miracle of the explosion of spring every year, however, bring echoes of the past on those walks through the seasons.

As the Church pauses for the summer and grapples with the challenge of change following the decisions of this year’s General Assembly, the changing seasons and beauty around us offer a timely reminder of the words of Ecclesiastes 3:1 ‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.’

Lynne McNeil Editor