Document Type
News Article
Publication/Presentation Date
3-2019
Reflection
I am writing this on the day that the UK was supposed to be leaving the European Union – Brexit Day, March 29, 2019. Except that we haven’t left and today, we don’t know if we will, when we will or how we will leave. All options appear to be open. Whether you are a Leaver, a Remainer or somewhere in between, we are living in interesting times and we wait to see what will happen next week with Brexit Day now potentially being April 12.
Meantime, Springtime has arrived here – the daffodils and other spring bulbs are flowering, blossom is appearing on the trees and new lambs can be seen gambolling in the fields. This Sunday is Mothering Sunday but unlike the American Mothers’ Day, it has a religious origin as the day when people would return to their ‘mother’ church. Half way through Lent, (the 40 days leading up to Easter Sunday) and marked by fasting from food and festivities (now people tend not to fast, but ‘give up’ something, eg. wine, chocolate), Mothering Sunday is a special day when traditionally, young people, mainly daughters, who were domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother and family, and fasting rules were relaxed. As they walked home, they would pick wild flowers to take to church or give to their mother.
Half way between Mothering Sunday and Easter Sunday is the new Brexit Day. It remains to be seen if we really do ‘Brexit’ on April 12, but at the moment some are saying, “I did my best” with the extra unspoken words, “but I failed”. I am sure that everyone reading this will have at some time, failed at something (Dave Stewart, Course 18, wrote to his instructor, Fred Brittain and asked Fred if he remembered his failure to land his airplane correctly during a cross country flight – but this failure didn’t stop him graduating as a pilot – see ‘The Instructors’). We all fail at things at times and then life can seem very dark and without promise, but perhaps it will help to reflect on the words of Henry Ford, who said, “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently”. Wise words indeed which promise hope!
‘Their efforts to preserve the freedom of the world were not in vain and will never be forgotten'
Scholarly Commons Citation
Harding, J. A. (2019). 5 BFTS Association Newsletter No 13 - March. , (). Retrieved from https://commons.erau.edu/bfts-clewiston-newsletters/14