February thoughts from Nick ...

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On holiday last year we went into an old fashioned sweet shop. The sweets weighed out from big jars, the little paper bags, the names of some of the sweets, everything except the price was evocative of childhood innocence. Do you remember Love Hearts? Before they fizz in your mouth releasing copious amounts of artificial sweetness into your system these are the sweets that carry a ‘lurve’ message, usually a saccharine soppy sentiment, occasionally something sharper. The flavours themselves vary, sympathetic to the tone of message which can have an acid edge. The modern ones differ in that they now beseech the loved one ‘email me’ and are sometimes written in txt language! A timeless message of love updated.

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There will be many such messages on Saint Valentines’ Day but who actually was Saint Valentine? Appropriately enough we don’t really know! He is apparently not only a man of mystery – but probably two people muddled up in a case of mistaken identity. Perhaps the idea of two people mysteriously becoming one is a good one for the patron saint of lovers.

It is surely good that what on one level is a secular and commercial day in the calendar retains a link with the idea of holiness. We might think of holiness as our human potential seen through the eyes of the God of love, who is mysterious but whose signature can be found if we look on everything and in everyone he has made.