Small Actions Make Big Changes

St Mawgan-in-Pydar

On Saturday, as I sat in the Thirteenth Century Church of St. Mawgan awaiting the start of Sarah and Jon's Wedding I began to think on all the hundreds of other weddings that must have taken place there in the past seven hundred and fifty so years. There would have been many rich patrons and vastly more poor couples who had stood and recited their vows before God. Ceremonies would have changed over time and,as the site is even more ancient that the church, some may not have even been Christian.

However much time and customs may have changed, all those couples, from whatever age, would have held similar hopes for the future. Prosperity, children and a myriad other things would have been on their minds. Some would have married for love, some for local political expediency, others because a child was on the way. Each ceremony would have represented the coming together of two lives that were, without them knowing it, going to change the future.

As today, many of those couples would have no idea that the simple act of their union would bring about change. We may think that real change is made by those in power but the more I study history the more I realize the part we all have to play. John Donne said that 'no man is an island'. Each life and each action of life changes the actions of others, and so the effect of the original action is multiplied.

It is a sobering thought to realise the things I do today may well have repercussions not only today but well into the future