View from the Lantern by Canon Peter Dobson – February 2024

This article was written by the Revd Canon Peter Dobson, the Cathedral’s Canon for Outreach & Discipleship. It was first published in the February 2024 edition of Link, the monthly newspaper for the Diocese of Newcastle.

At the beginning of another new year, it’s easy to feel the pressure of the ‘new’, the prevailing ‘new year, new you’ culture, and the promises and resolutions we feel we must make. When so much around us in the world feels as if it is in flux, newness can feel all the more unwelcome.

On the other hand, there continues to be much welcome change here at the Cathedral. In welcoming our new Dean, we are reminded (as we all need to be at times) that newness can bring much joy, too – new energy, fresh insight, a different perspective.

Here at the Cathedral, these are the gifts of the ‘new’ we continue to carry into this new year. We are committed not to change for change’s sake but to the newness God calls us to make: to being with those who feel as though they are in the dark, to noticing the people and experiences we have pushed to the margins, acknowledging the gifts in our midst and, in all of this, noticing what needs to be different.

Already in 2024, the work of the Cathedral’s Lantern Initiative – our commitment to mission and ministry alongside those in dark times – is helping bring fresh insight and renewed challenge to our common life, and we hope to others too. Filming has begun on a series of videos that will live on our website, sensitively telling the stories of those who join in the work of the Lantern Initiative through projects such as ‘Recovery Church’.

Looking ahead to 2024, we are providing a space for the ‘Speak Their Name’ North East Suicide Memorial Quilt from 5 February
until 27 March. We are also on the brink of working with a local composer and musicians who have sought refuge in our country, enabling members of the asylum seeker community in Newcastle to tell, sing and perform their own Stories of Sanctuary.

Collectively, we hope the work on the Lantern Initiative will help others notice, as we are, the experiences of those we sometimes find too easy to turn away from.