Hush the Noise

Christmas is loud, isn’t it? So much expectation. So many voices. Telling us how to celebrate, what to wear, what to eat and drink, what to watch and what to buy.

At my church, a Methodist Church, this Advent and Christmas season our theme is “Hush the Noise” taking words from the familiar carol “It came upon a midnight clear”, “O hush the noise, ye men of strife and hear the angels sing!”. The carol was written in America in 1849 as a response to geopolitical unrest, and as a protest about the horrors of slavery. It describes a “weary world” filled with “Babel sounds”, “sin and strife” and war. Sadly, 175 years later the carol is just as relevant as we long for harmony, justice and restoration.

I’m not sure you would call any of us at Henwood Court “angels”, but there is a certain amount of the message conveyed from church this year which reminds me of financial planning, even on a Sunday!

Not only that we educate clients to “Hush the noise” of volatile stock markets, but another image that was used in church on the first Sunday in Advent was that of a leaking bucket; clients of Henwood Court will be very familiar with “leaking buckets”! However, in a church context and alongside our Advent and Christmas theme of “Hush the Noise”, it was used to help to help communicate how we’re feeling and to find ways to hush some of the overwhelm; what is pouring into your bucket, and what can you do to make some space to hush the chaos.

Even when the noise is overwhelming, there are things we can do to reconnect with love and peace. What could you do to make the drain holes in your bucket bigger?

We can send messages in so many ways nowadays; using phones, emails, images, words, emojis, and of course Henwood Connect! We can spread good news in all these ways – and in our actions. We can shine light into the communities we are a part of, through a smile, an act of kindness or kind word.

There’s a lot going on right now – and its easy for a lot to become too much. Take some time to “Hush the Noise”

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring.
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing!

(Edmund Hamilton Sears)

Helen Allen CFP ™, APP, Chartered FCSI, FPFS
Chartered Financial Planner