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I<br />
read a rather astonishing statistic recently.<br />
Apparently British people now live on average<br />
100 miles away from their birthplace, whereas<br />
25 years ago they only lived, on average, fi ve<br />
miles away. I would like to get to the bottom<br />
of those numbers – do they for instance include the<br />
quite considerable number of people born thousands<br />
of miles away but who have now made Britain their<br />
home? And if so that tells us rather more about<br />
international, rather than internal, migration.<br />
But even so, I presently live 160 miles away from<br />
my birthplace and my wife lives over 400 miles from<br />
where she was born, so I suppose that makes us<br />
fairly typical. But not, I think, typical of people living<br />
in Sheffi eld. I am always struck when meeting<br />
people here how geographically-centred family life<br />
in Sheffi eld is. This says something about the deep<br />
June/July <strong>2017</strong><br />
WOODSEATS • SHEFFIELD<br />
affection that residents feel for the steel city (Sheffi eld has highest<br />
graduate-retention of any university city outside of London) but also, I<br />
think, something about the strong bonds of family life here that keeps<br />
people close to their parents and siblings.<br />
Living in close proximity to family brings with it great blessings as well<br />
as challenges to overcome. A nearby source of convenient babysitting<br />
is a huge advantage to struggling parents, but do the grandparents<br />
sometimes feel taken advantage of? Problems of loneliness amongst<br />
the elderly must be lower when family live so nearby, but do tensions<br />
also increase when parents and children see each other so often? One<br />
of the questions that I pose couples seeking marriage is how they will<br />
carve out their own life together as well as honour their existing families<br />
who may struggle to adjust to the new situation.<br />
Whatever challenges might be faced by living so close to our<br />
nearest and dearest, I suspect that most of us feel happier being in<br />
the neighbourhood than far away and for those who are far away from<br />
children and grandchildren, or who have no close relatives, life can feel<br />
very lonely at times.<br />
At St Chad’s we recognise all the joys and tensions that family – and<br />
no family – brings. Weddings baptisms and thanksgivings<br />
are celebrated for the gifts of God that marriage and<br />
children brings, whilst at the same time we recognise<br />
that for many people the church community provides<br />
an alternative family. In this we follow the example<br />
of Jesus who controversially declared that his<br />
disciples were his true family. This wider defi nition<br />
of family provides its own challenges as we stretch<br />
our love to include people to whom we might not have<br />
a natural affi nity, but it also helps remind us that in<br />
baptism, water is in fact thicker than blood.<br />
Rev Toby Hole, Vicar,<br />
St Chad’s Church, Woodseats<br />
Family Ties<br />
St Chad’s Church, Linden Avenue, Woodseats<br />
Church Offi ce: Linden Avenue, Sheffi eld S8 0GA<br />
Tel: (0114) 274 5086<br />
Page 3<br />
email: offi ce@stchads.org<br />
website: www.stchads.org
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