Lots of people debate the issue of the continuing of the monarchy or not. I am not prepared to get into that topic today. I do have some opinions on the subject. But today is not the day to go into that debate at least not here in this blog.
However today I do want to talk about the end of an era for the Commonwealth. Last week Prince Phillip died. He and Queen Elizabeth had been married for 73 years. That's longer than I have been alive. It has in my lifetime always been the two of them. And now he is gone. It will be strange to think of Buckingham Palace without him. However, he is gone. An era has come and gone. Change has come.
Changes in things that have been long standing are never easy. I remember when Canada changed to the metric system in the 1970's. It meant a few changes to us at school. Oh we had to learn a new system and the text books had to be changed. But since we were young, it did not seem to be a big change. For my mother though, she refused to learn the new system. She had charts posted around the house to see what plus 10C meant or how fast 80 km/h was. Eventually charts came down when Mom began to understand that plus 2 was cool, plus 25 was warm and minus 40 was just like minus 40 farenheit. Charts for speed also came down when the speed signs and the speedometer in the car both read metric.
In-laws in the United Kingdom talked about how difficult it was when the country adopted decimal currency in 1971. For hundreds of years people had used pennies, shillings, and pounds. There had always been 240 pence in a pound. Then all of a sudden they had to adopt pence and pounds and a system where there were 100 pence in a pound. There was confusion for a while. Soon however, people adapted.
The thing is change is a constant in life. We have no choice. Things are not going to be the same from the time we are born until we die. Most of us struggle to a degree with this change. Change upsets the way we were used to doing things. Pat, a friend of mine, says the only one who appreciates a change is a baby with a messy diaper. Yet change is inevitable. We have a choice: we can accept the change or be left behind.
So an era has changed. The man who has been the symbol of the Commonwealth has gone. We can accept this change or we can be left behind. Blessings.
