I’ve been thinking about great partnerships this week. Morecambe and Wise, French and Saunders, Lennon and McCartney, Torvill and Dean, the list is long. All worked together creatively to make something others could really enjoy. No doubt there will have been tensions along the way and sometimes missteps to be overcome.

I got an insight into a creative working partnership recently in Scarborough. St Martin-on-the-Hill, is one of the earliest “Arts and Crafts” churches in the style developed by the designer William Morris and his associates. There are a series of stained-glass windows in this Victorian church, some of which were created by William Morris himself when he was just developing his techniques. I was intrigued to read that Morris had not done very well initially with some of the windows and so had gone to his friend, the artist Dante Gabriel Rosetti to get him to fix them for him. Rosetti has been quoted as referring to “poor Topsy” (Morris’s nickname) needing help, which he wouldn’t charge him for! Thankfully, Morris kept learning and developing his skills, resulting in his firm making beautiful things from wallpaper to chairs which became available widely across Britain and around the world.

Good friends and partners can bring out the best in us. We need this even more when the conditions we are in become challenging. This November there are many uncertainties in the world and difficult conflict situations that seem almost unsolvable.

The Christian tradition reminds us of how encounters with God have often led people to find fresh hope in knowing they are not alone, and then to reach out to others, together finding ways to tackle problems. There are plenty of stories in the Bible too about missteps and failures. Always there is the opportunity for forgiveness and help to start again. Sometimes the hardest thing can be to forgive ourselves: contemporary wisdom suggests we should speak to ourselves as we would imagine a kind friend doing. Good friends will be well aware of our weaknesses along with our strengths, and still be the ones to say, “come on, between us we can fix this”. Or, “if we cannot fix it, we can be in it together”. An openness to learning and growing with others, through mistakes, can be massively beneficial beyond the individual. And, as the old Turkish proverb says, “no road is long with good company”.