Old friends and the importance of prayer

Yesterday I went back to the place where I had been minister up until 16 years ago. (I started there 21 years ago as a rookie straight out of college) It was a time of mixed emotions. The building looked the same but it was the people I went to see. There were several gaps where people who had played a key part during my time there were no longer around. (I like the phrase - "Promoted to glory") Sixteen years can turn a working man into a retired man or a young man into middle age and women also become more mature! They were very kind and said I hadn't changed at all! (Which of course isn't true)

We had many conversations which began with do you remember when... and it was good to remember.

It did my ego good to hear that they looked back to my days there with affection because the church was often full and we regularly had to put extra chairs in the aisles. Someone suggested that this was because I went to the prayer group every week. I hadn't really thought about that before - but every Tuesday morning I would set aside time to go and do nothing but pray and chat and have coffee and biscuits in Carole's sitting room. Since my time there the prayer group has continued but the ministers who have succeeded me have never attended the prayer group.

Those were difficult years for us as we coped as a family with the pressures of manse life, peoples often unrealistic expectations and the demands of a very young family. That little prayer meeting was an oasis for me in the week where I could be with God in the presence of trusted people where I was not afraid to show I was human and fallible too! So what I had done as a selfish "for me" exercise had been seen to benefit the church in positive ways. If only every church had a small group like that with its own "Carole" - a firm foundation who despite her own problems encouraged others and was steadfast in her faithfulness. Never underestimate the power of prayer!

Repent!

Lots of people want to return to their childhood it seems. I deduce this from the popularity of friends reunited, facebook and other sites that help us trace those we used to know. But would we really want to go back to the school where we sat in tiny desks in neat rows! I think we just want to go back to satisfy our insatiable curiosity when we ask "I wonder whatever happened to such a body?!"

Repent does not mean going back in terms of recreating what once was. (or what we think it once was like which is different!) Repentance is much more like following a sat nav!

I was travelling last weekend and we turned off the motorway to drive into town to get fuel. The driver was collecting points on her supermarket card and only wanted a tesco petrol station. But the sat nav didn't like it. "Turn round" it kept repeating in an agonisingly polite but annoyed voice. I cannot imagine that people enjoy machines nagging them in this way but it was not my car. And all the way to tesco the voice continued until after we had refuelled and turned round. Then it began to redirect us back onto our route home.

Repentance is about getting back on the right route - making the right turning and not going off on some interesting but irrelevant byway.

Followers of Jesus were originally called "followers of the way". I wonder if we can reclaim that name with Jesus as our lord, sat nav and guide!

Advent

This is a special time of preparation but what am I preparing for? Is it the annual round of Christmas services? (yes I have a work plan sketched out all ready!) The feasts I will attend and enjoy?! (I wonder, if I am abstemious now will the pounds not pile on if I stuff myself later?!) The second coming of Christ? (uhmmm? you what?) That traditional advent theme is not something I usually concentrate on at this time of year. But it is there in the set readings for the Sundays of Advent.

My reason for not majoring on this theme is that it often seems to have been hi-jacked with those who want to use it as a pretext to attack others. "When he comes again he will make straight the pathway" has been interpreted by some who want to say "I am right and you are wrong and when God comes he will prove me right and then you will know it!" As someone who believes in shades of gray in issues that some consider black and white I do not find such an attitude helpful.

Christmas celebrates incarnation - God with us and resurrection continues this theme. Life with its many ups and downs, with its contradictions and paradoxes can have meaning, direction and purpose because God is with us. God is with us in the questions as in all of life's rich tapestry. God's continuing second coming is God's presence with us at each moment. At Christmas we celebrate that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and so was with the people then in a physical, fleshly way. Many saintly people have emphasised the presence of God with them. The last recorded words of John Wesley were "The best of all is, God is with us."

Film review "The Heartbreak Kid"

The prospect of a two and a half hour ferry journey from Scotland to Northern Ireland is always made more pleasant because you can relax in the on board cinema and chill out completely with a full length feature film. But you have no choice of the film and on yesterdays crossing a film was shown that the best thing you could say about it was “it passed the time”. “The Heartbreak Kid was so awful that I wondered how it was ever funded.

Perhaps it is just the American sense of humour (or should I say humor) that was so crude, crass and obvious that made me squirm. Anyway the film was supposed to be a “rom com”. But it was totally immoral, somewhat pornographic and based on a man who had a series of totally dysfunctional relationships and destroyed many other peoples lives in the process. Strange to say I hardly found any of it funny at all. It was a tragedy of relationships.

There was no character in the film that you could warm to – except perhaps Marilyn but then she was portrayed as a somewhat naive bit of romantic interest. Marilyn's family were fairly normal and likable but were portrayed as stereotypical red necks – ie rather stupid and boring and trapped in their own little world. The main character, his best friend, and his father were all fairly un-likable numpties. The wife was an air-headed sex maniac, though to be fair she had a deeper side to her character: she had recovered from cocaine addiction and was left with a permanent handicap as a result. But the only impact of this “depth” was as the butt of jokes and she was mostly portrayed as a pathetic foil to the main characters fantasies. Some of the actors in the film I'm told were quite well known but they must have been pretty desperate to take on this script.

Perhaps as a documentary of social realism of dysfunctional lives where serial monogamy is the norm and selfishness is the dominant emotion controlling life choices this was an accurate portrayal but it was not a comedy. It was the sort of thing I would have switched off after ten minutes at home but on a ship with nothing else to do (having left my book in the car deck! ) there was nothing to do but savour the embarrassing awfulness of it all. I was left at the end with the feeling of two hours of my life having been wasted!

Turmoil

May you live in interesting times was an ancient Chinese curse.
I don't know about a curse but things are definitely interesting at the moment. I am the sort of person who likes to have things sorted out and there is at present a large degree of uncertainty about my future. I know that in 12 months time I will be doing a different job in a different place and this week has been a time for making important decisions and filling in forms! Such a lot of forms to fill in.
Things will gradually become clearer as time passes but I have a natural tendency to be impatient. I also like to take things into my own hands and get them sorted but many of things that are happening to me are out of my direct control. And I don't really like that.
But this is also a time of faith. Strange as it seems I feel a great sense of peace about what is happening. I really believe that God has everything under control and it will all be well.

Hoarding

I have had a clear out. It makes me feel good to shred things no longer needed. Was there any point in keeping those files of old bank and credit card statements from the 1980s?

But as I fed them into the shredder I had a feeling of some regret because I was destroying some of my history. There were the credit card entries from the French motorways as we drove through France. And there was the payment for a camera... and a payment to Toys-r-us. I haven't been in a toy shop for years now! I had to look away as I was taking too long to feed them into the shredder.

Well they are now all gone. But my memories are not gone? So many days hours and minutes summed up in those transactions which had been half forgotten. I suppose if you live a full life you cannot remember everything and anyway how accurate were those memories really? Those motorway tolls reminded me of great holidays in the Pyrenees but I had forgotten the tedium of the fourteen hour drive across France to get there! Memories are selective.

I am just grateful that I have so many good memories - it must be desperate if you cannot look back for fear of remembering too well. How sad if you are someone for whom the past is something you only want to forget.

Loving creation

"Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love." Dostoevsky

This is creation time in the church calender - when we celebrate harvest festivals. I was at one in the local primary school yesterday and the children brought gifts to be distributed to local old folks and had a theme of thankfulness for the good things from the earth.

But in the quotation we are called to go much further. This sort of deep spiritual respect for creation and reverence of it involves looking at the earth as a God of love must look at all that He has made. Loving involves embracing with the emotions and that can hurt. By loving we make ourselves vulnerable. So we are careful who and what we love as we try to protect ourselves. But this quotation reveals a greater truth - that though we might think that we do not have enough love to go round - if we give honestly of what we have, we will find ourselves renewed and refreshed so that we can give more that we ever knew we possesed. If we keep it to ourselves we will never find the potential vast love that is latent within us....

The cost of socialising

I was at student inductions today - giving my presentation on what chaplaincy could do for the new students....

What caught my eye was the student union handbook which put an estimate of what freshers week could cost. It came to over £500. Now much of this was essential start up costs of coming to university such as fees to join societies and food and rent.

BUT what really "gobsmacked" me was the estimate of £230 for entertainment - three good nights out two medium nights out and two days in to recover. And if that is an average what must some of the highest spenders get through in the bars and clubs. I suppose I have not been to a nightclub for years and do not buy lots of drinks but wow is this how students get so much debt! I begin to realise what a sheltered and non typical life I lead. But then that is my choice.

I wonder if all these young people are making a free choice and how much peer pressure there is to conform to the hard drinking stereotype of the typical student.

I must find a way to find out more and and an appropriate forum to discuss this issue.

Fujipix Camera - a miracle

Digital cameras are highly complex items of technology with computer chips, glass lenses, and electric motors working in harmony to take great pictures when you point and shoot.

But my daughters little Fujipix camera stopped working. No warning - just taking pictures one moment and not the next. It would just not switch on. You pressed the on button and a little green light flashed then nothing. Now I'm not one to give up without having a poke around inside and there was nothing loose I could see and the batteries were fully charged(I'm told batteries are one of the major reasons for faults in digital cameras!) So onto the Internet to see if anyone has found a similar fault. And after half an hour I found not only what was wrong - someone helpfully described the same symptoms as were affecting our little Fujipix but also told us how to fix it!

Now this is the best bit... I fixed it with a quarter inch piece broken off the end of a matchstick! It seems there is a little lug on the battery door that has to fit in a hole so the camera stays switched off when the battery door is open. This little lug breaks off quite often and a matchstick shoved into the hole can effect a repair! I rate this as one of the best amateur fixes for a piece of sophisticated hi tech equipment ever! It seemed like a miracle when with this little bit of rubbish stuffed into the hole made the whole thing come back to life!

It reminds me how every little thing, however small, has a part to play. Anything that gets broken it can mess up a whole lot more complex things. Sometimes something very simple can have an effect far beyond our expectations. Think of how a smile from a stranger can lift your spirits. So remain alert at all times - everything we do, however small, is important.

Its a strange world

When I first read in the newspaper of a pastor in a church in the United States of Yankeeland having a "bring your gun to church" Sunday I thought it was a spoof. A joke. Surely this cannot be real!
But it seems there are enough people in his little world who believe in their God given right to bear arms that they want to include this right in their religious observance.
It has increased my resolve never to go to the USA. What are these people so scared of that they all need guns to defend themselves at all times - they must live in a really terrifyingly bad place like central Baghdad at its worse! But no- it seemed the pastors church was in some small rural town in a little known state that no-one out of the state would ever have heard of. It is just beyond my comprehension.
The Celtic way was to bring all of life to God and look for God's presence in all things and see God working through all things. I am baffled as to how God is seen to be working through a handgun. I cannot in my wildest imaginings see Jesus ever having need for a weapon, defensive or otherwise.
I wonder what sort of bible this pastor is reading - and what sort of Jesus he is preaching about. They both sound different to the ones I have encountered.

Poem - topical - political by anon

It's Voting Day!

I want a floating duck house
I want to clear my moat
I need to mend my tennis court
That's why I need your vote.

I have to build a portico
My swimming pool needs mending
My lovely plants need horse manure
And the Aga needs much tending

A chandelier is vital
Mock Tudor boards are great
My hanging baskets won awards
And I've earned a tax rebate.

I need a glitter toilet seat.
My piano so needs tuning
Maltesers help me stay awake
And my orchard must need pruning

I could have said the rules were wrong
And often thought I should,
But somehow it was easier
To profit all I could

The public really have to see
That the rules are there to test
And by defrauding taxpayers
We only did our best

The Speaker of the House has gone,
Our sacrificial beast,
But the public are still braying
For our corpses at the feast

What do the public want from us,
Those vote-wielding ingrates?
They really should be grateful
To be financing our estates.

The message is so very clear,
(you're merely learning late)
That the MP's way of living well
Is to screw the ruddy state.

Tempus fugit

Last night I was at a parents information evening for those with youngsters applying for university admission next year. Can time really have flown so fast that our youngest is now ready to follow his sister away from "the nest" and make his own way in the world. Is he really 17.... where did those 17 years go?
Parenting has been a continuing gradual process of letting go. When he was a wee baby we did everything for him. Gradually he became more and more independent and self reliant and now he is by some definitions a man. Yet as those links of dependency have lessened they have been replaced by other links which are potentially much stronger and will ultimately we hope be longer lasting.
Many parents find it hard not to be needed in the same way. And from my distant memories of teenage years, I recall it is hard to be as independent and strong as you think others think you should be. But then no relationships are easy. The word means that we have to relate and in doing so we have to be prepared to change and any change can involve pain.
Albert F Bayly's words come to mind:

Grant those entrusted with the care
Of precious life from thee,
thy grace, that worthy of the gift
and faithful they may be.

Teach them to meet the growing needs
of infant, child, and youth;
to build the body, train the mind
to know and love the truth.

(Hymns and Psalms no 372)

Facebook - good or bad

I have been a member of facebook for just a few days but I am having doubts already.
Is it a valuable use of time to learn how to be a part of this online community when I could be spending the time participating in real people communities instead?
To me the word friend seems to be devalued when it is used so freely and without any depth. (My definition of friendship is summed up in the anonymous quote which I paraphrase "An acquaintance is someone I may spend a lot of time with, laughing and enjoying stories but a friend is someone I choose to cry with.")
So I am undecided about my involvement in facebook.
(If you are an uncritical fan read Janet Street Porter's article "Why I hate facebook". I would probably not go as far as her in her dislike of all social networking sites. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1138445/Janet-Street-Porter-Why-I-hate-Facebook.html )
On the plus side I can see the value of sharing photos and social invitations with people that you share these things with anyway. It is a good way to make contact with people that you have lost touch with. (Memory can be very selective - do I really share anything with the people who are the same age and once sat in the same school classroom except that memory?!) It is also a great way for discoveries (such as new quotations) or moments of serendipity to be shared.
Perhaps its greatest benefit is for people who live alone and don't have any other channel for interacting with people on the trivia of everyday life?
On the negative side it can function as a community in itself divorced from reality where so called friends may be not who the profile says they are. And let us be realistic about the trivia that is written on walls and the rarity of real wisdom.
I think I will stay with facebook as a tool for keeping in touch with folks I know and want to share with regularly. BUT I must be on my guard never to regard it as anything more than a tool or utility. It is useful but not indispensable. And God help me if "screen based reality" ever seems to be taking over from life as it is to be lived and enjoyed in the company of others....

Menagerie - a moral dilemma

I am beginning to suspect I live in a menagerie. At 05.00 this morning there was a rustling in the wall near my bed - do I want to know what it was? We have had birds come down the chimneys and get between the plaster and the stone in the ancient walls!
Then when I opened the shutters and stared out to our garden there were three rabbits on the lawn and four magpies on the patio! There was also a large fat pigeon in the tree and a grey squirrel on the wall! Lovely I hear you say imagining my ideal rural existence.
Now as many of you know we have two dogs. However they are quite useless at deterring the rabbits. The little one is a deaf and rheumatic temperamental old westie and the big one, a young Labrador, bounces around wagging his tail and is every animals friend!
The rabbits are the ones that are destructive. Last year everything I planted in my vegetable plot was eaten very quickly and not by me. This year I have invested in a fence of chicken wire to keep them out and the beans and courgettes have survived so far. But my main worry is the habit rabbits have of multiplying - like rabbits... so a month from now how many might there be.
My vegetarianism isn't based on absolute principles of never harming animal life but on the clear health benefits and the damage to the earth caused by too much consumption of meat. However, I may soon be faced with a moral dilemma if I ask my neighbour to borrow his air rifle!
I would not hesitate to take the necessary steps to get rid of mice from the house, or a wasps nest or slugs but rabbits are furry and cuddly but they do eat anything that is green. If I could think of a way to get them to eat grass only then I could save on lawn mowing!
Perhaps I should get a great big tom cat that likes rabbit for his tea!
If you start asking moral questions then it can make life very complicated. But if we never ask moral questions and instead go along with what is allowed then we can become like the many members of parliament who have made disgracefully excessive claims on their expense accounts!

Cutting it fine.....

When I returned home from Norway I did a quick mental calculation as to how much I had spent on the trip and counted up how many crowns I had left over. It was tight. I brought back 46 crowns - about £4 and I thought I had taken loads of money. If I hadn't met that nice lady on the bus who agreed to share a taxi with me from the bus stop to the airport then I would have had to use the plastic to get me out of a hole. (3km taxi ride cost 160Kr - I'm really glad I only had to pay half!)
I know from acountants that this is called headroom - the amount of money you need minus the amount of money that you have.
We all feel comfortable with good headroom but for many people in the world this luxury is not available to them. The underlying issue is about security and living with risk. Jesus said odd things like "you don't need two coats for your back" but I have met very few Christians who take these sayings literally. If we have enough (and in terms of Norwegian crowns I did - just) then why should we be anxious - but human nature is that we are. Jesus challenges me yet again.....

What goes around comes around!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I was "saved" by a good samaritan who gave me a ride on the back of his pickup when I had a puncture in my bicycle tyre.
Yesterday I got a chance to be a good samaritan.....
The usual story - middle aged couple turn up at our house after leaving their car in the monument car park and have not realised that they have descended the wrong side of the hill.
I was just at that moment going up to the University so was able to give them a lift for the couple of miles to the carpark to save them a long and unpleasant walk alongside a busy road.
If only I and other folk could always be like that!

Prices - what value

I will not complain about things being expensive again.
I bought a cup of coffee in an ordinary cafe this morning and it cost £4.80..
Some of the folks I was with ordered a small bowl of soup for their lunch. It cost £15.00.
There was fish and chips on the menu and it was over £20.
This was not some swanky restaurant but a street cafe in Kristiansand Norway - this must be the most expensive country in Europe.
We next went to a sandwich shop and cheese and ham rolls were about £6 each.
What do we value. Is price the only measure of value that we recognise. How else can we value and prioritise?
But this is a beautiful place - I went on a boat trip through the archipelago of islands here today.
Now this trip was included in the conference fee but I wonder what it would have cost - and what would I have been prepared to pay? Makes you think....

A Scottish poem for Norway

I have to put on my kilt and share something Scottish on the last night in Norway ....This will do

The Moosie's Prayer by Anon

A puir wee kirk moose aa forlorn

Its furry coat fair sairly worn

Sank doon upon its bony knees

and prayed - for just a wee bit cheese.

The tears ran doon its wee thin cheeks

But nane could hear the saddest squeaks

That drifted oan the cauld nicht air

Till whiles it couldnae pray nae mair.

Syne daylight cam, the kirk bells rang

The doors swung open wi a bang

Communion day had come oan by

Wi wine and plates o breid held high.

The wee moose lay as still as daith

And watched it aa wi bated braith

Then thocht - if I keep awfu quate

A bit micht jist fa aff a plate.

And so it gazed as roond they went

Then jist as tho twas heaven sent

Whit landed richt upon its heid

Bit twa lumps o communion breid.

The staff o life lay oan the flair -

Then, bounteous answer to his prayer

Jist as he thocht, 'It looks fell dry'.

Ae body couped some wine forbye.

Wee moosie stoated up the aisle

Wearin sic a boozy smile

The folk stopped singin, fair aghast

Tae see a drunken moose walk past.

The organist fell aff his chair,

The meenister could only stare

Tae see this drunken, sinfu moose

Cavertin in his sacred hoose.

At last it staggered up the nave

Then turned and gied a happy wave

'I ken noo when its time to pray

I'll do it oan communion day'.

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Norwegian sexologists

I attended a very interesting lecture today from a married couple - he is a "transvestite" medical doctor and she is a psychologist and they are both sexologists. Their presentation was about gender identity and why the old polarity of male and female no longer will do. The lecture included the science of how gender develops in the womb and how the sex organs can develop of fail to develop over a period of time and the complexity of the genetic makeup of people who are not female or male in terms of their chromosomes - instead of XX or XY there are people who are XXY.

Androgyny was celebrated in the time of the renaissance - we looked at a slide of Donatellos David and a Michaleangelo statue of a woman which was the physique of a man with breasts attached! And we all know about the image in the Da Vinci painting that has made Dan Browns fortune.

The following poem by anon was quoted -

"Put no question mark to joys that others earn
however weird they seem to be
there always is a lot to learn
and even more to see."

We examined the complexity of the "trans - spectrum" - how people define themselves as "transvestive", "bi-gendered", "trans-sexual" and "unspecified trans".

There is now the possibility that peoples gender can be changed or reinforced by surgery but the plea for our speakers was let surgery follow the soul rather than what the surgeons deem is best and most appropriate for purely surgical reasons.

It is an incredibly complex area and I was pleased to have this opportunity to explore it more deeply in this seminar presentation by international experts.

Inspirations

Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible. - William Butler Yeats
With the above quotation Gregory Collins ended his lecture this morning on the monastic contribution to contemporary spirituality and Christianity.
Then this afternoon there was a lecture by Netto R Thelle which started with a quote from R S Thomas
Pilgrimages

There is an island there is no going
to but in a small boat the way
the saints went.


...Am I too late?
Were they too late also, those
first pilgrims? He is such a fast
God, always before us and
leaving as we arrive.

... was the pilgrimage
I made to come to my own
self, to learn that in times
like these and for one like me
God will never be plain and
out there, but dark rather and
inexplicable, as though he were in
here?

He ended the lecture with this poem by Gunnar Ekelof "The ferry song"

Every person is a world, inhabited
by blind beings in obscure revolt
against the "I", the king who rules over them.
In every soul a thousand souls are captive,
in every world lie thousands of worlds hidden.


Words that are really worth meditating on.....

Off again - this time to Norway

I am off again. I set my alarm clocks for 10 to 4 this morning and I was glad I set two as one of them was still on GMT so if I had only set that I would have been an hour late.
Some diary notes of my travels - reflections later....
I got to Prestwick airport at 5.30am just as a coach load of Norwegians were unloading so had
quite a queue.
The flight was on time and the bus stop 3km from the airport but a taxi got me there five minutes before the bus left. It was a very comfortable double decker with free tea and coffee on board and a loo too.
Got to the meeting point in Kristiansand at 1.30 Norwegian time ( 12.30 UK time) and spent the afternoon looking round the town. Its great here. the bus ride was three hours across pine and
birch forests with few towns and the coast intervening on the landscape in particularly picturesque ways. This town with an 80,000 population has a sandy beach next to a marina and promenade and picturesque old town. It also has a commercial harbour wit a ferry to Denmark.
There is a spectacular old tall ship moored in the harbour and I walked up and had a close look at her.
Then at 15.00 we had a snack arranged for us( fish soup ) and at 17.00 there was a reception in the local town hall at which the mayor, the rector of the local university, the local bishop and others made speeches and a famous Norwegian folk fiddle player played music.
Then at 19.00 there was a folk mass ( sung) in the cathedral here - which was really stunning and moving. Then bus to the conference centre and we checked into our rooms and then had supper (sweet and sour with rice ) followed by returning to my room to make up my bed and go to sleep as I feel very tired(getting up so early....zzzzz). The bar was open but at 25KR for a beer of glass of wine I will be abstemious ( 9 kr to the pound)

Catching up

I've been away for a week and was not able to post but here are my notes for each day that I would have posted if I could....

Friday 22^nd May

The good Samaritan

Today I met a good Samaritan. He was a farmer on his way to mend a fence. I had had a puncture in my bike tyre. Like all well equipped cyclists I was carrying a spare inner tube. I changed it efficiently at the roadside. Then I got out my pump and tried to inflate the tyre. But nothing happened. The pump wouldn't work. Wouldn't fit properly. When it had happened I waved to my friends who were riding with me to carry on to the lunch stop- confident of my bike engineering and that I would see them for lunch. So I was alone on this narrow country road with no passing traffic. I set out to walk the three miles to the abbey where I knew they would be waiting. And surely one of them would have a working pump that would fit.

Then along came my farmer. He pulled up and asked what was up.

I told him my tale and he told me to throw the bike on the back of his truck and climb in beside the dog and he would take me a couple of miles down the road. And he did. And as he dropped me off at the top of a long descent where I could see at the bottom the abbey at which my friends would be waiting . A fifteen minute walk and I was with them and I found the pump and was ready to go.

Thank God for good Samaritans.

Saturday 23^rd May

It has been a day of sunshine and heavy showers as we did a 35 mile tour of the countryside by cycle today. There was a lovely café for lunch with home made soup and carrot cake. The thing that made today special was the trail of art and craft studios that were open. A barn had chainsaw wood carvings, a front room had paintings and prints and a converted outhouse was a photographers gallery not to mention the ramshackle farmhouse that had ceramics displayed all over it! Loads of talented people trying to make a living off the visiting public – and being welcoming to a group of cyclists who they knew would look but not be able to carry and therefore buy anything. I saw a statue that I would like in the garden but she who must be obeyed said definitely NO. It makes me glad that I have a regular pay check and don't have to rely on selling my talents from my front door or garage. It does make me wonder though what people would be prepared to pay for what I do!? That is a sobering thought! Perhaps some of those overpaid financiers and politicians with their snouts in the trough would do well to ponder on what ordinary people judge that they are worth.

Sunday 24^th may

what goes up also goes down...

that old adage is so true for cyclists. Hills cause you to sweat and puff all the way up but you are rewarded with a long wizz down afterwards. Wheee... hope the brakes work

unfortunately the only place you get all the whees down with no toiling up is when you are skiing!

The rest of life requires you to struggle for the uphill in order to enjoy the downhill whee run..

if you coast through life you will never enjoy the exhilaration of a long run as you will not have built up the potential energy. For that is what it is – building up potential energy.

We need the energy we build up during the good times to give us strength for any times of difficulty.

Summoned by the bell

Threave Castle near Castle Douglas was the destination for my cycle ride today. This castle is on an island and requires you to ring a big brass bell hanging up by the jetty to summon the ferryman who will come and take you across to the castle. The ferry is a small motor launch that can take about four passengers at a time so they are not overwhelmed with visitors. As I looked at the boat and the bell I thought of the legend of the ferryman who would ferry people over from this life to the world beyond in Greek mythology. I think he was called styx or something like that. It is a nice image of passing from this life to the hereafter with a friendly ferryman and a boat on a calm crossing. Humans have had lots of picture language to describe the journey we make at the end of life. One of the problems for modern people who have rejected all the traditional religious pictures - what will replace them – the scientific picture is bleak and cheerless. The traditional picture often doesn't resonate for many . Perhaps we need images to help people understand what life after death means. For unless the traditional religions and for me especially the Christian church , can supply this creatively and catch the public imagination – then there are all sorts of New religious movements with all sorts of wacky ideas waiting in the wings.

Tuesday 26^th May

I crossed Mull today on the bus. 40 miles from Craignure to fionnofort. And the bus driver was having one of those days.... I could tell by the way he interacted with the people who approached him. To the question where is this bus for he replied it says on the side! To the man who who said is this finofort he replied no this is craignure. To the couple who asked for tickets to Dunessan he replied “there is no place of that name on mull.” after some umming and aarring and they spent several moments looking for the details of the address they were heading for he relented and said – Do you mean Bunessan!? He showed in everything he said that he was having one of those days....

I wonder if it is as noticeable when I have one of those days as we all do.... But it was a lovely bus ride across the island – the weather was clear and the views spectacular. And by the end of it as we got off and said thanks to the diver it seemed he had mellowed too.

Wednesday 27^th May

I found a lovely poem today. Thinking about peaceful people R S Thomas wrote “farm wife” here is someone you warm to – who's presence conveys peace just by being with them ...

FARM WIFE

by R S Thomas

Hers is the clean apron, good for fire

Or lamp to embroider, as we talk slowly

In the long kitchen, while the white dough

Turns to pastry in the great oven,

Sweetly and surely as hay making

In a June meadow; hers are the hands,

Humble with milking, but still now

In her wide lap as though they heard

A quiet music, hers being the voice

that coaxes time back to the shadows

in the rooms corners. O, hers is all

This strong body, the safe island

Where men may come, sons and lovers,

Daring the cold seas of her eyes.

This was in an anthology of poems in the cottage I am staying in on the island of Iona. It is a small cottage let to Holiday makers but unlike many so called holiday cotages this one has been left just as the family moved out. The bookshelves stuffed with an eclectic collection of antiquarian and other interesting books. The walls cpovered with antique prints of real quality and value. Yet here – open for visitors to use – the owner a retired minister must be so trustign of others.. so unconcerned to protect his own property – Perhaps if I lived in a place like this I could have a similar attitude but its just not practical where we live in the city – or is it?

Thursday 28th May

Friendship needs nurture not to wither and die - thus spending a couple of days with guys from college days over 20 years ago was a special time. Time to catch up on stories from the intervening years. Time to think about what we have achieved and if we are now still as equally convinced of our call to be ministers as we were 20 years ago - And that is an interesting question to which we all agreed that the job had changed so much and now we were spending much more time doing things we were not initially called to do. Interesting to think about call and if it changes or if it stands unchanged for all time. We were all still in the church but we were doing things we were not trained for and didn't enter the church to do.

Off for a few days

I'm off for a few days from tonight - holiday- vacation - and no regular internet connection. But there is a long list of all the things to be done before I can go and a long list of things to get ready to take with me. No wonder going away can be more stressful than staying at home.
We will be in Dumfries and Galloway - camping!!!
We hope that a break will re-charge our batteries but isn't it ironic that I have spent much of today making sure all the gadgets we are taking with us have got their batteries charged up (cameras, phones, torch, laptop!) Wasn't life simpler in days gone by! I am not a gadget fanatic but there are some things I would find it difficult to do without now that I have got used to having them.
We have all to some extent been brainwashed by the consumption pushing advertisers. I am not advocating going back to the stone age but I believe we need to think much more about what we really need and not just get things because they are there! Alistair MacIntosh in his challenging book "Hell and high water" argues that it is this attitude that has created the excessive consumerism which is the engine that has driven climate change.
Going camping will be a real test of whether I mean this or not!

Look aboot ye

I have heard that some people are forecasting that we will have a very hot summer this year – well we have all heard that before so I guess we will just have to wait and see. The summer, whatever the weather gives us an opportunity to get out and about whether on a day trip or for a longer holiday. And wherever we go, near or far, we usually find a change of scene makes for a good break.

In Alloa the other day I noticed a waste bin. On the front was the Clackmannanshire Council crest which has the motto “Look aboot ye”. These are said to be the words spoken to King Robert Bruce when he lost his glove during a hunting expedition. After a search the glove was found on a slope to the south of the present site of Clackmannan town. Alloa isn't the most picturesque town in Scotland but when you “look aboot ye” you see the dominating Ochil hills, the River Forth, Alloa Tower, and some fine trees and parkland.

When we go on holiday we “look aboot” and notice the landscape and the interesting buildings but when we are home we are so used to the things we see every day that we no longer notice the hills or the architecture.

As I mentioned last week, my aunt who died earlier this year was a talented amateur artist. At her request the following verse was read out at her funeral service.

"The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colours, lights, and shades; these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts."

The author of these words is unknown but the text is chiselled into a large memorial wall for Alexander Morton (1844-1924) which is located in Darvel, East Ayrshire. He was a Victorian industrialist who built up the local textile industry.

The two quotations sum up an attitude to life of learning to keep your eyes open all the time and notice the people and places around you. This is fun on holiday when we are exploring a new place for the first time. But it is also important at home where taking things for granted can become a way of life which if taken to an extreme means we can miss so much.

God has made a beautiful world and we can glimpse this everywhere. The ability to see beauty in unexpected places is a God -given gift. We can develop it if we “train the eye” to look for beauty. One of the best ways to do that is to take lots of pictures, which can now be done cheaply with a digital camera. Once we upload the photos onto a computer, we can enjoy the beauty long after the time we took the photos. Since God has placed beauty, truth, and goodness all around, may He never need to say to us, ‘Do you have eyes and fail to see’ (Mark 8:18).

(Picture Castle Campbell, Dollar, Clackmannanshire)

Speed vs stamina

I have just fitted a new cycle computer to the handlebars of my bike. This one is more complex that the previous one I had. It not only tells speed, distance, maximum speed, average speed, time, temperature, but also calories burned. My max speed is now at just over 20 as I went down a long hill today! But more important is the average speed figure - how am I doing overall? And then there is this idea of calories burned - I am not needing to loose weight but do I wonder how a magnet on the wheel of the bike can tell how much energy I have used from the data it recieves!
I am going away on a cycling weekend in three days time and these figures matter. Speed matters as when I am going out with a group I want to know that I can keep up - there is nothing more demoralising that trailing behind a group of fast cyclists and every time they stop for a rest you just about catch up and it is time for them to set off again. Average speed is important as I need to know that I can keep up the pace for a whole day ride. Distance is important as it is satisfying to know that you have broken through certain psychological distance barriers. And I suppose the calories consumed tells you something about stamina though I am not sure quite what!
Speed and stamina - it is a "both and" requirement and not the opposites as in the fable of the tortoise and the hare.
In the church we struggle with the question of speed verses stamina. We are here for the long haul - and we need energy to achieve anything but we have to pace ourselves. Burn out comes when Christians try and do everything to bring in the kingdom of God on their own and in one go. You do not set off to ride from Land's End to John O Groats without doing training rides to build up for the challenge. We all have our own little mission and ministry to fulfil and we believe that it is all a part of God's overall plan. And we must not get discouraged when we think that our contribution is too small and insignificant. Every great achievenment is made up of loads of tiny acts.
Point yourself in the right direction, and set off, keeping a measurement of your speed and distance travelled and most of all enjoy the ride!

Thinking back to Easter

I had a shock when I opened one of the free newspapers last week. There was a photo of me on the inside front cover carrying a huge wooden cross at the front of the Good Friday procession through the town. As I looked at the photo I wondered what people at the side of the street doing their shopping made of it. I thought it looked strange but then I don't like looking at pictures of myself!
I wonder what the effect of our walk of witness was. Some people who saw us may have had their memory jogged that this was not just any old Friday. Some might have seen the cross and thought "religious people at it again". Some would have been frustrated because we caused a hold up to the traffic and delayed their journey. Some would have no idea at all as to what was going on or been so caught up in their own business that they didn't notice we were there.(Though that might have been difficult as we were led by a bagpiper playing Easter hymns as well as his limited range of notes would allow!)
But there might just have been someone who saw us all ( and there was a good big crowd) and thought that Christianity isn't finished yet - if all these folks can give up time to walk through town doing this then perhaps I shouldn't reject Jesus without giving him a proper hearing. And if just one person thought that, then I am delighted to have carried the cross.

What was lost is found!

Yesterday I lost some keys. Well today they are found. They were in a plastic bag of miscellaneous bits and pieces that I had taken with me to a home group meeting to play the memory game. (Everyone knows the game - items covered on a tray - remove cover and give people a minute to memorise as many as possible then recover the tray and people have to write a list of what was there) I had used this little bunch of keys and wonder of wonders I also found my library card in the bag too - that had been lost and I have been taking books out on my wife's card for several months!

We sang "All things Bright and Beautiful" in church this morning - I was reminded that the last time I sang it was at my Aunty Vera's funeral. She was a talented amateur artist and she asked for the following little verse to be read out at the crematorium. I don't know where it came from or who the author was but it was appropriate for her.

The wonder of the world
The beauty and the power,
The shapes of things,
their lights and shades
These I saw.
Look ye also, while life lasts.

Keys

Now here is a fix. I have lost a small bunch of keys. They are quite important - but I haven't needed them for a couple of years so I assumed they were on the hook with all my other keys. But today I needed to look in that locked place and they were missing. I remember using them a couple of years ago. I remember what they look like and remember the colour of the leather fob but where can they have got to. Something so small but yet so powerful and capable of causing no end of bother.
I have searched high and low for them but so far no good. I think I will have put them in a pocket after I last used them and perhaps not returned them to their home hook but what on earth would I have been wearing two years ago.
No wonder Jesus used the word Keys when he was handing over responsibility to his disciple Peter because they are highly symbolic by the power they give to open and close otherwise impenetrable doors.
I'll keep searching but it may have to be a visit to a locksmith.
And I am still waiting for the plumber to fulfil his promise.

Climate change - news

George Monbiot in his Guardian blog today says "Two weeks ago a momentous event occurred: the beginning of the world's first evacuation of an entire people as a result of manmade global warming..... The Carteret Islands are off the coast of Bougainville, which, in turn, is off the coast of Papua New Guinea. They are small coral atolls on which 2,600 people live.... There are compounding factors – the removal of mangrove forests and some local volcanic activity – but the main problem appears to be rising sea levels. The highest point of the islands is 170cm above the sea..... this appears to be the first time that an entire people have started leaving their homes as a result of current global warming. Their numbers might be small, but this is the event that foreshadows the likely mass displacement of people from coastal cities and low-lying regions as a result of rising sea levels. The disaster has begun, but so far hardly anyone has noticed. "
This makes the discussion we had about local sustainability and carbon footprints at the eco-congregation network meeting last night seem all the more relevant and urgent. This is not a purely theoretical matter for the church heating needs renewing. If we are to take our care for creation seriously we should make the efficiency of what we choose to be the top priority. The church is in the centre of town and built on solid rock so the option of a ground source heat pump is not open to us. And if we choose the wrong heating system then this will make us responsible for more people from low lying places having to evacuate their homes.
On the home front the plumber has still not arrived to fix the non functioning toilet.

New poem

I was introduced to this poem today:

THE BRIGHT FIELD by RS Thomas

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

A habit is 21 days

Interesting comment tonight at the church meeting - if you do something for 21 days then it becomes a habit.
It was in the context of spiritual disciplines such as daily devotional reading, prayer time, bible reading or meditation. Is that really all it takes to ingrain something into your daily routine? Do it for twenty one days or three short weeks and you can do it for ever.
I follow the prayer pattern in the prayer handbook "Living Fire" and the Iona community book every day and that is an important part of my daily routine. If for some reason I can't do it I feel my day has missed something. But I wasn't aware of a three week point when it felt different doing it.
It is a good way to encourage people - if they can keep the discipline for 21 days then they have mastered it.
I wonder if this three week rule also applies to tackling other habits such as giving up smoking? I don't smoke so I can't try.

Beginning

This is the start of a new journey - I've never had a blog before.
What a momentus day to start - not only the day when I'm waiting for the plumber to arrive to fix a flooding toilet - but also the day of our 25th wedding anniversary. Was it really 25 years ago that I wore top hat and tails for the only time in my life!
Today has made me wonder how many of the dozens of people I have performed marriage ceremonies for over the last 21 years are still together? Not that all of them didn't fervently hope they were doing the right thing and meant it when they said "til death do us part".
For us today is a day for celebrating love and commitment. And I am still in love!
Everyone has ups and downs in their relationships and we have had our share but it has been an adventure - a journey of exploration and I look forward to the adventures continuing for the next 25 years and beyond. Now where is that plumber?