Resolution

Since Mother Ruth has suggested over on Eat, Pray, Love Liturgy that Candlemas is a good time to make resolutions I am making one a bit early and decided to post it on my blog in the hope that it might help me stick to it.

On Wednesday’s we have a Eucharist over at All Saints, every week I jump in my car and make the journey which usually takes a while as the traffic is often busy.  In fact in the past I have seen it take so long that I have been late, even though it is only a mile and a half.  If on the other hand if I walked not only is the journey shorter, about a mile as there are paths that cut through, but also it would do me some good so from now on I am going to walk, unless there is a really really good reason not to.

Sunday Angel

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Photography, Sunday angel

Conversion of St Paul

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Mission, Photography, Saints

St Paul ~ Melrose Abbey

By his preaching to the Gentiles, Paul laid the foundations of the churches from Jerusalem by a circuitous route as far as Illyricum.

Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius

It is common for us to refer to our Christian life as a journey.  Usually we use the term to express the ongoing nature of becoming more Christlike or to mark our belief that we are not alone but daily have God beside us as our companion.  Liturgy also underlines this idea of travelling, of journeying from Baptism to Death while between the two we have the Eucharist and Liturgical Seasons to accompany us.  However Paul, whose conversion the Church remembers today, doesn’t journey for those reasons but rather to spread the Good News.  This brings to clear focus the raison d’erte of Christian journeying, it should change us and compel us to share with others we meet along the way the purpose of our journeying.

We may not travel the miles that St Paul travelled, we may not end up getting shipwrecked as he did, we may not even have the dramatic conversion experience that he did.  However, if our journeying with Christ doesn’t change us as it changed St Paul, if we aren’t compelled to spread the Good News by and through our journey, then are we really journeying at all or are we merely stuck on a treadmill?

The dictionary defines the act of travelling on a treadmill as “a monotonous, wearisome routine in which there is little or no satisfactory progress”.  Christian journeying must be more than constantly working to remain static and it must certainly not be something that lulls us into a false sense of self-righteousness and a mistaken belief that we are doing the real thing, when we are in fact only going through the motions.  St Paul teaches us that to journey with Christ is both challenging yet rewarding beyond measure; both dangerous yet safe with him by our side; both life changing and life affirming.  Surely that is indeed something to share.

O God, who taught the whole world
through the preaching of the blessed Apostle Paul,
draw us, we pray, nearer to you
through the example of him whose conversion we celebrate today,
and so make us witnesses to your truth in the world.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Tree of Life

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Art, Photography, Religion

The Youth Discussion Group at All Saints have been hard at work producing a mural for the wall of the meeting room this is the finished result.

Sunday Angel

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Photography, stained glass, Sunday angel

Praying the Easy Way

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Prayers

If like me you rejoiced at the possibility to put the Scottish Episcopal Church’s Daily Prayer in its pdf form on your Kindle or other e-reader, you will also have discovered like me that it is even more cumbersome to navigate around electronically than in its paper form.

For those of you who have never managed to co-ordinate the jumping from here to there and then back to here you may be wondering how it could be made less user friendly but I can assure you it is.

So I embarked on a little project of my own making Daily Prayer e-reader friendly and now I have got to the stage where I am looking for others who use, or indeed would like to use, Daily Prayer on any electronic device that supports pdf’s to trial it.

So if you are willing and interested then please let me know, but remember it is still a work in progress so don’t expect perfection.

Etta James RIP

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Music

Radio Blackout

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graves disease

The radiotherapy is finished it seems to have made a difference although the doctor says that it wont be until a check-up in a couple of weeks tine before they are prepared to commit themselves.

As a souvenir I got to bring home my mask.  From the expression on the face of the radiography it is obviously not a commonly made request.

The stickers with all the marks on them that they used to line me up had to be removed because of – are you ready for it – contamination control!  Neither of us were very sure as to why the stickers mattered and the mask didn’t.  There was a sticker either side of my head just below each temple and another one down the bridge of my nose, but they are no more.  The black sections are how the mask was attached to the table.

So, dear reader, you too might be wondering why I wanted my mask, well I will tell you.  I am sure it will make a good sermon illustration at some point and I am always on the look out for them as it is easier to pick them up when the opportunity arises than to suddenly try to find something suitable in the week before.

Thank You Whoever You Are

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Books

Today a package plopped on the doormat addressed to me.  I wasn’t expecting anything but yes it was addressed to me so I opened it, inside was a book – The Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning.  Puzzled I checked the package, nothing else in it however the address label told me the company which had sent it, so I contacted them after all someone could be waiting for it and it had landed on my doorstep instead of theirs by mistake.

Well I have received a reply from them and it I would appear someone has sent me this book as a gift.  So as I have no idea who sent it and the company who dispatched it understandably can’t tell me either, I decided the best way to thank them was by putting my thanks on here in the hope that they might read my blog.

So thank you whoever you may be.

Confession

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Family Life

I don’t like tea, or maybe to be more precise it doesn’t like me, it makes me physically sick.  Hubby on the other hand loves his tea and has a whole variety of blended and un-blended leaves to drink depending on his mood.  He does however also occasionally like an espresso.

I can be tempted towards a decent cup of coffee – for preference a cappuccino or latte – and for many a long year a coffee maker has languished on my Amazon wish list as the whole heating and frothing the milk can be a bit of a faff, so in the Rectory it has been the cafetière which has tended to be the major coffee-making bit of kit, but no longer.

Thanks to Hubby Santa brought me one of these and we can now both have just the coffee we like.

Sunday Angel

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Photography, Sunday angel

Unchanging Times

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Ecclesiastes

In the same day I have read these words:

Everything that happens has happened before;
nothing is new, nothing under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

and then these:

“… when lawyers or hussars who have no special knowledge are appointed Directors of banks or companies and receive gigantic salaries, I conclude that these salaries are not fixed by the law of supply and demand but by personal influence.  This is an abuse important in itself, which has a bad effect on the state …”

Karenin in Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy