Category: blog

As we welcome various pre-Lambeth bishops around the province, a helpful reminder from Timothy Radcliffe’s What’s the Point of Being a Chistian:

‘The Church exists to gather people so that we may rejoice together.  Herbert McCabe OP writes that

we express our joy in bodily signs, by dancing, singing, or laughing.  We shout for joy, or hug each other, or turn cart-wheels.  Just how we express our happiness will of course depend on what country we live in and the local customs and traditions.  In parts of Africa you would express it in highly sophisticated and formalized dance.  In parts of British suburbia, I believe they manage it with a slight twitch of the upper lip.’

inner quot., God, Christ and Us.

The ‘flu is passing.  Slowly.  I thought I was well enough yesterday to do a few hours desk work and attend (not chair) a vestry meeting.  That turned into 6 hours at the desk, plus the meeting, and a giant lesson in overestimating my abilities as I crawled into bed exhausted.  So today I am not trying to work.  I’ve found the back of a kitchen cupboard I hadn’t seen for a while.  I’m looking for recipies for each of the varieties of bean and grain that have been lying there ignored.  I might do a bit of light hoovering before the cleaning party come to prepare the rectory for the visiting bishop on Sunday.

The congregation have been great, offering practical help and lots of encouragement (if that’s what one calls repeated cries of  ‘stop that now.  go to bed’).

I would feel better about a week of lounging around if I had the concentration either to pray or to read theology.  But I don’t.  So instead, it is cookbooks and Harry Potter, and a very happy cat.

As tempting as it once was, I could never really have been a benedictine.

It’s the requirement of hospitality that would do me in.

Tomorrow the bishop comes. So imagine the scenario:

‘Welcome, bishop. Mrs Bishop. Right this way. Yes that’s it, just step over the ice chests and don’t trip the bags of crisps. Yes, yes it is a lovely new barbecue that you saw on the back seat of my car. Please ignore the seventeen other bags on the porch, and the unwashed dishes in the kitchen. The last loo roll is where it needs to be, and the kettle is on…’

We did clean the sacristy and print the church magazine. Pew sheets and growing season challenges are ready. Apart from that I’ve spent the day under a blanket, nursing LemSips and trying not to cough.

(cough)

Time to go watch Casualty. Maybe it will offer perspective. (Cough, cough)

“You certainly don’t want to go walking through a field of disoriented, agitated and wet honey bees,”

see original context here, or apply creatively to current events.