Category: blog

The first Friday of my holidays began bright and early with school assembly. (yes, I know… but it was their last day of term.)

I talked about how we value things and why — building on the story of Anne Frank’s tree, which has had a sudden reprieve from the ax, while people look for ways to prop her up and kill the fungus that makes her a danger.

And by way of illustration I brought in three things for them to pass round:

• a Tangle –a shiny plastic toy to play with
• a holding cross
• a small stone

The question was: what gives Anne Frank’s tree worth? Is it because of what it is, what it looks like, how it moves (the Tangle). Is it because of what it symbolizes — hope and beauty in the midst of one girl’s fear and darkness (the cross). Or is it because of the story we tell about it (the stone, given to me by a very dear old man in my ‘home’ congregation).

I hate the thought of that tree being propped up and held together and denied a peaceful death. Far better to let it go, and to act on the earlier plan of grafting a bit of it into new life, so a sign of hope remains. But I didn’t want to tell them that. They had to decide for themselves.

So I just told them how I felt about the stone. How it was the story that mattered. And how, once the story has worked its way inside us, the object isn’t so important — we can let go of it, or even give it away.

And you can see, now, where this is going, can’t you?

Let me tell you, giving a small hard stone to a 13 year old boy at 9am on a Friday morning is a pure act of faith.

And much to my surprise, no one told me off for it, and no one took it off him.

I wonder where it is now…

This is another public service announcement:

Choose where to buy your printer ink very carefully.

My two month old laser printer needs ink, which is a bit of a surprise given that my old printer only needed ink 4 times in its entire life.   So off I went to PCWorld.  I realised that the ink cartridge for my printer was smaller than many of the others and seemed to be priced accordingly at £37.  When I went to pay, it came up as £74.  There were no specifications telling me how many pages it would print, and that seemed like a lot for two month’s worth of ink.   So I went home to check on line.

For the same ink cartridge, with a pathetic yield of 2,000 pages (I got the wrong printer…) the price is as follows:

• PC Word — £74.99
• HP on line — £49.99
• Amazon — £39.99

Is it any wonder Amazon has taken over the world?

Now why is it that any time I spend more on something than is strictly necessary, Molly assumes it must be for her?

One of the things I am very bad at is preparing rotas. A member of the congregation noticed this (OK, most members of all of the congregations noticed this) and offered to prepare the rotas for me. I was wary. Part of the stress of doing it is in remembering the little things that are hidden, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to bring them to light. But I braved it out and produced a long set of instructions which included things like:

• don’t put pairs of people on together (husband & wife, best friends…)
• make sure the person who hates a particular type of service and who is not always able to come to church is not forced to come for the service (s)he hates…
• don’t put lay team members in prominent rolls the weeks before or after they preach
• if it’s a lay led service, make sure someone ‘else’ (neither lay team, nor their closest friends) is on readings.
• try to balance old members and new, draw from a range of ‘groups’ in the congregation, keep mixing things up as much as possible.

And then I set her free to juggle names, with the one last warning that she should leave all major festivals blank so that I could sort out Christmas once I knew who would be active in the Advent Carol Service.

The person did admirably, and had the grace to admit that she now understands why rotas drive me crazy.

But as I looked at the list and changed the last few reading for February since Lent had crept up sooner than usual, I remembered another reason I hate rotas.

There, on two sides of A4 was the reminder that it is not only long nights, AGMs and Advent which are fast approaching, but the marathon that is Advent-Christmas-Epiphany-Candlemas-Lent-Easter- Pentecost.

It is all one this year. The wax will hardly be set on the newly blessed candles before room fills with the smoke of burning ash. And then, at the end of it all, and endless sea of green.

Lord have mercy.