rejoice

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I have found a clergy shirt that fits.

What’s that you say?  Why should you care?  Well, that means that you won’t have to listen to me moan about them any more.   And I won’t be as grumpy in hot summer weather when I HATE HATE HATE that little bit of plastic.

Indeed, I’ve worn it all day without out once whipping out the white bit and unbuttoning the top when no one was looking.

Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.

Now, for those who have reason to care:  the shirt is from Butler & Butler.  It’s fair trade cotton.  The neck is cut much more generously than the other companies which is both more comfortable and less ugly.  It is shaped to fit a women rather than  a bale of hay.    Rejoice.

[and completely superfluously — I am just so impressed by that pilot on the Hudson.  Truly a good day’s work.]

growth of an idea

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Yesterday, we met for the weekly ‘No Small Talk’ pub lunch.  The topic was ‘what makes a good book for you’ — something easy to get us going again after the holidays.  My mental list read along the lines of:

  1. quality of writing
  2. quality of writing
  3. creativity
  4. quality of writing

But as I read last night, I realised I’d forgotten the one thing for which I will forgive a certain lack of verbal sparkle:  the ability of a book to generate and refine a thought stream.

It can be vague, of course:  half-thoughts that intrigue, but aren’t fully resolved.  And if the truth be told, I prefer the game when played not with written text, but in counterpoint with a good lecturer; but that is a more costly endeavour.  What I love is that moment when someone else’s idea leads you into something, a hunch, a glimmer — and then as you’re musing, and reading or listening to something which is their thought and not yours, they suddenly say something that gives you the next piece of the puzzle, that sets you off on a tangent again.

So, last night as I was reading Christopher Irvine’s The Art of God,  the thought stream went like this:

Picasso once said, ‘I don’t seek, I find’; the world is gratuitous, it is simply there, and there to be discovered and delighted in.’

interesting.  I would say I believe that.  It is an incarnational statement — the ability to God in our midst, to respond to what’s there, respectful of the other as other rather than as someone/ thing in relation to me.  But for all that it feels wrong.  I have a theology of incarnation, of givenness, but a seeker’s restlessness.  Not ‘as is’ but ‘becoming’ … more likely to seek than to find.  So how does that fit?

On and on it went, musing, pondering, following different themes and arguments being presented in the book, till 20 pages later, he said this:

The New Testament bears witness not only to the figure of Jesus Christ as the image of the invisible God, but also to how the Christian might grow into the likeness of Christ by being conformed to the pattern of Christ’s death and resurrection.

And there it is.  That’s why I spend half my days trying to offer the reassurance that God is already here, that we are already loved, that there is glory in our midst; and the other half trying to disturb the balance, to stir the cognitive dissonance needed for growth, to nudge people out of their comfort zone (and myself too) into the scary place where we are changed and changed again.

It’s not the best book ever — it feels a bit too much like a master’s thesis, covering old ground.   The writing is competent but not elegant.  It was stimulating without  being so captivating that my own lines of thought were overwhelmed; but sometimes ‘good enough’ is all you need.

[never what we hope for, but sometimes all we need]

just enough time

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17 minutes till the first person arrives for tonight’s meeting.

Last bite of dinner gone.

Busy day, and thus no sense of urgency to use these 17 minutes.

It will take me 3 minutes to boil the kettle, but then the teapot can travel.

Just enough time for Finzi’s Eclogue.

….

Bother.  It’s hiding.  Late season Britten then.

a costly error

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‘Have you heard that X has gone back into hospital?  Do you want me to bring him communion after the service on Sunday?’

‘No I hadn’t.  I can bring him communion on my way home from Rothesay.’

So after the service,  I left coffee hastily to catch the 1pm ferry from Rothesay to Wemyss Bay.   Only there was no 1pm ferry.  It had been changed to 1.30pm.  The nice man said I could leave my car and go get a sandwhich so long as I was back by 1.15.  Done.

We set out at 1.30pm — not to Wemmys Bay as expected, but the long route to Gourock.  Never-mind, thought I.  It is closer to the hospital anyway.  And so long as this ferry’s running, the others will be too.  I’ll go to the hospital then a brave little orange ferry will take me home.

So I went to the hopsital — Care of the Elderly unit to be more exact.  ‘No, sorry, he’s not here.  He must still be in the main block.  We’ll ring for you.’

But no, he was not there either.  X had spent a month before Christmas at Inverclyde.  He’d been sent home for the holidays, and readmitted this week,  ‘very frail’.  The mistake I made was this:  ‘re-admitted’ is a general concept.  It says nothing of location, and contains no implication of ‘return’.

Still, I could catch the next ferry and be with him in no time.

But the brave little ferry had given up.   The last one was well across the water, nearing its bed.

I paused to give thanks that I do — in fact– live on the mainland, then set out for the two hour journey home.  First petrol station:  24hours, but no petrol.  Second petrol station:  one pump drip-dripping out its last few gallons.  Enough to do the job.

Things got better as I approached the Erskine Bridge.  It was 4pm and the re-broadcast of Evensong for Epiphany was particularly fine.  I drove up Loch Lomandside in a blissfull haze of Britten and Eliot.   Pondered the joy, earlier in the week, of giving a 15 year old boy his first book of poetry and Eliot’s collected works.   Sang along when I could, and listened to poems (good and bad) I hadn’t heard in years.

All was well till Tarbet, where the static broke through; the radio gave up completely by Arrochar.  Then a long journey across the Climb and be Grumpy, before — swoosh — down the watery 815 by Lock Eck.   Sanity was restored as the radio jumped to life with a radio 4 programme on Obama.  Enough like hagiography to be fun; enough like critical analysis to be stimulating.

Then at last I arrived at the (correct) hospital, a mere five and a half hours after setting out.

X had just started his dinner.  I return tomorrow by another road.