surprising things

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pigsb

So, do you suppose the white haired man stumbling around the farm shop in confusion was most perplexed by the fact that:

  1. there were two people in dog collars blocking the door?
  2. one of the two was a woman?
  3. the other was wearing a purple shirt?

In other surprising news, I was called Tiggerish today.

Yes, that’s right…

…

get it all out of your system…

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have you stopped laughing now?

…

Good.  Then I can go on to say:  before you get carried away with the Piglet jokes and make me feel very Eyoreish, the photo above is illustrative of context and not character in today’s story.

imagining otherwise

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So, I seem to have gotten away with re-writing the 10 commandments.  The faithful at Tighnabruaich were a bit alarmed, but Dunoon didn’t bat an eye.

The question on the floor was how can we help the text be heard by a generation that can’t bear with Thou Shalt Not long enough to find any good in law.

The tentative answer was that we play with it, and invert speech.  So, I ended up with this:

10 Offerings (an inversion of Exodus 20.1-17)

Then we said to God:

  1. You are our God, who brought us into freedom:
    we shall have no other gods before you.
  2. We shall not make idols, or try to contain you
    in the things of this world;
    we shall not worship the work of our own hands,
    for if we turn from you we will be miserable.
    We know that we and our children
    will be miserable without you.
  3. We shall not abuse your name,
    or use it to gain our own ends.
  4. We shall remember the Sabbath, the day of rest.
    We shall remember that our worth comes from you,
    and not the things we do.
    We shall honour that worth in others,
    and let strangers and all your creatures
    be blessed by your Sabbath.
  5. We shall give honour to those who nurture us,
    to all who give us life;
    so that we learn to live long and live well.
  6. We shall respect life, and help it flourish.
  7. We shall honour the commitments of love,
    and walk carefully with one another.
  8. We shall share our wealth freely,
    so that no one is left desperate.
  9. We shall speak what is true, and what is kind and good.
  10. We shall rejoice in our neighbours’ wealth and good fortune. We shall rejoice when they love and are loved.

I realised after the fact that I began with ‘nots’, but by the end was looking for affirmations only.  I’ve left the descrepancy in hope that maybe you will have a go at editing.

a rare morning in Dunoon

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It is not yet 2 pm, but whatever else comes of today, it has been a good day’s work.

Primary School assembly this morning.  I hadn’t a clue as to what I wanted to say, so yielded to confusion and brought a lot of pictures that relate to my faith and invited questions.  It was fun.  We covered (in one way or another) the origins of Christianity; Jesus and Judaism;  apophasis;  Christology; the nature of ritual; the radical transcendence of God; Pneumatology; the nature of fear, risk and faith;  and a theology of friendship.  Oh, and ‘where does God live?’.  After that,  I filled in for a boy who was absent as they practiced The White Cockade for the dance show next week, and then spent a few minutes watching a cormorant dry his wings before driving home.

A quick trip to the shops ensured I will have sufficient food for the weekend, and then I was blessed with one of those conversations that priests live for, but are far too rare outside of chaplaincy.   There was the added joy of it being someone roughly my own age, who has ironically appeared in my life here just as I am leaving.

The shape of my call was never just to the newly-retired, nor even (just) to strategic development, and certainly not to property management.  Those things have their place, but some of what I can offer is to a generation I have seen little of here, and it feels so good and right to have a chance to engage with that again.

Time, now, for a cup of tea and a bit more bird watching before getting on with the  Lay Training curriculum and sorting out style sheets, service books and web pages.