Month: August 2020

The Bambi made it and we are near Ashbourne for a day and a bit. It’s fairly posh rolling rural here. There are lots of horses. It has been a hazy, muggy dawn.

Two distinct layers of cloud this morning – fuzzy low cloud blown over the hills from the east, and altocumulus castellanus.

Of the Canaanite/Syrophoenician woman, more later.

A bracing northeasterly first thing, bringing low cloud across from the other side of the hills, along with a trace of drizzle. As I came back west, the sun was beginning to come out, and faint piece of drizzle-bow was just discernible. A twocker has finished his journey at Rough Fields.

I thank you God for the wind
that blows between houses, abandoned cars,
trees, warehouses, tenements,
gritstone edges, reservoirs, playgrounds,
shopping malls, seasides…
…I thank you God for the wind.

Lovely misty morning first thing, with a thin mist clinging to some of the hills…

Later, walking with Janet, I found there was enough refreshing breeze to make waves slap the sides of the reservoir.

Creator God, we thank you for this planet,
with its variety of animals, of habitat, of weather.
But sometimes the weather isn’t the weather we want.
Sometimes the circumstances of our life can be all wrong,
and it’s devastating, even tragic.
God in Christ, be close to us when we need you:
bring healing and a new beginning.

In my cynical moments I sometimes think political programmes are dreamt up in the pub – maybe not so daft after all, as the pub is where they will be discussed by us. This is from AE Housman’s A Shropshire Lad 62…
“And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.”

Lots of people out early this morning, enjoying the nice weather before it gets too hot. The breeze is light, there’s no rain, and it’s getting sunnier.

Supplementary walk this morning, going down the hill I usually go up, on the way to meet Janet. The steep down bit seemed much steeper than it was on the way up, a real joint-banger.

Apparently it’s going to be really hot in the southeast. I’m glad I’m not there: I hope H&T are OK.

The softness of the clouds, the stillness of the water, the smell of the bracken…

The image doesn’t really convey it, but something about the light today made me realise just how much darker it was walking under trees than on the open sections of the path. It felt deeply gloomy. Then you come out into the open, and it’s day! There’s even small suggestions of blue sky near the southern and eastern horizons. It was muggy, breezy, but dry – I’m not confident that the dryness will last, though. I’m never quite sure how to take the weather forecast – we’re in the southeast of the northwest, or if you like, the northwest of the east midlands. Plus we sit on some west-facing slopes and occasionally in the shadow of some Welsh mountains. I usually go by TV transmitter, not county, which makes us northwest. (As I may have mentioned…) We’re only about a mile away from Tameside in the Manchester COVID zone, and Tameside is our local hospital. The railway and bus connections mostly look towards Manchester. If you get up early enough in the morning, you can see that we’re in the Manchester TTWA.

Companion Christ, as we stumble in the darkness,
lead us on, keep us going
until we walk in the light again.

Some of you are old enough to remember Simon and Garfunkel. And one of their verses goes like this, according to the internet…
“And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said:
“The words of the prophets are
Written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence.”
…this seems to take its cue from the Hebrew scriptures, for instance as the above website points out, the book of Daniel; and also from one of the Old Testament options in Sunday’s Lectionary, at 1 Kings 19:12. The Lord was not in the noise and fuss, but in the awe-inspiring silence. It’s a bizarre quirk of my lifetime that the ‘silent majority’ is anything but. The real silence is of the disenfranchised poor, women silenced by their husbands, people silenced because of their faith or skin colour.

It’s raining a bit. Not much, but a bit.

Intermittent low clouds today, one or two showers about, and the woodlands above the valley steaming

From next Sunday’s Lectionary, when Joseph’s brothers plot against him, they start by saying ‘Here comes this dreamer’. They say it to each other. It is the kind of trash talk that’s familiar from many eyewitness accounts of gang assaults and murders. For people who’ve been killed for being black, or for being unlike their assailants in other ways, trash talk maybe the last words they ever hear. Jesus, too, had endured many insults in the last hours of his life. Why do I say, “here comes this dreamer” is an insult (it wasn’t actually directed at him)? It’s because of the plans they start to make immediately afterwards. You can tell that “here comes this dreamer” is no compliment. And the things that people say to one another within the group are as dangerous to the victim as the things said to their face. The sly internet insults, the drink-enhanced slagging off in the pub – these things all increase prejudice and aggression. And yes, “here comes this dreamer” is quite often an insult today. In effect it’s something quite often said by the cynical type of church member about a younger and more idealistic member of a church. But Biblical prophecies about people ‘dreaming dreams’ are prophecies of hope, not despair.

Living God,
give us dreamers of dreams, we pray,
and give them strength
to live through the insults.

Clouds, some sunshine, some showers, but the mix not quite right for morning rainbows.

Waiting to see how much space there’s going to be before resuming church: so next week probably. Also, we’re about a mile away from the intervention zone, and the other half of our bubble is in it.

Now the sun is becoming a bit more prevalent.

Living God, let your light shine
in our lives,
in the life of our world,
in our relationships with one another,
and with our planet.
Make the way clear to us all.