Month: November 2020

Some of this morning’s clouds were displaying lens-y tendencies…

It was a pleasant enough morning walk, and still quite warm for the time of year – although my birthday fleece may have made it feel warmer than it really was. We did a thing with the car so I walked one way from home and Janet walked back home the other way. We were, after all, using it for local exercise. The trail was fairly quiet this morning.

In Sunday’s Lectionary, from 1 Thessalonians, there’s a sense of urgency. You don’t know when the day of the Lord is coming, but it feels as if it’s soon. Don’t get drunk, don’t sleep. I’m not sure what the concrete meaning of ‘don’t sleep’ might be – perhaps the readers knew only too well – but literally being sleep-deprived for more than a short while is surely not being recommended. ISTR on the Manchester soup run long ago, a number of the people were full of apocalyptic language, and it crossed my mind that some of them had had a personal apocalypse. The day of the Lord, the reckoning, has meaning not only for the end of everything, but also in personal and communal life. Some of the things Jesus said about the kingdom of heaven would have made sense if they were about the community in that age.

Is the ‘day of the Lord’ good news or bad news? How does that feel in your guts?

And how do we respond to 1 Thessalonians as the years pass, and the sense of urgency wears away? Maybe it’s worth bearing in mind that the reckoning for individuals and communities can come at any time.

A quiet dawn this morning, after some rain in the night.

The Gospel reading in next Sunday’s Lectionary is hard. Is God really to be likened to such a ruthless master?There’s plenty more to consider in this passage, but a couple of suggestions for now – (i) it gives us an insight into real life in those days – there were ruthless landowners, it was a hard and unpleasant human world, rather like now, (ii) be ready for the reckoning – be ready for that time to come when you have to face the consequences of your actions (in God’s presence, as we generally are).

As to the title, it’s an updating of the parable, which Janet has done.

No, not the suburb of Stockport with one train a week to one of its stations, but the colour of my birthday jumper, which I wore gratefully this morning. It is similar to the colour of an old-time Metropolitan Railway locomotive. Red is also the colour of the poppies with which Janet has decorated our window. They are felt, so the black centres merge into the bright red outsides. It’s like a combination of fresh and congealed blood. Let us not forget the horror of war.

And what lesson do we draw from that? How do we avoid going there again? It’s all easier said than done, even with good will, which is sometimes absent anyway. There’s a lot of angry people in public life (as in all life), and that anger is not always channelled creatively.

In tomorrow’s lectionary, Joshua addresses the people at Shechem. Serving God is a serious business, it’s not to be undertaken lightly. It’s the same as serving in public life or any job, really: there’s no place for egotism. Obviously, this kind of seriousness is not incompatible with humour. Anyway…

God give us grace
to do what we can,
in whatever circumstances we find ourselves,
to serve you honestly.

When we, like Jesus did,
find ourselves in the wilderness of uncertainty,
show us the way to live for you.

And God bless America
with peace and reconciliation,
and all that is best
for all children of this planet.

…the spelling is intentional.

Today I’m 68, the age at which I’d normally have retired, and Janet has made a ginger cake – delicious!! Of course I still wonder whether I should’ve stayed to the end – but if I had, maybe we’d not have been able to do some of the projects we’ve done. Also I was never the best at keeping up with what was going on anyway, and that feature of my working life was getting worse as I went through my sixties.

Obviously it’s another time to think about how my working life went: perhaps what I didn’t realise before is that although I had many talents, I also had one or two gaps – so possibly I couldn’t have been all that much more useful than I actually was. Sometimes the things you fall down on aren’t the ones you are expecting.

Anyway, there’s a lot more life to be lived, and I’m looking forward to it, lockdown or no lockdown. As a matter of fact, the virus has come to us at the least worst possible time – we are newly retired, relatively fit, on a fixed income and living somewhere beautiful.

Something to think about for our future – how can life be more beautiful for people who have been pushed aside in the struggle for wealth?

Some pieces of cloud down on the valley side this morning, and yesterday’s clouds made for a pretty sunset.

From Sunday’s Lectionary, one of the alternative readings. It’s not in the core Bible, but something to think about anyway…

Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16
“6:12 Wisdom is radiant and unfading, and she is easily discerned by those who love her, and is found by those who seek her.
6:13 She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her.
6:14 One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty, for she will be found sitting at the gate.
6:15 To fix one’s thought on her is perfect understanding, and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care,
6:16 because she goes about seeking those worthy of her, and she graciously appears to them in their paths, and meets them in every thought.”

Wisdom, it seems, is discerned by those who love her – and for those who don’t love wisdom? I contend they (we?) wouldn’t know wisdom if it slapped them (us?) in the face. Recent events and the growth of dangerous nonsense on social media kind of push me in the direction of agreeing with that.

Keep praying for America.

A gentle, understated dawn, with a gibbous moon still high in the pale sky and banks of soft mist clinging to the hillsides. Also, the GPS which wasn’t working yesterday is now working perfectly.

Not so gentle across the pond. It’ll be a long, heartbreaking time before we know what’s happened.

God bless America
with peace.

A walk on the Pennine Bridleway south of Hayfield today, past Mount Famine. I thought, maybe famine at one time was more of a shared experience, not like the present-day marginalisation of people in poverty, but no, that’s not how the Potato Famine worked. Some landowners probably managed to get by while people where dying around them.

Today’s walk was a fairly easy way to get in amongst the knobbly landscape…

In Sunday’s Lectionary, Jesus tells the story of the ten bridesmaids. It’s about being ready for the kingdom of heaven, and the punchline is “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” But what concrete actions can we take to be ‘awake’, to be ready for the coming of the kingdom in which the first are last, and the last first?

A fair morning today, no showers recently, and some bits of blue sky to set of the yellowing beech leaves.

Next Sunday is Remembrance, and the Lectionary has some relevance too. But for now just a general observation … those who have died cannot speak for themselves. Their deaths are both gut-wrenchingly grief-making and powerful in many ways. And so those who survived, but especially succeeding generations, are tempted to colonise those deaths and use that emotional weight for their own purposes. It’s happened throughout history. And I wonder if it’s sometimes happened to Jesus too. People find many layers of meaning in the cross of Christ. We sometimes draw different conclusions.

God of love and mercy,
we remember.
We acknowledge the pain,
the grief, the terror.
This is the cruel world,
and these were children of your creation,
fearful, vulnerable, yet brave;
ordinary, yet amazing.
We will remember them.

I heard on BBC radio this morning that IDS thinks the government have given in to scientists over COVID-19. It seems that in the Toryverse, now not only is the UK at war with the rest of Europe, but we’re at war with truth. It’s the scientists’ job to tell the government the likely consequences of their decisions, and they’ve done it in good faith. They don’t deserve to be maligned for telling the truth.

Presumably if the government had stood up to the scientists, then when the COVID-asteroid smacked us in the face, another explanation for the disaster would have been found.

I don’t think I’m going to church this morning – if a lockdown is worth starting, it’s worth starting now.