the adventures of retirement
A splashy walk this morning, with many puddles on the Trail. Someone has driven along it marking up widths at a few points – so maybe a resurfacing is in prospect! That would be nice for somebody like me, although maybe it would make the Trail less adventurous. Many tree trunks looked black because of the wetness.
I praise you in the wet,
in the wind and rain,
in fog and frost,
in thunder and sunshine,
glorious God of creation.
God of love, as I look forward
to the celebration of Jesus coming,
as I look forward to the promise of peace,
as I look forward I also pray….
…because I long for that old transforming power,
the power to change minds,
the power to inspire us to change direction,
the power to change the world.
I look forward to your kingdom
coming on earth.
I look forward to your will
being done on earth.
I look forward to the time
when nobody goes hungry,
when the burden of disease
no longer falls on people in poverty,
when guns belong in museums,
and the world can breathe again.
Sometimes I think I can hear the sound of angels
in the stillness of the night,
and everything becomes possible.
A walk this morning along the Trail in pleasant weather. Everyone I met today respected the distance limits, which was brilliant.
Last night we watched the first threequarters of Schindler’s List, which was, as it should be, a difficult watch. It’s not just the brutality, but also the confusion which makes it hard – that too must be true to the experience. This is what we people can do to each other, and in such a twisted world even the heroes are compromised. I don’t want the world to be like that again, and even now people in Europe are trying to work together to avoid another such terrible conflict, or the re-emergence of any such philosophy as Naziism. Except us of course.
Perhaps there are people here who think the war was a good thing. (It may for us at the time have been a necessary thing, but that’s different). Most of the people who now see the war as a great moment are people who never experienced it.
We now have 35 hours in which to finish the film.
Gracious God, give us peace we pray,
a peace in which there is also justice,
in which no voice goes unheard,
the peace which Christ can give,
but not the world.
These vaccines are great, but not everyone will get them.
Please pray that every country, rich or poor, gets a chance to fight back against this virus.
From Sunday’s Lectionary, John the baptist explains himself by quoiting from Isaiah… “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’…” So part of God’s plan for the world comes by the voice of someone shouting in the wilderness. How do I respond to such voices? Generally I walk by. If it’s a voice I don’t want to hear, I shut my ears. But even a drunken rant from somebody on the street has some import, if only “my life hurts”. For many people’s lives are hurting right now, and the Great Separator of disease has amplified hurts that have been there for decades. A few days or weeks ago there were some TV shows about the plague (the 17th century one). And guess what? People in poverty were more likely to get it than rich people.
Meanwhile, before dawn and in a modest rain, the Trail was almost deserted – a b it of wilderness near at hand. A few small bits of snow were still visible on tufts of grass in sheltered spots beside the track.
Sunday’s Lectionary reading from 1 Thessalonians is a set of instructions about living which in this translation come at you staccato…
“5:16 Rejoice always,
5:17 pray without ceasing,
5:18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
5:19 Do not quench the Spirit.”
…and so on. Not always much explanation or nuance there, but maybe it’s just important to do these things rather than devoting too much time to understanding them. If Advent is a time of preparation, it’s also a time to re-examine our lives. Are we taking these injunctions seriously, even if we do want to take some care just how we do them? For instance “rejoice always” might be a bit insensitive at funerals – surely it’s part of Christian solidarity to weep with those who weep. And yet somewhere deep inside we cling to the notion that God is indeed good.
What about the quenching the Spirit thing? Some people have quite specific and maybe unsettling ideas about what that means. Is everyone who gets worked up in the name of Christ really praying for something we should all be praying for? There are parts of the Christian world that are more like the prophets of Baal. OTOH, maybe you can sometimes get an intuition that the Spirit’s being quenched somewhere. I love the URC and its conciliar polity – all those meetings: but in my more cynical moments it feels to me as if the elders’ meeting is designed to be a Spirit-quenching engine.
Good walk this morning in the calm, with small patches of snow by the trail, and more still hanging around on the hills.
Living God show us when
it’s time time stop waffling on about living right
and just do it.
Oh dear, this won’t do. This is far too political and should not be said in church… “For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.” and “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
It is of course from the Bible, from the Isaiah reading and the Luke reading for the third Sunday in Advent (next Sunday) this year. So: there you go.
Some snow around the place, but it’s been melting for a while.
The tussocks are poking out. Reminds me of the times I used to yomp more than I do now.
Some of the lower fields are already back to green mode.
When I was out, there was thin snow down to about 300m on the valley sides. The walk was similar to walks I’ve done many times, but this time the place looked more austere under the grey sky. It has many moods. Now I’m indoors and it’s gloomy and sleeting.
“Austerity” – when I was young (very young) its only meaning for me was to describe locomotives that were built during and just after WWII, designed to be cheap to build and easy to maintain. We had a load of the 2-8-0 freight engines on the line past our house, hauling coal in the old-fashioned straight-sided wagons, and they were the bread-and-butter of my trainspotting experience, along with Fairburn 2-6-4 tanks on the commuter trains, and a mixture of GWR 4-6-0’s on the longer distance trains. Slow trains went to Marylebone and fast ones went to Paddington, for ours was a joint railway from of old – so even companies can co-operate when it suits them. I like co-operation.
Now, “austerity” is often heard in something closer to its core meaning, to describe severe economic restraint. I accept that we sometimes need economic restraint – you can’t magic wealth out of nowhere, and at some point we’re going to have to pay the for all the extra money we’ve spent keeping things going during the pandemic. For me the key question is not should we control our spending, but who bears the burden? Why does it always seem to fall on the shoulders least able to support it, on people who are already poor? How can we control spending and at the same time achieve the twin goals of reducing poverty and supporting economic activity*? It might be easier if there weren’t already so many rich people with undue influence.
It’s looking more like wet snow now, not settling. I think being indoors is good, but some people do not have any place indoors where they can be safe.
God of love, protect everyone
who has to live with someone violent.
May women’s refuges have all they need,
all the money, all the staff,
all the support and respect they need
from their communities,
so that they can continue their work
without people being hunted down.
Give strength and hope
to people who work to protect
those in danger.
Living God, may your world
be a place of peace.
* By which I mean the creation of goods and services, not trading.
Please pray for the people of Avonmouth and the workers at the waste plant there.
Also I believe a government minister has said the people of my country are better than anyone else in the world. That’s not my experience.