Month: May 2021

Not so much walking today. Old enough to be allowed to avoid the rain. But more walking than I expected! So good.

Making the most of a spell of decent weather today. Still in sight of distant showers though.

Pentecost is soon. What can you say? That bunch of stunned, bereaved, confused disciples probably didn’t know what to say. They just stuck together and prayed. That’s how Pentecost found them.

Light on the spring trees yesterday: no such luck today.

Pleasant walk in the morning, in the relative quiet before the Sunday crowds, and in the good weather before the sun gets to work and the warmish air near the ground wants to replace the cold pool aloft. Also pleasant in that my moving parts seem relatively OK at the moment.

Combine a large population declining exponentially or at least not growing fast with a tiny population growing quickly exponentially, and the small population of viruses will eventually come to dominate. In the case of the variant first identified in India, ‘eventually’ might mean ‘quite soon’. I don’t know whether this is the reason the number of cases in our borough has gone up 5-10x in the last couple of weeks, but it could be. (The sample must be very small, so there’s a lot of randomness – and that alone may explain the jump). The government (in response) appears to have changed the vaccination policy from “keep transmission down” to “give maximum protection to vulnerable people”. Will we be able to give enough protection that we can live with this disease?

Fortunate to have walked in a dry spell this morning. There are quite a few patches of rain about.

From Monday we’ll be allowed to hug (using that mythical ‘common sense’). It reminds me of a joke I only half remember. A man goes to the orthopaedic consultant and she tells him that after the operation he’ll be able to play tennis. And he says “That’s good, because I was never able to play tennis when I was healthy.”

So it is with hugging. I was never much of a hugger, rarely initiating a hug in social situations. I have been a huggee more often, but still not very much. It’s all a nest of difficult questions about what is appropriate anyway.

This was on the Trail less than a mile from our house. Although it mostly walked away from me, it didn’t seem too bothered by my presence, and eventually walked back past me. They are quite bold, the deer. Maybe if people don’t harm them, there’s no longer any selection in favour of the cautious ones.

A walk on the Trail on the other side of the Pennines yesterday. This cutting nicely festooned…

Meanwhile, the Holy Land burns. There seems to me to be a kind of arrogance in treating your enemy like a child who needs to be punished (more severely than the original offence). That can go only one way. It’s also questionable whether it’s a good idea to treat a child like a child in that sense.

Please pray for Israel and Palestine.

Also today is Ascension. To oversimplify, Jesus escapes the bonds of place and time to be available to all people everywhere. We Christians too like our holy places for psychological reasons, but you’d hope we’d be able to realise they are not core to our faith. Peace is more important than place; as are justice, faith, love, forgiveness.

A question that comes up in my head from reading Sunday’s Lectionary – where do you get your guidance from, and how do you test it?

Some ideas from the readings – the word of the Lord, a random process (casting lots), the ‘testimony of God’ reflected in Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the word of God… Well, they are not mutually exclusive – and other ideas suggest themselves – the Bible, and reason itself – it’s got to make sense. All this is not straightforward, though, and there need to be checks, tests – we interpret God’s dream not alone, but in community. It’s hard, especially when you’re talking with people who are coming from a very different place – maybe that is part of the pain of living in an imperfect world. Another good question to ask – are we hearing what we’re hearing only because it’s what we want to hear – or is the message moving us on? Nevertheless don’t let this morass of semi-knowing slow us down from following Christ eagerly once we do get the idea of where we’re going.

Also I’m confused by this voter ID thing – doers it mean we shall (in effect) have to pay to vote? – In which it seems to be sending us backwards to a pre-democratic time. It’s a crap solution to a small-scale problem.

Sun, water, carbon dioxide, a few other bits and bobs, and trees are happy.

We thank you generous God,
for water, carbon dioxide and sunshine,
with which all plant life can make food.
Help me care enough
to do what I can
to keep these things in balance.