Month: November 2021

Back from Gloucester now. Here is a new housing estate. The clock was a bit of a surprise.

Decent walk this morning. Bit by tiny bit the darkness is lasting longer (as you might expect).

In tomorrow’s lectionary, the writer to the Hebrews seems to want readers to be free of all those ritual obligations. Just turn to Christ instead. But somehow these obligations start to build up again, in any religious organisation. It got to the point that Luther wanted to set people free again, centuries later. And no doubt churches are continuing to follow the same sad path again now, towards piling on the obligations.

Just live right, and love God.

Walking in the nautical twilight this morning, I could see, beyond the head-torch light, that the night was clear and frosty. The frost sparkled in the beam of my torch. But daylight came with cloud, becoming lower, and eventually giving little pulses of drizzly rain. Sometimes, if you hit it right, the night has beauties which are unavailable in the daytime.

Praise God for night and day!
Praise God for rain and sunshine!
Praise God for hot and cold!
God, give us the grace
to take the hard decisions we need to take,
to make this planet habitable,
and lovely, and kind
for everyone.

The weather has calmed down a bit and walking is easy – a lovely day.

In Sunday’s Lectionary, we read that Jesus said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets!” I think I have mentioned this before. But it feels like something I’ve remembered for a long time and may have gone deep. I still get a feeling of embarrassment, of being in the wrong place, whenever I’m in exalted company.

Last night, loads of writhing plasma from the sun blasted into the earth’s outer atmosphere. And the weather was largely clear. A few times I went to our west-facing upstairs window and craned my neck around to look north. But nothing. Too far south, horizon too high, and too much light. Never mind. Someone got a nice picture from Hadrian’s Wall. This far south, what you often get is mostly red from the parts higher up, rather than green.

So, someone starving goes and asks another starving person for bread. Reluctantly, she gives it to him. This is the 1 Kings passage from Sunday’s lectionary. Here we see the fellowship of the desperate (which in some ways resembles many of Jesus’ first followers – people in need of something). Under God’s guidance – and part of the mainstream of the salvation-story – , it all works out and both are fed. I have to say, I wouldn’t always be so confident things would work out – and the experience of people in desperate circumstances is often more like the fight for the bent halfpenny. Elijah was a prophet, and the woman who gives him the bread is a foreign widow. God has co-opted an outsider into the things that God is doing. There’s a few things here that we might say offer guidance for what to do in our twenty first century lives, but I’m not so sure there’s very much of a direct translation.

Maybe it’s just a piece of narrative that says God is amazing and might very well surprise us.

A muted morning on the Trail today, with soft clouds and some faint mist about. Sometimes it’s just good to listen. Behind me I heard a pigeon flapping into motion, followed by a cascade of fog drips from the trees. Every so often along the Trail, the sound of a little torrent was very obvious (some streams were visible, some not). There has been quite a lot of rain over the last few days.

The local newsagent is changing hands. Out of curiosity, I looked briefly at the TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employees) regulations. It seems that the new employer can change a contract of employment for reasons that include ‘economic’. This seems to me to give them carte blanche to do whatever they like. I believe there has to be some kind of consultation, but if workers aren’t represented by a union, I assume this takes the form of ‘take it or leave it’. It just seems pointless having these regulations: am I missing something?

Speaking of which, how do we move from ‘the widow’s mite’ (Sunday’s lectionary) to the widow’s might? … or ‘sense of agency’ at the very least.

The Trail this morning is graced by a plethora of chromatic* leaves…

• * Thank you to the Kashmir, Sheffield, for this phrase. I believe there were to be roadworks. I wonder what became of it.

‘Virtue signalling’ is not a particularly useful phrase – it’s frequently used as an insult, often relating to people who really are doing the right thing and where there’s no other way to do it – for instance people who wear masks in confined public spaces because they don’t want to give a potentially fatal disease to someone else. Machismo posturing is no less virtue signalling than mask-wearing – it’s just a kind of ‘virtue’ borrowed from a dark and destructive philosophy.

So perhaps it’s too easy to say Jesus condemns virtue signalling when he says this – “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” – in next Sunday’s lectionary reading from Mark. He is saying something important though. Never mind how much respect you or someone else has: just doing the right thing is what is important.