I was looking through books for prayers and poems for this coming Sunday, when I came across this, which doesn't fit the service, but is worth a share...

Hold onto your faith

Kindle it with your questions

Test it with your doubts

And you will have two faiths

A resting faith

A wrestling faith

Remember that they can live together

They are not mutually exclusive

From Wrestling and Resting CTBI 1999, page 227

To my shame, it is now three months since I last posted on this blog.  Life has been hugely busy.  I have been keeping up to date with the church social media presence, and, with others, working hard to ensure that hybrid church goes as well as it can.  There have been times when I meant to post here, only to realise that another week had drifted past.  It has even taken me about three weeks to find a moment (or make a moment?) for this post.

My current subscription runs to the end of 2022, so I'll make a final decision then, but it does feel that this blog has almost certainly run its course, and that it is, or very soon will be, time to shut up shop.

I doubt very much anyone still drops by here, but it you do, thank you for your loyalty and interest.  It's been fun, and I've 'met' some wonderful people along the way, but the not-quite-post pandemic world is very different from the  one in which this blog began, and different media are now needed.  Roughly as the oft quoted saying goes, for all that has been 'thanks' for what is still to be 'yes.'

This morning is Palm Sunday on Zoom for the third time... DV next year we will be hybrid, and I won't be frantically pinning plastic palm leaves to purple fabric, though if it is either, that will be fine, I am sure.

After a bit of a late panic, when the hard drive on my laptop died, and it spent 24 hours at the laptop hospital, followed by about three hours of installing essential software, it's quite pleasing to be set up and, broadband or Zoom glitches permitting, good to. go.

Looking forward to a multi-voiced amble through Luke's version of events... which has no palms and no anointing, but does have all the essential elements to lead us to Gethsemane.

Last night our Zoom Tech Team went to the hotel for a trial set-up and dry run.  The headline is: IT WORKS!

There were some challenges, mostly around broadband, and for the time-being it's an experimental lash-up to test the concept before we spend any money, but it was so much simpler than we had dared hope.  Thank you P, L, A and B (some onsite, some online) for your hard work and determination.

We are quite clear that we are moving to hybrid worship, not simply streaming onsite worship to an audience.  We are not turning back the clock to March 2020 with cameras, nor are we doing Zurch with a bunch of folk in one room.  This is a 'new thing' that embraces the best of the 'old' - not new wine in old skins, but a rather fantastic experimental spritzer maybe!

We know things will go awry. We know we will need to be patient and forgiving. We know that we won't all like everything.

We also know, in so far as we know our hearts, that this is the path in which Jesus is leading us - so, onsite or online, we journey in, together with God.

It's been a while since Sophie joined me to lead worship, but today she was determined to con-celebrate communion.  I have a feeling she's a closet Roman Catholic, as she jingled her bell at precisely the right moment!