(If you're going to plagiarise, you might as well plagiarise the world's all time best seller!).

There will, indeed, be silence in this corner of Blogland for about half a month - next week I have to fit five days' work into three (so nothing new there) in order to be able to go to Manchester for three days to be introduced to the Doctorate of Practical Theology that will occupy my spare time and eat my remaining savings for the next six years.  I am very much looking forward to this, it has an element of 'pioneering' about it and it will be good to have some more formal exercise for my brain.  Then, after a detour to Sheffield for an ordination service and a service back in Dibley on the theme of 'Living Stones' it's back to the North West to begin my little stroll from Liverpool to Hull.  Sponsorship to date is around £600 and still a few more offers trickling in.  I am looking forward to the walk, to two weeks away from Dibley doing something utterly different - and to dipping my toes in the North Sea at the end of it!

So, one way and another there will be no blogging for a bit.  I may revert to real journalling of some sort whilst walking - though paper adds mass to my pack - and there will undoubtedly be plenty to reflect on when I get back.

I often wonder what silence in heaven for around 30 minutes would be like - no endless Alleluia's by the heavenly creatures, all those walled gardens for different denominations devoid of hand-raising, incense, organ music, Wesley, Kendrick, or whatever their thing is, lest the others might hear and realise they are not, afterall, alone...  would there be a sense of foreboding as perhaps Revelation implies?  Alas studying Revelation at undergraduate level served only to confirm one thing: it is a confusing book that I do not understand any more than I did beforehand (though I understand my confusion a little better!). 

By contrast this half a month of silence is something I am looking forward to, whatever may follow on afterwards.