Some great and wide-ranging conversations after yesterday's service on Naaman's wife's maid and the concept of the 'child at the centre'...

Two people told me what they'd seen on QI  about language and customs relating to children... that the word 'girl' once covered both genders and that there was a time when girls wore blue and boys pink...

A conversation about the concept of leprosy and whether it mattered that Naaman's almost certainly did not have what is now technically termed leprosy being instead a skin disease that evoked dread - and the contemporary parallels with other diseases.  Someone also lent me some booklets on the history of TLM and one on a medical perspective on Biblical leprosy.

Someone else majored on the nascent faith of children and told me of a child in our church who had demonstrated, at the age of five, an understanding of 'all things being made new' in heaven after a much loved pet was injured.

All in all a good morning.

And a good and equally interesting evening, in which I was able to listen to someone else's work, focussing on aspects of Pascal's philosophy and faith.

For my first weekend back after the break it was an excellent beginning.  It's good to be home... and I'm sure the coming months will be 'quite interesting' too.

Following on from the last post, and the comments it raised, I wondered what the stereotypical Baptist manse is... not least as unlike other Christian denominations we have no minimum specification on size or facilities.  So, if you want to add your thoughts, positive or negative, based on experience, personal or otherwise, please do.

But for starters....

The sterotypical Baptist manse is:

• cold, damp and draughty with never quite the right number or configuration of rooms
• probably Victorian, and was probably last rewired when Eddison was a boy
• a repository for spare green hymnbooks (or red ones, or old editions of Songs of Fellowship or Spring Harvest Praise or OHP acetates or whatever hymns/songs your brand of Baptist hoards)
• a place whose occupants will be thrilled to have your cast off kitchen units, carpets and, if they are really blessed, curtains, especially those faded, frayed ones that were rescued from great auntie Maud's house after the great flood of 1923.

More positively...

• a place where the kettle is always freshly boiled and tea/coffee and biscuits/cakes await
• a place where you can be sure to be listened to - and your darkest secrets never get out of the four (crumbling) walls
• a place where laughter and love abound
• a place where gospel is lived by flawed and failing disciples in the fish-bowl glare of every knowing who you are.

Over to you...