Yesterday I was watching Pointless (a repeat but I hadn't seen it before).  The 'head-to-head' round required the contestants to:

• identify upper case Greek letters
• identify British national parks from their initial and final letters
• answer questions on the 1980s miners' strike

At the end of the round Richard Osman said "and especially welldone to anyone at home who got all fifteen answers'.... that'd be me then!

In 1985 I was in my final year of my engineering degree and had to write an essay on the role of power in the miner's strike... I wrote to both Arthur Scargill and Roy Lynk of the UDM so those questions were a gift.  (The letter to Mr Scargill came back to me marked 'gone away' I kept it for many years as it made me laugh)

I have walked in most of the national parks they listed, but was secretly pleased that I reocngised Pembrokeshire Coast (the lest known answer)

Greek letters - well any scientist or theologian really ought to know those, epseically as they were sigma, omega, delta, theta and psi.  Easy peasy!

Just a shame I have no idea when it comes to films and sport!

... the moon sees me.

Last night was an especially beautiful full moon, radiant, sparkly, slightly golden-glowing and, so it appeared, grazed by wisps of silver cloud in a darker than dark blue sky.  I should have taken a photo I suppose, but they never quite capture the moment.

I don't quite know why humans are so endlessly enchanted by the moon, but it does seem to have a kind of mystical magnetism that draws us into its orbit ((deliberately) bad physics but you know what I mean!)

I have in the past commented here about the sense of connectedness I feel when I look at the moon - that it hung in the sky when my forebears walked the earth, that it observed all the major (and minor) events of history.  That everyone who ever lived, famous, infamous or unheard-of has, at some point, glanced upwards and been struck by its presence is something that I find endlessly fascinating.

Quite why it is the moon to which this power or mystery is attributed I don't know.  I have never heard the same said of the sun or the stars, nor yet of mountains, rivers or seas, each of which in some measure carries the same sense of permanence.

God who made the lesser light of the moon

The reflected glow of distant sol

Silently embracing the earth 'below'

Thank you for this gift of grace

For the mystery of its beauty

For its timeless hint of eternity

For the secrets it keeps

And the joy it inspires

God who made the lesser to reflect the greater

May we we be as moons

In our time

And our place

Amen.