Thanks to H for this photo, taken in Sunday morning at the end of the service just before we went into super-fast pack up mode to allow the room to be re-set for a Wedding!

Everything on the table holds significance for the Gatherers.  The objects we had packed up last week were carefully unpacked within the serivce, and the table re-set.

It was all a bit cluttered, the table the hotel supplied was much smaller than the one we left behind, but somehow that expresses something of the messyness (messiness?) of this community of all ages and stages, assorted views and understandings, backgrounds, nationalities etc. etc.

Something about the messyness seems to be very Advent appropriate - life is messy, untidy, doesn't always go to plan yet this is precisely where the promise of Emmanuel, God with us, is experienced.