Four/Five days work to go (depending how you count) and five more services to be delivered and then 6 days off!  Hurrah!

I think I'm looking forward to the mania of the next few days - welcoming somewhere between 12 and 20 folk into my house for food and fellowship (service 2 of 5) tomorrow night and trying to round up a few waifs and strays for Tuesday lunch/tea.  After two years in Manchester of having Christmas dinner with forty otherwise lonely people, I have never been able to get back to the 'we four and no more' model, but round here it is really hard to persuade people that sitting alone with the grumps saying 'I'm fine really' is not the only option.  Whatever happens, Tuesday will include some time spent with lonely or hospitalised people - and the 'blessing' won't be all one way.

So, this blog is now having its own Christmas holiday.

Many thanks for reading this stuff through another year.  Special thanks to those who comment and/or if they know me in the real world phone or email.  I hope your Christmasses will be wonderful times of blessing, relaxation and renewal, and that 2008 will be peaceful and filled with hope.

Now I must de-Rachel my office, write some intercessions and attend to some thrilling admin...

Take care and I hope to 'see' you soon.

PS Here is some holly just because I like it!  The nativity scene is Brazilian.

Thank you to all those who read the 'signals' yesterday and prayed into a tricky pastoral situation, and epsecially to those who sent personal emails of support and encouragement.

Sitting in an open waiting area, seeing so many frightened and anxious people, some in tears, others masking terror with bravado, was a sobering experience.  How many broken lives, how many shattered dreams, how many worst fears realised?  Granted, some were old hands, knew the system, and I had to bite my tongue when I heard comparisons made over who was lower than who else... "for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God"

As I recall these shattered lives, these children of God who are scarred by life's experinece, those who are trapped in cycles of poverty, chemical abuse or even of knowing no different, I recall some words from two thousand years ago...

"Jesus, remember me, when you come into your Kingdom"

For those I saw today, for those I stood alongside wearing two inches of white plastic (it has some uses!), I pray it might be so.

Was good fun, though the poor weather probably put a few folk off from venturing out.  The broadcast was good though some of the interviews were a little verbose - to the extent that the bishop was cut short, two carols reduced and one axed inorder to avoid an overrun.  Such are the perils of live broadcasting.  Though I doubt they'd have had the same qualms had it been football or cricket...

The good news - around a third of those who came to the event don't go to church, though all had a vague link with one or other of our churches (four were from our lunch club).

So, around 40 of us for an hour's service followed by another hour of food and fellowship, and we raised £50 for charity on the way.  Not bad for an evening's work.

Highlights of the broadcast - the shepherds' rap and the bishop's talk.

Highlights of the evening - seeing 'John' from lunch club who has lots of problems welcomed and affirmed by church folk, and 'Kim' who came with her ten year-old son.

If this was repeated all over the county, well, then I think God smiled.

Countless people are still held hostage by unnamed guerilla and terorrist groups.  Others are imprisoned for their beliefs.  A man is released from death row after 20years.  People released from Guantanamo face extradition and fresh charges.  Tomorrow I have a mega pastoral situation to deal with, which may well spoil a family's Christmas.  As I have pondered these facts, words from E Nesbitt's classic The Railway Children came to mind...

It is after the Russian gentleman has been taken in by the family, after the mother has had news about the children's father (in jail for fraud) that, at the end of Chapter 5 we find these words...

Presently [mother] said, "Dears, when you say your prayers, I think you might ask God to show His pity upon all prisoners and captives."

"To show His pity," Bobbie repeated slowly, "upon all prisoners and captives. Is that right, Mother?"

"Yes," said Mother, "upon all prisoners and captives. All prisoners and captives."

 

May it be God's word to us, this Christmas time.

Check out what Rowan Williams actually said to the Times here.  It's nothing new to anyone who knows what the Bible actually says - and it does what I'm meant to be doing on Christmas Day - challenging the 'faithful' to see how much they have absorbed traditions and legends as gospel.  I am doing a 'truth or tradition' quiz, with pictures, and blow me down if Archbishop Rowan hasn't picked up all the same themes.  Bah, candy canes!

And yet... I recall reading a theology book about five years ago (alas I cannot remember which - Sean please help me out you made me read it!) that took a more hopeful approach to this, that actually in the Christmas card scenes, in the nativity play synthesis, God actually reveals new things to us: the ox and ass link us with Christ as the saviour of the world (kosmos) not just the people on it, that the shepherds and kings together in the stable point us to the fact that in Christ there is neither Jew/gentile, slave/free male/female.  The layering and glittering may in fact add to, not detract from, the truths of the story.

So, Rowan Williams is absolutely right about legends and traditions, and yet God, being God, can still speak through them.  Yeah, way to go God!  Mystery and wonder - exactly what all this is about, and what the good Archbishop hints at anyway.