A propos of nothing much at all.

I love peacock colours - the vivid, almost electric hues, the blending of green, blue and purple in a way your teacher at primary school might have ciriticised.  I love the way nature defies our sensibilites mixing purple with red or orange in the sky, how pansies happily have yellow and purple or brown with blue.

This week the teal coloured curtains for my living room finally arrived - ordered with 5 day delivery they took over a month but never mind.  Now my window edges are softer and the nights more cosy as I shut out the darkness and rain.

And today I am wearing peacock colours just for the shear heck of it!  Green top, purple skirt, peacock pattern headscarf.  Oh yes, and green finger nails... :-)

At the end of August I spent the morning with Sunday School, part of a new thing we have agreed to do whereby once a quarter (roughly) I will leave with the children rather than preach.  On that day the children were focussing on prayers that said 'thank you,' 'sorry' and 'please.'

As our 'please' prayer we wrote something on a piece of tissue and placed it in the bottom of a polystyrene cup in which we planted a snowdrop bulb.  The leader reminded the children that sometimes it's a long time before we discover the answers to our prayers.

Today when I came in to church, I checked my bulb to see if it needed water, and discovered a tiny, weeny shot peeking through the compost.

The prayer I wrote was for the Chilean miners, and it was indeed some time before they would be rescued - the metaphor and the reality gelled.

What no one knew the day we planted the bulbs was that I had cancer.  I was waiting for my initial appointment (due the next day), assuming it was merely a cyst, and had told no-one.  It all felt very poignant at the time, and very much 'of God.'  As I prepare to meet the plastics team tomorrow, it seems somehow apposite that I saw the little shoot from my bulb.  If I manange to care for it adequately, it should bloom around the time my treatment ends, another metaphor or sign of God's grace (though I promise I won't read anything into it if it doesn't!).

One of the wonderful images created by our Sunday School children ready for this Sunday's service.

Here is something which uses as sound a 'short' some of our folk were involved with creating via GRF Christian Radio to which some images have been added by a church who used it in their service.

I think we're set for another creative and meaningful service on Sunday.  If you're in Glasgow make sure you get to us by 10:50 as we start early to get the silence at 11.

May remembrance of the past inform our present and shape our future for the better.

I am working with someone on some ideas emerging from the three Mary and Martha stories that will recognise the fact that, however skewed the balance, there's a bit of each of them in each of us, and that each of them got it more 'right' on one occasion and both did on a third.

As we were chatting, we recognised that we know nothing about these sisters, but that traditionally Martha is viewed as the older, often substantially so, as plain (even ugly) careworn and missing the point whereas Mary is usually young, beautiful and deeply spiritual.  We dared to postulate another idea - that these sisters were twins, and I'd like to say monozygotic (identical) twins, and play with idea that they are, if you like, two sides of one coin.

I know/have known a few sets of monozygotic twins and there does seem to be evidence that one is more extrovert, one more introvert, one more practical one more ponderous and yet, genetically, they are the same.

Martha and Mary probably weren't twins, I'm fairly sure this would have been noted had it been so, but so long as we recognise it is merely a device for our explorations, then I think it's OK.

Not saying anymore, too many readers who may see the fruit of these ideas in due course, but an interesting way to approach the stories which, for those who think there's only one such story, may be found in Luke 10, John 11 and John 12.

Yesterday's hospital consultation went really well - a happy consultant makes for a happy patient.  The surgeon outlined the options I may be offered by the plastics team and used the expression 'part of the package' to describe reconstructive surgery.  The purely therapeutic and the ostensibly cosmetic (including aspects that are purely cosmetic) do not find simple separation, and the psychological as well as the physical aspects are considered.

As I listened carefully to what I was being told, I was struck quite forcibly how some of what they offer as part of this therapeutic package has its origins in the purely cosmetic - enlargement, reduction, nips and tucks.  I fail to understand why someone would put themself in hopsital for a week, plus potnetially a long convalescence, purely to make themself look different, but I find myself grateful for the skills that have been developed and honed in that context.  Those with cash to spare in the illusive quest for the body beautiful as a by-product inspire and inform the work of those who endeavour to help people who are damaged by disease or injury to look reasonably normal.

Sometimes things that are beneficial emerge from things that are seemingly frivolous.  My Dad for many years worked in the motor sport industry, a lowly factory post but never the less one that brought him into a world of hi-tech facilities and cutting edge techniques.  The spin-offs from motor-sport find their way into ordinary vehicles - apparent vanity serving (eventually) wider society.  There are undoubtedly many other examples too.

I'm not suggesting that the wider benefits are an automatic justification of the seemingly vain or frivolous, or that we should simply surrender to the prevailing worldviews on what is to be valued, it is just that it isn't quite so simple to separate the purely practical and useful from the merely vain and fanciful.