Been and done it - my three votes on three different colour-coded voting slips posted into the appropriate ballot boxes.  From a simple 'yes/no' on the referendum to a roll of wallpaper for the Scottish regional representation, it reflected the diversity of democratic process.  Now we have to wait to see how the results pan out.

At least here I am reasonably confident that far right parties won't make an impact.  I had a quick look to see who was standing in my old local government ward of Dibley and discovered that the far right guy who got in last time is standing once more - this time as an independent as, it seems, the far right party he was part of wasn't far enough right enough for him.

After the local council election at which that candidate was elected I preached one of my few overtly political sermons as a response.  My one non-white, non-UK born, church member thanked me, because he was genuinely afraid of the potential consequences.

This week I've been thinking quite a lot about injustices and how difficult it is to address them, that sometimes it has to be one at a time, that sometimes former victims become perpetrators, that sometimes despite our best efforts we end up as hypocrites.  Baptists claim to believe in freedom of conscience, but we don't always think that through terribly carefully.  The far right people have the right to hold the views they do, and even to test public perception by standing for election; however, we have a responsibility both, where and when we can, to speak prophetically in response and to get out and vote for other candidates.

Whilst I was typing this, the postman delivered the postcard I'd completed a few weeks back at the closing gathering of the Glasgow Poverty Truth Commission on which I, like others, had been invited to write down one thing we would do as a result of what we'd heard.  I wrote this:

I will: continue to work for a just society where all are valued as of equal worth

Even as I wrote it, I knew these words were far easier to write than to enact.  Sometimes it seems like one step forward and two back.  Sometimes it seems addressing injustice A means living with injustice B.  Sometimes it seems there are so many injustices it's impossible to know where to begin.

I am reminded of words in a song sung by Cliff Richard back in the days when he was just about the only Christian singer I knew of:

It's a drop in the bucket, I can hear you say

But the bucket gets wetter, I know we'll fill it some day

And I think there is some truth there - what I, or anyone else, does may be just a 'drop in the bucket' but all the drops slowly and steadily increase the amount of water in the bucket, until one day there is enough to wash or drink or simply enjoy.  I guess the challenge is to avoid inadvertently kicking it over.

So, as ever on voting day, my aim is to get you to vote, and to do so bearing in mind the privileges and responsibilities of democracy, the challenges of challenging injustice and the value of every drip and drop.

Zap number 15 this morning means there are only ten left to go.  It is a routine I've now got very accustomed to and can almost do in my sleep.  I can chant with the radiographers '98.6 and 9 to the right.  Go to pin and raise by 5.... withdraw MLC....'  Don't know what half of it means (I know what the MLC is, and I know what a port scan (which they'll do again tomorrow) is) but it has a kind of almost liturgical feel to it!

Since I began my treatment I have seen other people come and go - some on 5 zaps, some on 15 and one on 29 (unusual number!) - and had some enjoyable, if brief, conversations with them.

This week the hospital has juggled all the zapping teams round - something they do every so often.  I guess it keeps them on their toes, treating different kinds of patients and working with different colleagues.  Probably it avoids slack practice or collusion in bad habits.  This morning there was a queue at my zapping chamber and only one staff member ready, whilst next door there were two staff and no patients... common sense prevailed and one of them came over to get things going.

So, 60% across the 'river' with only two full weeks left to go.  Although there is some skin soreness (more at exit sites than entry for some reason) and odd waves of fatigue, I seem to be doing pretty well on it.

Step by step, on and on, I'll walk with Jesus til the journey is done... as the kiddy song says.  Sounds a bit twee, but theologically it is good to know that God is with me in all of this.

It has been interesting reading the blogs of those who have been at Blackpool, most of which say the big underlying theme was 'inclusion'.  It's a great theme, and a great topic, but actually living it is not always so easy.  There's the hypothetical level of inclusion 'what would you do if...?' and the real life version, 'what do you do now that...?'

Sometimes people ask me what I love about my church, and I usually answer 'the diversity'

Less often people ask me what is the biggest challenge of my church, but the answer is also 'the diversity.'

Being inclusive, and being diverse, means being open to trying to hold together, in a creative and healthy way, sometimes contradictory viewpoints and understandings, each of which may be equally earnest and equally hard won.  Sometimes it seems that the good of the whole has to be at the expense of the hopes of others; sometimes a bigger picture has to supplant a smaller one, at least for a while. (Note deliberate use of 'a' not 'the'; how post modern am I?!)

It is easy to say a church is inclusive, less easy to live it.

It is easy to say a church is diverse, less easy to be it.

Far easier for a church to be exclusive or prescriptive or uniform.

I love my church because it works so hard to be inclusive.  I love the graciousness of those who keep silent out of love for others, I love those the willingness of most to engage with new ideas, I love that God keeps sending us challenges to our understanding of diversity that stop us ever getting smug and thinking we have it cracked.  I love that sometimes I struggle to know how best to lead this crazy, wonderful group of seekers, servers and followers of Jesus.

Sometimes, when people ask me about my church, I say 'I hope heaven is like this' and I do.  But this isn't heaven, it's real life, and sometimes we get it wrong and sometimes we get it right.  Sometimes it has the potential to be like the other place if I, or we, foul up.

Some of my readers may think I am alluding to them at various points in this post, and maybe I am, and maybe it's the people who think the oppsoite from them, and maybe it's both. We aren't a perfect church, not everything can satisfy the needs, desires or beliefs of anyone.  But with God's help, we keep living the experiment of inclusivity.

So, I am really glad to hear that BUGB was picking up questions around age, gender, sexuality and race and trying to think what that means for inclusion.  For people not steeped in British Baptistness the import of this may be lost.  God's Spirit is at work among British Baptists - well at least the BUGB branch thereof anyway - to frog march us into the 21st century, to smell the coffee, and to start thinking what inclusion really looks like.

I have just ordered a reocrding of the whole of Assembly (how sad!) and look forward to hearing what was actually said and how it might relate to the lovely, crazy, church of which I  am privileged to be part.

... and we all end up blind.

I was shocked to hear on the 7 a.m. news report the sound of President Obama announcing that the USA had killed Osama Bin Laden.  Shocked because this doesn't seem like any kind of justice I can relate to.  Shocked because there was celebration in the streets and people chanting "U.S.A."

What Bin Laden has been involved with is awful, there is no doubt of that, and some form of bringing to justice was necessary.  Assassination prevents that - now no-one will ever be able to ask what he did or why, details are lost forever.  It seems likely to me, whatever the claims about the lack of an equally charismatic successor, that this killing will prompt more, not less, violence.

Many other British Christian bloggers are voicing their concern over events as they are being reported, and are doing so far better than I can.

We listen.  We watch.  We try not to judge.  We pray for the incoming of God's Kingdom, we strain to glimpse the vision of a new creation, and in the meantime, in so far as we are able, we try to live at peace with all people (Romans 12/Hebrews 12) and to pray for, not about or against, our enemies (Matt 5/Luke 6).  Not easy... but no one said it would be.

Being the first, and so far only, ordained Baptist woman in pastoral charge of a Baptist Church in Scotland beings both privilege and responsibility.  Whether I like it or not, whether my peeps like it or not, one day, I and we will be part of Scottish Baptist history.

Most of the time that is something to which I, and we, can sit very lightly, getting on with life together, but now and again the responsibility aspect trumps the privilege.  I guess it has to really, since my ordination is to the wider church, not just to one fellowship.

It seems that a number of the Scottish Baptist women who are Associate Ministers have resigned in the last year, leaving the few who are hospital chaplains.  I don't know the reasons but it makes my role possibly ever more significant theologically and denominationally.

This week one of the students who preached for us during my sick leave meets the Board of Ministry as the final test of her call, we pray with and for her.  In a fortnight someone 'down south' faces her Min Rec ahead of coming to Scotland to start her training in September.  Rightly or wrongly, what I do, or don't do, say or don't say, will impact for good or ill how they fare in this beautiful and crazy Union.  I glimpse just a teeny bit of how it was for Edith Gates and Violet Hedger all those years back.

Please, if it's your thing, pray for F and A facing their boards over the next couple of weeks, and for all who find themselves thrust into pioneering or spotlighted roles.