Lots of eating today!

This morning I meet my PAM (a Mc-NAM for BUGB readers) for the first time.  We will have brunch, she will show me her wedding photos, and we will set some plans for how I mentor her over the coming year.  Looking forward to it.

This afternoon it is the first week of this session's Bible Study group, which I am leading, so I need to nip into a shop and get some cakes.  We only have nice cakes, so that will be good too!  And of course we'll be very holy first.

Then after a relatively normal day tomorrow, it'll be the student tea on Saturday, for which I am making some sandwiches.  Having now successfull tested my breadmaker, that'll almost certainly involve homebaked bread.

Sunday is church lunch and church meeting; yesterday was coffee club, so all-in-all a real ministry of food this week.

Last night four us spent a very pleasant hour filling goody bags and making key-fobs for our student welcome event this coming Saturday.  If you read this stuff and if you know whereabouts in Glasgow we are, and if you know any students who will be around the West End on Saturday between 3 and 6 p.m. please send them our way.  I know you can link this blog from the Gathering Place website but I deliberately choose to avoid reverse linking to grant my peeps some privacy and separation from the worst of my heresies!!

Once term starts properly we will once again be running informal Sunday lunches with soup, bread, cheese and copious amount of homemade cake.  Students are welcome whether they worship with us or not, whether they believe in God or not, whatever their circumstances. 

For any students who are interested, Glasgow SCM meet in our premises on Tuesday evenings and offer an open-hearted exploration and expression of Christian faith around food and friendship (bit of a theme here!)

Holding these three in balance is not always easy, and for sure, I don't always get it right.  In my lovely, crazy, diverse church finding the right balance is especially tricky as I try to help people think afresh without being a stumbling block in their path and without denying my own hard-won convictions.

The apsotle Paul in amongst all his many and varied, sometimes more helpful than others, writings spoke of being 'all things to all people' in order that he might 'win some'.  So I am left wondering what that looks like as I endeavour to lead this community of disicples in a way that is authentic.

I find myself picturing a group of people on a hike - some rush on ahead, some lag behind and most are somewhere in between.  So how do I determine who is where?  How do I help the stragglers to catch up without holding back those moving more quickly?  How do I restrain the eager without quashing their energy?  In the coming weeks we will be thinking about growing in maturity, about moving from being spiritual babies who need to be bottle or spoon-fed to adult disicples who can chew over complex issues and discover new insights from God.  I think one of my challenges, is to work out just what kind of solid food people are ready for, and that might mean stepping back along the path a bit in order to meet them and lead them forward gently and sensitively.

I've a feeling I've been a bit ham-fisted of late, well intended but not quite getting the balance right.  It is important to be truthful but not every truth has to be told, or at least not yet.  Integrity is vital, but it does not mean walking over some one else in the process.  Pastoral senstivity, awareness that hurts arise easily and damage is not repaired wihtout effort, is essential.

So, in being all things to all people in order to win some, maybe I have to say different things to different people, not in a way that is dishonest or contradictory, but in a way that helps us all move in the general direction of 'forward'?  Answers on a psotcard!

Recently I have been making a few adjustments to what I eat based on some research I've read which, whilst not conlcusive, seems to indicate possible detriment of some widepsread food-stuffs.  Having now started to read more labels more closely, I discover that one particular item is present in the vast majority of bought bread and cake, and whilst I'm not going to lose sleep over what I've eaten in the past, my choices seem to be (a) give up eating any bread, cake or biscuits (b) make my own.

So today, spotting a breadmaker on offer at half price in my preferred supermarket, I purchased it and look forward to experimenting with homemade bread without the hard work of the kneading phase or the need for an airing cupboard (which I don't have) for the proving phase...  What confused me, briefly, was that it has a 'jam' setting - it transpires the same device can also be used for making jam.  Brilliant!  Just need them to go the next stage now and design one that can slice the bread and spread on the jam for me...

I am reaching the conclusion that my days of using pre-made anything much foodwise are over as most things either contain things I'm allergic too or products I'm trying to avoid.  No doubt a healthier future awaits.

Wow, according to today's BUGB enews sweep my entry last week on appropriate and inappropriate humour that they linked was the most clicked link of the week!  Amazing.

Today Channel 5's The Wright Stuff included a segment arising from the objections raised to the teeshirt for breakthrough breas cancer that I'd also posted on.  This was prompted by a campaign on the bcc forum.  On the whole it was pretty sensible but one of the phone in people reduced me to tears - and crying is not something I do.  Maybe it just shows how much I've changed over the last year?

It all goes to show just how powerful the interweb is and how much responsbility we have for what we say and how we say it.