Over the years I've done a lot of individual fundraising for charities - walking across England, up Wales, around Scotland, and so on.  This year I'm taking a new challenge and a different - organising a team entry into the Glasgow by Night Pink Ribbon Walk in June.

Many challenges here, not only about fitness, but about team-building and team spirit.  It's easy to go it alone, to zoom round a course at high speed... or slog up a mountain at snail's pace.  A bigger challenge to hold together a team of people of varied fitness and motivation levels.  And I am relishing this.  It means walking the shorter ten mile course rather than aiming for the full twenty; it means walking at the pace of others... it also means conversation, laughter and companionship in the wee small hours.  It should be fun and I look forward to it.

So, for the next six months or so, a 'sponsor me' widget will appear on this blog.  Or you can text us a quid by texting GABB96 to 70070.

And of course this is a good metaphor for church life... gives me much pause for thought on how I participate in my own church...

By the wonders of advance posting, Sophie Cat, Sasha Cat, and Catriona, sometimes known as (Rev)Cat, and who is clad in Santa Cat jumper, would like to wish all readers of this blog as healthy, happy, hopeful New year.

None of us knows what the future holds, but as the old hymn says "we know who holds the future" not in some kind of predestined way, but in the sense that God is alongside us in whatever transpires... if God does indeed know the 'end' from the 'beginning' it is in so far as 'in the end all will be well' (and in the words of the First Exotic Marigold Hotel, "if it's not OK, it's not the end").  This isn't the time/place for heavy theology anyway!

As I type I know that some readers will enter 2016 facing huge personal challenges, and other significant communal or corporate challenges.  I know that there will countless people in the north of England affected by flooding and even more countless others in Calais, Eastern Europe and Syria fleeing for their lives.  I also know that lighting candles is better than cursing the darkness... and that photos of cats and their humans, however cheesy or naff, can bring a smile where one is needed.

Back soon with more usual stuff.  Take care and God bless.