A Skinny Fairtrade Latte in the Food Court of Life

... for a week on Sunday, as you do (or I do anyway) using the trusty tool that is HymnQuest and I spotted this one, which I won't be using, but it made me pause...

The trouble with many of our churches
is that they are not singing the blues.
The trouble with its staunch belongers
is the detached way they watch the news.
The trouble with our Sunday buildings
is people staying glued to their pews.

The problem with religious people?
They can't read graffiti on the wall,
they argue finer point of dogma,
their ears are too full to hear the Call.
The problem with those holy people
is that they are too sure they won't fall.

So many males, mitred in splendour,
are stifling their passion like a yawn,
telling peace-makers they should 'cool it',
huddling in prayer while earth is going-gone.
The holy people in procession
are leading (having) us on and on and on and on....

No wonder Christ wept for the city,
over the rulers and Pharisees,
he sings the blues of love and struggle:
'If only you knew the way of peace'.
He still calls his people to follow,
to fight against death and make a feast!


Fred Kaan (born 1929)   
© 1985 Stainer & Bell Ltd

Fred Kaan died just a few weeks back, so no more gems like this from his pen.  May he rest in peace, and we be stirred to hear God's voice.

At the moment one of the joys I encounter daily is my walk through the Botanic Gardens on my way to church.  Although the crispness has given way to sogginess, the late autumn colours of the trees are stunning and I love the way they carpet the paths as they fall (though I'm sure the gardeners don't!).  The change of the clocks back to GMT means that it is now, for a while, light again after a couple of weeks of sunrise strolls, and I miss the stillness of the early darkness.

A week or so back at church we sang 'Colours of Day' which is, I finally spotted (duh!), an urban hymn not a rural one.

'Go through the park on in to the town' is exactly what I do each morning, and I love it!

'Go down in the city, into the street, and let's give the message to the people we meet'

In the red-gold-brown soggyifed-former-crispness of leaves in the park the song lifts my spirits and I almost skip along to work each day.

In a world where sad and bad news abounds, it is good to recall one of my favourite portrayals of God, in the film Dogma (which is pretty grim overall): God is a young woman turning cartwheels in a garden.  A God who delights in colour and brings hope amidst the 'stidegeon gloom' - this is Good News indeed.

Nothing remotely profound about this, just the stuff that characterised yesterday.  Three things beginning with 'B'

On Sunday evening I discovered that my car wouldn't start and that the immobiliser kept kicking in and setting of the alarm... not good!  Was this the result of all the rain or something more or less sinister?  Because I didn't have time to get it fixed there and then (I needed to be at a service) I waited overnight to call the AA.  The nice man arrived at the appointed time and after various checks announced it was the battery, now defunct.  So all but £80 lighter, and the car was now happy again.

Moving house always brings with it the risk of 'freshers flu,' the exposure to 'new' bugs to which there is no resistance and the inevitable cold that follows. So it was/is.  I am pretty sure it is not the dreaded porkine lurgy since after 24 hours it has settled into the normal patterns of a heavy cold.  Even so, it impacts my week as I seek to keep my bugs to myself!

Lastly was a phone call late evening from someone 'down south' to let me know of the safe arrival of her first grandchild - a baby girl.  This was a lovely end to the day.  And somehow, in that perverse way that things balance out, this fitted with the sad news of Saturday evening.  Among my fondest memories of life in Dibley are the weddings I performed for a couple in their seventies, one of whom died suddenly on Saturday, and the cross-cultural ceremony for the couple who became parents yesterday.  In the words of Job, 'the Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord'