I am due to lead worship at an upcoming biggish event and I'm trying to find an easy to learn Portuguese language worship song (for any local folk who know me, the local Portuguese speakers are simply not answering my request!).  Does anyone have anything - words and music - that I could have a copy of?

I have lots of non-English stuff but nothing in Portuguese, which is the one language I really need this time.  (And, no, Spanish won't do as 'near enough')

This programme on ITV on Sunday evenings will, this week, show Housteads Fort on Hadrian's Wall.  You ought to watch it, if only because we were walking by when they were doing a bit of early morning filming last week.  Quite a strange sight to see a 'cat on a stick' as you climb up a hillside.  It was tempting to make a loud noise and spoil the shot, but we were well behaved!

I looked at the website today and was intrigued and a bit disappointed how few of my own favourites were there.  The choices for London were, I guess, predictable, but for me one of the best views is from Blackfriars railway bridge, the city to the east and the 'Post Ofice' tower west and north - London in an instant.  Not sure what my favourite Manchester view is - I always look out for the spire of St Mary's in... Hulme?  Moss Side?  Not sure which!  Where I used to live - sentimental twaddle really.  The view from the platform in the Imperial War Museum North is impressive but I actually prefer some of the lower down views.  I have a post card Jim Medway's cartoon 'Oxford Road' of some cats catching a No 42 bus near the railway bridge on Oxford Road which is certainly one of my favourite views of Manchester - not pretty but authentic.

Watching last week's programme, I was struck by how many of the views were those people associated with childhood - a kind of nostalgia driven preference.  My own favourite childhood views are no more - "Blackey Moor" was our favourite place as children, a very long walk through a farm, over a brook to the grounds of a once grand house where a dogs' graveyard (complete with head stones) lay hidden behind a pond that was great for 'fishing' for tadpoles.  Now it is covered in houses, a whole generation has grown up not knowing the simple pleasures we enjoyed.  Sad?  Maybe, but my own special places have shifted and changed as I have moved around the country.  I don't know that I have one 'favourite view' or one special place any more, rather I have places and peoples I love, sometimes despite what they look like.

It is interesting to see what various people consider their favourite view and to hear the stories of why it is so, not so much because of the places chosen, but because it reflects the wonderful diversity of this tiny island we are blessed to call home.

I have just read The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards.  It's described as being about redemption (at least at the end) but I'm not entirely sure.  More, it seems to me, to be about the outworking of a single decision - a choice made in haste and with honest, if foolhardy, intent, the consequences of which were worked out over a lifetime.  It is an unhappy tale, at least for the character we meet first and his close family, but one that provokes some thought.  I also read A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon, a very different, and overall humourous tale, and included a fleeting mention of one Miss Cottingham, class teacher who filled me with terror at the grand old age of 9!  Yet here, too were hints of the interconnections of lives, the consequences of secrets and half-truths.  I suspect I must be getting too intense in my old age when my summer reading gets the old grey matter going - or is it just middle aged angst?!

When I was around 12, an English lesson introduced me to Roberts Frost's poem The Road Not Taken, which I now know inspired M Scott Peck's spirituality writing (which I have never read).  It was one of those poems that lodged deep inside and surfaces ever now and then.  Choices - consequences and the "impossibility of going back to repeat the experiment" as my old boss used to say.

This week the A level results came out, and I was being a 'responsible adult' with a friend of mine at her son's results day party.  Watching these young adults celebrate, observing the different characters and listening to the hopes and dreams mingled with the first stirrings of nostalgia (they chose to have a primary school sports day as their theme!) the poem came back to me along with memories of the last 26 years since my own (and, I thought at the time, dreadful) A level results arrived.

I guess I've been pretty fortunate - I have very few regrets about the choices I've made along the way, and I'd like to think that I've learned from the mistakes I've made.  Watching these youngsters, and knowing some of what lies ahead of them - joy and sorrow - is a strange experience.  The girl with five grade A's and no confidence, the shy boy whose grades meant he didn't get in to his first choice, the couple who've chosen to go to the same university because they can't stand the thought of separation...  what will their futures hold?  How will the party be recalled in 26 years time when they are middle aged (and I am old!)?  Who will still keep in touch with whom?  What dreams will lie shattered on the floor?  Will any of them be doing this navel gazing?

The Memory Keeper's Daughter centred on a very big decision made in haste and its consequences over a life time.  Not every choice is as dramatic or its consequences so far-reaching but the book did make me think afresh about the decisions I make and the ripple effects they have  - whether it's the brand of coffee I buy, the path I choose on an afternoon stroll, the books I read or the sermons I preach.  I suspect that at the end of time when the review takes place, the sum of the small, seemingly inconsequential, decisions will be as great if not greater than the one or two mammoth ones I wrestled with.

All very deep as a response to a bit of summer reading - maybe next time I'll read some real rubbish!

Today I received my sparkly copy of Theological Reflection: Sources courtesy of Amazon.  Lots of creep points for buying the Prof's latest book, I trust.  A few sly smirks when flicking through I found bullet points and numbered lists - it's not just me after all...  Also a sense that actually I have heard of quite a few of these people, so maybe I'm not quite so ignorant after all.

Amongst the flicking, I found some poetry by Oscar Romero, and this one (dated 19 December 1977) struck me...

Let us not measure the church

by the number of its members

Or by its material buildings.

The church has built many houses of worship,

many seminaries,

many buildings have beeen taken from her.

They have been stolen

and turned into libraries

and barracks

and markets

and other things.

That doesn't matter.

The material walls here will be left behind in history.

What matters is you,

the people,

your hearts

God's grace giving you God's truth and life.

Don't measure yourselves by numbers.

Measure yourselves by the sincerity of heart

with which you follow the truth and light

of our divine Redeemer.

Theological Reflection: Sources, Elaine Graham, Heather Walton and Frances Ward, London, SCM, 2007 p. 368 

Yes and Amen

A while back I saw a spoof version of the famous 'Footprints' poem that ended up something like 'when you see only one set of footprints it was then that we were hopping' (there's also a version about dancing).  Over the last week or so, as I've been pondering what to say about Habakkuk on 'authenticity' it came back to me, and I think that, whatever its intention, it actually has a better message than the original.

Our life experience is not usually that we are carried through the tough times, rather that are a real slog - not unlike hopping a long distance.  I think I'd rather imagine God hopping alongside me, sharing in my struggles, than as someone who scoops me up out of the nastiness of real life.  I think this is more authentic theology (mourn with those who mourn, laugh with those who laugh) and more helpful.  If we believe, as I do, that in the cross, Jesus and hence God somehow embraced and shared suffering, then a God who shares the hopping and the dancing seems good to me.

This week our TV news has been filled with accounts of murder and mayhem.  People may well ask where God is.  Hopping mad with those who are enraged, limping with those who limp from moment to moment - and big enough to take our anger, questioning and pain.  "Our God is a great big God" who hops with us, hand in hand.