In 2019 I started using Duolingo to brush up my French ahead of an overseas mission trip with out teenagers we had planned for 2020... it never happened as the world changed, but I plodded on, adding in a smattering of Greek, Gaelic and German as well as a few months of Welsh, and a hurtle through the 'math' (arithmetic).  Now, having kept on almost everyday and completing 2000 active days, I have cancelled my subscription and am going to look for a new challenge going forward.  I'm not sure what yet - a break from the relentless daily translation of useless sentences is definitely in order.

It feels like only yesterday that I joined a group of slightly eccentric Anglicans in Manchester's Albert Square to 'Mark the Millennium'.  Somehow or other they had persuaded the then Bishop of Manchester to join us to sing Cliff Richard's 'Millennium Prayer' when everyone else was singing 'Auld Lang Syne'.  I had already led, at the vicar's request' a service to coincide with 2000 dawning in Samoa (I can't recall what I said, but it was well enough received).  So how come that we are now on the brink of 2025, that quarter of a century has flown past, and that woman in her middle thirties is now in her early sixties?!

New Year's Eve is the annual anniversary of completing my chemotherapy in 2010, so that's fourteen years ago, a day when I pause briefly to give thanks for the wonder of modern medicine and the NHS services across these islands.  Today as part of my volunteering, I spoke to a woman just about to begin her own chemo journey... I guess I have spoken to a few hundred women over the years, and it never ceases to be a privilege.

I last made a New Year's resolution more than 45 years ago, and successfully kept it - a decision never to make any more!  But it's always good to pause at New Year, not to make plans for the year ahead, but to remind myself of all I have to be grateful for, and to commit whatever may lie ahead to the God who is present in it all.

So, these well-loved words from Bonhoeffer, in a 'Baptist' translation...

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered
And confidently waiting, come what may,
We know that God is with us night and morning,
And never fails to meet us each new day.

Yet are our hearts by their old foe tormented
Still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;
O give our frightened souls the sure salvation
For which, O Lord, you taught us to prepare.

And when the cup you give is filled to brimming
With bitter suffering, hard to understand,
We take it gladly, trusting though with trembling,
Out of so good and so beloved a hand.
    
If once again, in this mixed world, you give us
The joy we had, the brightness of your sun,
We shall recall what we have learned through sorrow,
And dedicate our lives to you alone.

Now as your silence deeply spreads around us,
Open our ears to hear your children raise
From all the world, from every nation round us,
To you their universal hymn of praise.

Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000) and Keith Clements (born 1943) based on the German of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

Wishing all readers a Happy, Healthy and Peaceful New Year and, if this isn't possible, then at least the assurance that God shares in all of life.

Way back in 2005, I attended the BWA Conference in Birmingham, and one day we arrived to find vast numbers of armed police and sniffer dogs checking out the conference centre... former US President Jimmy Carter was due to be speaking in the evening.

I can't remember the detail of his 'Sunday School lesson', as he described it, which was one of the finest sermons I've ever heard, though I recall it being about unity, diversity and inclusivity, about true Baptistness at a time when the US SBC had left the BWA over (ostensibly at least) ordination of women.  I think the text was from Colossians 2 (that would make sense given what he said) rather than Galatians 3, which I'd expected from his introduction.  It certainly made an impression on me, and I am glad I had the privilege of hearing him.

A man of integrity, who lived out his faith in practical service: faith expressed in deeds is faith fully alive.  May he rest in peace and rise on glory.

This morning I have tidied my desk, transforming it from 'peak Rachel' (IYKYK) to tidy ready for the next few months.  One day, maybe, I will learn how to be tidy, but as the saying goes 'a clear desk is the sign of an empty mind' and I like my mind not to be empty all the time!

The first company I worked for had a clear desk policy, which meant we all had 'work baskets' full of files that got stuffed in a locked cupboard every night, a kind of fake tidy.  The second company I worked for, we all had large under desk cupboards, which meant we had enough storage for whatever we were working on. 

Nowadays, my office at home is usually decidedly cluttered, with books and papers all over my desk that I never quite get around to re-shelving (and in any case my shelves can't take all the books!) until it reaches the point that either I just can't work any more, or it's annual leave and I blitz it.  I keep telling myself I can do better, and I keep failing... but, hey, in a few years I will have retired, re-homed most of the books and will have all the time in the world to be tidy! 

BlogSpirit subscription renewed for another year - the first time in several years I haven't felt the need to debate this with myself! 

Wishing all my loyal followers - some of whom have been loyal for nearly twenty years (this blog was 'born' in October 2005) - a very Happy New Year when it comes along.  This also means that I have been in some form of Baptist ministry for quarter of a century as my training began in September 1999!