This week is another manic week in Dibley - and it involves an awful lot of food!

After the weekend's extravaganza, yesterday it was the last Advent prayer group, with soup lunch, but being the minister's birthday, someone brought trifle, someone else mince pies and a third person a cake.  After a race round to fit in a funeral visit and a sick visit, it was time for a proper 'Vicar of Dibley' party complete with chocolate fountain, supplied by one of my deacons.  Fortunately it was not large enough to dive into but seven of us had a fun time dunking strawberries, bananas, marshmallows and other yummy things into it as part of a girlie evening (never quite got to watch the chick flicks I'd bought specially, but the chocolate was far more interesting).

Today was the lunch club Christmas dinner - fifty wrinklies in a coach travelling to Quarndon for lunch.  The food was fine, but the service was abysmal - if you know what Quarndon is famous for, don't book a large party in at the pub named after the hapless creature pursued there.  Three hours for a two course basic lunch - and I never got my cup of tea.  Ah well, we laughed about it on the way home and the coach driver was forgiving.  We had a Social Services visitor, who we treated to lunch, who indicated they'd like to grow our club by as much as another 20 members next year... watch this space.

Tomorrow we 'Sing Christmas' in the pub with Radio Leicester - which includes biscuits and mince pies along the way.  Also crackers, party poppers, candles and a Christmas tree - very 'post modern'/'emerging.'

The weekend is an endless round of services, food, services and, hmm, food.  Proper Baptists, trying to convert our Christian siblings to our ways!

It is very tiring but it has been a fun week.  With the local rag, Baptist Times and Methodist Recorder all carrying the story of Sunday's service, a media request for photos from tomorrow night, and the new BUGB prayer diary featuring us next September, I feel that it has been a good year and that the parties are well deserved!

So we named our ecumencial carol service event, and so it was.

It was hard work, and some people pushed my (and other's) patience close to its limits, but it was grrrreat.

We had just under 90 booked in for tea - mainly seniors citizens but also those taking part in the service.  We grid-locked the street with the coach dropping off about 40 seniors we had rounded up from three sheltered complexes and I, dressed in red and wearing a santa hat had to apologise to the drivers who were stranded until it moved - I think seeing Mother Claus (or a renegade from Butlins) defused any irritation!  So, we all settled down for a lovely feast, complete with crackers.

The service went really well - Methodists supplying a music group and actors, Anglicans the building and a choir and Baptists all the catering plus the service sheets and PowerPoint; we had readers from all three churches.  Based on the number of left over lightbulbs after we had given one to each person present, we had 130 in the congregation.  Not bad when the combined membership of the three churches is about 80, and quite a lot of our folk were missing.

Back into the hall for mulled Schloer, freshly brewed coffee, hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows ('cos a certain Baptist minister likes that) and mince pies before clearing up and heading home exhausted.

I feel that God smiled (even if the divine fingers had to be inserted in the divine ears when the choir sang) and everyone agreed that it had been a cracking start to Christmas.

Today I was visiting my kid sister and her tribe.  After a run in with my seven year old nephew (who has never before met anyone who could out-stare or out-stubborn him when he refuses to cooperate) he decided to treat me to his worst possible insult: -

" You're just like a chicken, no a turkey."

Gobble gobble!

Today's first aid course was excellent but I had to laugh when the tutor was talking about lititgation and the fact that in the UK you cannot be sued for the consequences of first aid unless it can be shown that you were (sic) negligible.  So, be sure you are big and bold in your bandaging, and you will be fine, not fined!

No, I have not got my title muddled up, I think there is a light of unknowing - of realising what it is I don't know, or don't understand, that is constructive.

I am now technically ~8 weeks into my "Professional Doctorate in Practical Theology" but despite the best efforts of teachers and supervisors have yet to make much progress.  In the last week or so, my unknowing has coalesed (however that word is spelled) into some sort of knowing - I now know what it is I don't know or understand that would enable me to get going with any degree of confidence that I was on the right track.  Hurrah!

Way back when I started to learn theology one of my then tutors told us not to worry about big, grand sounding words, we'd soon grasp them and it would be the little words like 'sin' or 'God' that would cause us to wonder as we began to realise the enormity of the concepts to which they referred.  He was right, but as time has passed I have discovered that it is not just the theological words that matter but the grammar and punctuation that trips me up!

I once wrote a shortish piece on 'Credo in Ecclesiam' vs 'Credo ecclesiam' (Kung and Barth) which hinged on the import of the 'in.'  I have even pondered on one occasion the placing of the comma in the Isaiah 'voice of one crying in the desert.'

So now, here I am wondering what the university actually understand by "Professional Doctorate in Practical Theology" with the key question being over the word 'in.'  Am I meant to be undertaking an exercise in the study of the disicpline called 'practical theology' i.e. that it is the subject of my research?  Or I am meant to be conducting a piece of academic research employing the skills of practical theology in a new application?  I thought it was the latter but now I am not so sure!  At least I now am a little clearer what it is I do not know, and have begun tentatively to pose the question to those who may be able to help me.  I think I have a light of unknowing - but that still leaves me with an enormous task to turn that into a cloud of knowing!