It being a Bank Holiday today, and my house guests having wanted to get away early, I was up, fed and out just after 8 a.m. this morning.  Having waved off the guests on their train, I set off on one of my favourite walks along the Clyde, to Glasgow Green, back through the city centre, into Kelvingrove Park, thence the Botanics and finally home cutting through the Gartnavel hospital campus. 

For a number of months, I've been aware of the wonderful mural of cats at play in Sauchiehall Street and kept thining I ought to photograph it whilst I can. So today I did, and here is part of it. 

Nothing hugely spiritual, but a reminder to myself of the importance of play as recreation, or re-creation... which sort of links to yesterday's sermons about heaven, and being made new or being renewed.

Hello faithful reader(s) - sorry I haven't posted anything this week, it's been pretty full-on one way or another.

Last Sunday we had the absolute delight of an infant blessing, during which we made our promises to support a child and their family 'come what may'. Part of what I love about such services is that they say, in effect, 'we are here, and we will still be here long into the future.'

Sometimes we can get so bogged down in the necessary practical stuff that we may just lose sight of what really matters - that we are still here.

This week, among other things I've been to meetings about buildings and meetings about ecumenism, I've led prayers in the university chapel and I've prayed a rosary in a care home, I've written up notes and I've read books, I've bumped into people I know and I've had planned meetings with people... and I'm still here, and, more to the point, we are still here!  Many of these meetings relate to 'being here' physically and maybe even missionally, others are about being present with others, which is also a form of being here.

When the child we blessed is the age I am now, I will be long gone and forgotten, but I hope - and I trust - the church community is still here, passing on the stories and living out its faith to another generation.

Ten years ago today I preached for the first time at the church that would become known on this blog as 'The Gathering Place' - it was the Sunday after Low Sunday, and we were just beginning the careful process of discerning whether there might be a 'match' to be made.

I still remember the look of incredulity on the face of the door steward when I said I'd come up from Leicestershire ('lester-sheer')... "'lester-shyre' that's an awffy long way" she said

I also still remember the sense of home-coming, the amusement that having spent several years in HBC (Dibley) I might now be about to spend some in HBC (Weegie).

Today has been a 'proper' day off - I had a nice lie-in after I'd fed the cats at 6 a.m., and then mid-morning headed off to Kelvingrove because I wanted to see Dippy the Dinosaur. I love Kelvingrove precisely because it is probably the most chaotic museum I ever go to... you either get it and love it, or you don't. Where else could you listen to an organist playing the tune used for 'Thine be the Glory' closely followed by 'Flower of Scotland' whilst a man dressed in a dinosaur suit poses for selfies with small children?  Where else can you see an exhibition of pencil sketches by Leonardo da Vinci and then eat cake whilst overlooking the park but they refuse to give you a lunch menu because you are five minutes too early!!

After the perfect meld of sublime and ridiculous, I meandered through the West End to the Botanic Gardens where the lawns resembled Blackpool beach on a sunny Bank Holiday (all the people sitting facing the same way on the grass, the smell of sun screen and small children with dripping ice-creams) whilst in a tucked away room a second hand book fair was taking place. The daffodils were fading away and the blossom is giving way to new green leaves... soon the summer planting will begin.

Then it was along Great Western Road (well the terraces on the south side of the road where it is more shady) and back home, pausing to by an ice-lolly and something to cook for tea.

I am very blessed to live in a place where there is so much to see and do in easy walking distance.  And it is a real blessing to have such a glorious day to be 'off' after all the busy Lent and Easter stuff.

Back to work tomorrow with a real sense of having had a fun day today.

At 8:30, around 60 of us gathered under the blossom spangled, natural vault of the trees in Glasgow Botanic Gardens, as the birds sang their morning praises. It was a lovely start to the day of Resurrection, an oasis of peace and tranquility.

Afterwards, a few of us gathered in the hotel dining room for tea and toast before setting up for morning worship.  As the choir rehearsed and others of us laid out the 'props' someone brought me news of the terrible events in Sri Lanka, where worshippers had been killed as they gathered to celebrate God's defeat of death...

At 11, a group of around 50 shared in Easter celebration praise.

As part of our worship, we decorated the cross (from last week) with butterflies - small, colourful stickers, and large, foam cut outs on which prayers were written or symbolised in some way.  Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of this was a father and his toddler son sitting together and adding numerous butterflies.  Perhaps it was the young woman who knelt to place her own butterfly enabling others to take the courage to add theirs.  Perhaps it was the prayers, earnest and creative, transforming plain white card into a beautiful collage of hope.

Now it's all done and dusted for another year - and I expect in a week or two I'll have totally forgotten what we did.  But that doesn't matter.  What matters is the truth that love is stronger than hate, that good is stronger than evil, that life is stronger and death. And we will go on rehearsing this truth year in, year out, until it is the lived experience of everyone on earth.