Oh dear, my train is now stuck north of Oxenholme due to a "struck object".  Virgin have given us free tea and chocolate biscuits - a sure sign we aren't going anywhere any time soon.  Rail status update is more informative than the announcements... looks like maybe a couple more hours sat here.

For me, this is mere inconvenience... the wifi has become more wobbly, but I have my kindle, my colouring book and my MP3 player.  I have emailed the meeting secretary to alert him that I may not arrive.  Above all, I am safe, warm, and alive... if the last few years have taught me nothing else, it is that all time is a gift.  So I cannot be cross - it sounds as if for someone, somewhere today may well be shrouded in tragedy, but for me it is not; for some the delays may be catastrophe, for me they are not. 

Perspective is a wonderful thing.

PS amusingly, this wobbly blog platform seems more stable than social media!!

PPS very weary looking policeman just walked along the track...

At 3:30 a.m. the alarm went off, dragging me from slumber, even disturbing the kitties who looked aksance as if to say "but Mummy it's not breakfast time yet" - quite strange not to have them racing into the kitchen, tails up, purring like motorbikes whilst I stumble, bleary eyed, behind them.

At 5:00 the taxi arrived with ten seconds of me putting the phone down - I raced down three flights of stairs, out into unexpected drizzle, then leaped in.  In under five minutes I was at my destination.  Plenty of time to grab a skinny decaf Fairtrade latte before boarding my train.

An experiment today - on the grounds that the quiet coach is always packed, and that usually there are people wtih VERY LOUD VOICES who ignore the 'no phone calls' rule, I booked a seat in an ordinary carriage.  And so far it is totally, utterly blissfully silent... until the train manager starts an announcement anyway.

So I have now completed some work, played around on social media (it seems other people are up are silly o'clock too) because for once the on-train wifi is working.  And now I'm posting this.

There was a time, even relatively recently, when I would not have attempted such a long day, but today it just seems to make sense, my week is cram-packed with stuff and the early-late day with snooze time potential on at least one train is the least challenging option.  Funny to think that five years ago, had someone said I'd be doing this again, I'd have thought they were impossibily optimistic, but here I am.

Train now chugging out of Carlisle on its way south.  A busy day of charity trustee work ahead - but I am grateful to God that I am able to do so.

Time to check my emails, read the papers for the meeting then maybe snatch a quick snooze before the train fills up.

Yesterday we had an important information meeting at church which included a presentation by a secular organisation, whose representative would not, I suspect, profess an active faith of any kind. 

We began, as any church gathering would, with a short act of devotion, in which I invited "those who felt comfortable so to do" to join in the responses.  Our guest politely and quietly sat in with us, observing, I thought.  This is what we shared.

Opening Responses

This is the place, and this is the time;

Here and now, God waits to break into our experience;

To open our minds

To revitalise our lives

To transform our understanding

To help us see the world, and the whole of life afresh

          To fill us with hope and joy

          To give us confidence for the future

This is the place, as are all places

This is the time, as are all times.

          Here and now let us worship God.

Psalm  127

Unless the Lord builds the house,
   those who build it labour in vain.
Unless the Lord guards the city,
   the guard keeps watch in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
   and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
   for he gives sleep to his beloved.

Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord,
   the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
   are the sons of one’s youth.
Happy is the man who has
   his quiver full of them.
He shall not be put to shame
   when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Psalm 133

How very good and pleasant it is
   when kindred live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
   running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
   running down over the collar of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
   which falls on the mountains of Zion.
For there the Lord ordained his blessing,
   life for evermore.

Silent Reflection

Prayer

At the start of his presentation, the peaker thnaked us for our welcome and for including him in our devotions (I had mentioned gratitude for his company in our prayers).

After the presentation, we had a tea-break during which I chatted to the guest speaker.  Diffidently he asked me "may I take away the devotions sheet".  Of course!

Then he pointed to the line in Psalm 127 , "Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord" observing that's really beautiful, and then told me, like any proud father of young boys, about his two sons, the one who had been tap dancing in the bathroom late at night, and the one who had gone with him to the office to print papers for our meeting and had drawn a picture of a  tractor.  "Precious moments" I said.

The thing is, I had very nearly chopped the second half of Psalm 127, feeling that it didn't quite fit - and then thought "hang it, it's a short Psalm, we should have it in full".

And so, indeed we should have.

I have no idea what the ultimate significance of any of that is, and actually I'm not too concerned.

But that precious, beautiful moment in the middle of a meeting .... that'll be God, then!

Yesterday I went to see the film "Suffragette" which was an enjoyable endeavour.  There was a lot in it that gave me pause for thought.

The civil disobedience, beginning with smashing windows and escalating into blowing up pillar boxes and even attacking a residence was such a clear parallel with so many other similar acts that history declares to be wrong.  Kristallnacht, the targeted smashing of the windows of Jewish shopkeepers in Germany clearly motivated by xenophobia.  The 1980s letter bombs and blown up pillar boxes by Irish paramilitaries frustrated to the point of violence at not achieving their desires.  The arson of Welsh holiday cottages.  Or, indeed the IEDs and suicide bombers of our own time.

Huge questions about when (if ever) such actions are justified.

How did the suffragettes appear to ordinary, decent people of their time?

Huge questions about how history is told - always from the point of the 'victors'... how might the story of the suffragettes be told or seen had the outcome been different?

Do the ends necessarily justify the means?

The suffragettes were arrested, beaten, imprisoned and force-fed.  I can't imagine ever being ready to face that.  Partly because I'm a rule-follower, I don't 'do' disobedience, fear of shame and embarrassment for others, as well as for myself, would dissuade me from actions likely to lead to such consequences.  This is a far cry from the people of our day who sit in the middle of the road and let the police carry them into vans, deliver them to clean police stations and either caution them or detain them overnight before letting them go.  These were women who lost their jobs, their families and their homes. Not nice middle-class peaceful protests, ugly, violent, sacrficial suffering.

I find it hard to imagine any cause that could inspire me to do that... to lose everything and everyone that matters to me.

I'm all for freedom of speech, in favour of rallies and marches... just not so sure about people who set out to get themsleves arrested almost as a badge of honour, whilst creating huge amounts of work for an overall over-stretched police service.

I grew up very aware of the significance of what the  suffragettes had achieved, and was regularly reminded of my democratic duty: "people died to get you the vote".  I have no doubt that the cause espoused by the suffragettes was good and right.  I would never, knowingly, not vote.  So for all my questions about method, I am glad they did what they did.

But what of other causes?  How do we discern which are motivated by 'good' and which are not?  How will history tell the story of our time?  It's easy enough to say that xenophobia, homophobia, islamophobia or whatever it maybe is wrong... but that doesn't make it any easier to determine a healthy response.  Easy to say what governments should or should not do, less so for them to act.

Definitely more questions than answers!  Glad I went to see the film.  Didn't really learn anything new in terms of facts, but it did give me lots to ponder.

On Friday it will be exactly ten years since I bowed to peer pressure and began blogging.  The vast majority of those who encouraged and cajoled me into this form of self-expression have long since abandoned their own blogs, worked through and beyond social media, and are now in a more private phase of life.  That mildly amuses me.

I have often said that the internet is a gift for people like me who are naturally shy, introvert, introspective and somewhat lacking in confidence.  It is sufficiently removed from real conversation to feel safe enough to express things, yet retains the potential (sometimes anyway) for others to comment.

When I began blogging, no-one in my Dibley church had a clue I was doing so, indeed many of them barely used the internet.  It was a safe space to play with ideas for sermons, to share liturgies and to post what I felt were amusing stories about Baptist life in the area.

Moving to The Gathering Place that changed, with lots of people reading my stuff, and the need to keep in mind that people would read my stuff, and would take it perhaps more seriously than I intended.  I now very rarely float ideas ahead of services and perforce am a bit more circumspect in what I share.  Maybe all of that is a good thing.

During my cancer treatment it was certainly a boon having a ready-made space to post stuff suitable for public consumption, even if I did end up with a rod for my own back of needing to post daily, including my day off, as people worried if I didn't!  Overall a nice reason to have the rod I think.

The last couple of years I've from time to time pondered abandoning this blog - partly because I eventually succumbed to social media, partly because I often don't seem to have much worth saying, and partly because a few things I've posted have caused significant offence to one or two people.  The reality is that ten years on I have less self-confidence and am more wary than I was when I began blogging.

For all that, in ten years I have written just shy of 4,000 posts and I think only pulled about 4... 0.1% is not a bad figure I reckon, even if I still smart over at least a couple of them.

In ten years I have received just over 3500 comments - despite the worst efforts of this blog platform - which suggests a high level of engagement with my stuff.  At various times there have also been email exchanges on some of the posts.

The world has changed a lot in the last decade, as has the internet, as have I.  It is quite amusing to read the seemingly prosaic language of some my early posts, as well as interesting to see what I was thinking about.  If nothing else, it is an interesting 'social document' for anyone who cares to read it.

When I began this blog it's subtitle was "ramblings, reflections and rubbish" before at some point morphing into "everyday adventures of a Baptist minister".  Each of these is a reasonable description of what it contains, and each is what it will continue to be.

I'm not promising to blog for another decade... I wouldn't even dare to presume to be here to do so (with apologies to those who don't like talk of mortality)... but despite the hiccups and stumbles along the way, I'll carry on for the time being - and hope that some of it amuses, informs or even inspires others along the way.