This poor neglected blog - yet I have discovered that some faithful folk still drop by from time to time, so I have once more renewed my subscription.

The pandemic and the (voluntary and chosen) demands of church social media presence have meant no energy for this, and that’s sad. So I am going to ‘try harder’ in the months ahead to return to blogging. 

The photo is my ‘bus pass’ as we get them at 60 in Scotland! I am officially old and that’s a blessing denied too many people. So, as a somewhat grumpy old woman, I will endeavour to post something regularly if not frequently.

Wishing you a healthy and hopeful 2023 when it arrives.

It's been too long - life took precedence over blogging or even pretty much anything non-essential.  Anyway, here is a poem for Advent, not one I'm using for church, but well worth a read...

In the Days of Ceasar by Waldo William tr. Rown Williams

In the days of Caesar
By Waldo Williams, translated Rowan Williams

In the days of Caesar, when his subjects went to be reckoned,
there was a poem made, too dark for him (naive with power)
      to read
It was a bunch of shepherds who discovered
in Bethlehem of Judah, the great music beyond reason and
      reckoning:
shepherds, the sort of folk who leave the ninety-nine behind
so as to bring the stray back home, dawning toward cock-crow,
the birthday of the Lamb of God, shepherd of mortals.

Well, little people, and my nation, can you see
The secret buried in you, that no Caesar ever captures in his lists?
Will not the shepherd come to fetch us in our desert,
Gathering us in to give us birth again, weaving us into one
In a song heard in the sky over Bethlehem?
He seeks us out as wordhoard for his workmanship, the laureate
     of heaven

May God bless us with poetry and prose to warm our hearts and refresh our souls.

I came across this poem... I think it's worth a ponder...

Each lifetime is the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
For some there are more pieces.
For others the puzzle is more difficult to assemble.

Some seem to be born with a nearly completed puzzle.
And so it goes.
Souls go this way and that.
Trying to assemble the myriad parts.

But know this. No one has within themselves
All the pieces to their puzzle.
Everyone carries with them at least one and probably
many pieces to someone else's puzzle.
Sometimes they know it.
Sometimes they don't.

And when you present your piece
to another, whether you know it or not,
whether they know it or not,
you are a messenger from the Most High

by Rabbi  Lawrence Kuschner

.CW... cancer/death as well as life/joy

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Today I assembled an afternoon tea as a treat for myself... because it is twelve years today since my cancer diagnosis, and that seems worth marking.

Curiously, one of the sandwiches I bought was egg and cress... the same flavour as I bought for lunch on 23rd August 2010, except that one was from Tescos and this one from Sainsbury's!!

I enjoyed my treat, but I also found myself recalling the feelings and words of that, now long ago, day.

This evening, scrolling through a social media feed, I saw the sad news that someone I 'met' online all those years ago died today of secondary breast cancer.  That's the ugly, unpallatable, inconvenient, truth... around a third of the women I've come to know along the way have died of their cancer.

Which means it is all the more important to celebrate life - afternoon tea for one is just a small part of doing just that.

If you are kind enough to read this stuff, pleaase look after yourself.  Take any screening offered; check  your cheackable bits; and see your doctor about anything that doesn't seem right.  It could save your life.

I was looking through books for prayers and poems for this coming Sunday, when I came across this, which doesn't fit the service, but is worth a share...

Hold onto your faith

Kindle it with your questions

Test it with your doubts

And you will have two faiths

A resting faith

A wrestling faith

Remember that they can live together

They are not mutually exclusive

From Wrestling and Resting CTBI 1999, page 227