Yesterday evening I set off for my seven mile training yomp, going round the loop clockwise for a change.  I opted for a fleece rather than a waterproof as the cloud was light and the outlook not too bad. 

By a mile in it was drizzly and mizzly but hey ho, there were lots of runners, dog-walkers, a few other yompers in hiking boots, and plenty of evening strollers. 

Reaching the Botanic Gardens it was steady drizzle, never enough to permeate my fleece, but enough that umbrellas were up, wipers on, and most people head down.  I could, I thought curtail my walk, take the two mile route back home and still have four miles or so under my belt.  But I pressed on, turning left along great Western Road.

Tourists and students scuttled along to reach their destinations and then the sight that made me smile - a family group, anoraks zipped up to the chin, stocially sat at a table outside a pub sipping their drinks with that indomitable spirit that says "we are Brits, we are at leisure, we are having fun!"  Well, Glaswegians asserting that it is meant to be almost summer, anyway.

Up to the motorway, round the corner, down Woodlands Road and into Kelvingrove Park.  Some lads playing five-a-side football in the rain, a group of "britmilfit.com" people running up and down the paths and round and round the fountain, a smiling dog-walker, a courting couple.  The play areas deserted (probably by now past bedtime for the children) but cyclists zooming along.

Over the road, past the former transport museum, along the side of the expressway and back up into Dumbarton Rd - still warm and dry inside my fleece, even if soggy of hair, as the drizzle drizzled on.

Home again, with a sense of satisfaction, and the pleasure of having seen so many other people out in the dull, wet evening, living life, having fun... as the old saying goes 'that's the spirit!'

Not a spiritual post, but one emerging from a wet walk that reminded me of what it means to be fully alive.

I think this post has been ruminating in my subconscious for a while now - certainly since my sermon John 10:10 that ended up interpretting Jesus' words as "I am come that you might be fully alive."  As with all the best sermons, it was one the preacher needed to hear as much as, if not more than, anyone else. If Jesus comes to make us fully alive, how come we spend somuch of our lives drifting along with the same old, same old - even those of us who have had the wake-up call of facing our own mortality and had the complacency of certainty taken from us?

The person leading intercessions that Sunday used the word 'mortal' in a creative and thoughtful way - the consequence of defining ourselves as people who will die, who are, infact, always dying, beofre suggesting that maybe we would benefit from describing, or defining, ourselves as 'natals' as people who are born, or maybe (though I don't recall them saying this) being born (certainly this would fit with the Johanine 'born from above/again' language).  This has been swirling in my subconscious for a while, and then slowly I realised that there might be a missing word: 'vital' - we could (should?) refer to ourselves as vitals, as people who live, who are living.

Or maybe it's all three - we are mortal, we are natal, we are vital...

Our lives are shaped by a complex blend of our mortality, our natality and our vitality.

As I continue to respond to my own sermon, as I seek to reconnect with those habits, rhythms and activities that energise me, I think it is helpful to recognise the inevitable interplay of these aspects of 'life in all its fullness'... letting go of what needs to die, opening myself to what is being born, and in all of it seeking what is vital.  Ah the delight of ambiguous words - vital as in needful, vital as essential, vital as life.

So, vitality - the activity of living; this is what Jesus offered - and, as the saying goes, "in spades"

Now this has been a rarity... I actually took my day off and the in-lieu-of-bank-holiday-Monday Tuesday properly 'off' this time.  And it has been good.

Yesterday after seeing my physio in the morning (ouchy!) I met up with some friends for tea and scones and a very quick meander round Kelvin Grove (why, oh why, does it close at 5 p.m.?  That's really early).  Today I did a heap of ironing, waited in for a roofer to call, and then headed off out for a seven mile training yomp around Glasgow - think I've got the route just about sorted now, though could add on another mile or so without too much messing about.

The upshot of all of this is that I feel relaxed and energised - both of which have to be positives.

Just to round it off nicely, it's a glorious evening in Glasgow.

Back to work tomorrow and the inevitable impact of a day off on work to get through, but being better rested will hoepfully mean I work better too.

I know you have a job to do, and I expect the pay is dreadful.  In fact I seem to recall someone telling me it is often related to how many mugs donors you manage to recruit.  But please will you learn to LISTEN to what I say (yes I do know about the arctic fox, the plight of the whale, the need for child sponsors in this or that nation, how terrible the regime is in that place, and so on and so forth).  And please don't chuckle away to yourself as you rattle through your script, it's really annoying.  Try to keep in mind that most people you call are a lot older than you, have heard a million times or more what you are saying, and have probably forgotten more about this regime or that environmental concern twenty years ago than you will ever know, so don't talk down to us as if we were eejits, numpties or came down the Clyde on a banana boat.  Oh yes, and when I say I already give away X% of my income (substantially larger than a tithe) and really cannot afford to take on even just £2.38 a week to save the one-horned, one-eyed, flying purple people eater I mean NO - and I am also NOT going to give you £1.69 instead.

OK rant over!

I do give a lot of money, both planned and spontaneous, to assorted charities and causes.  I do try to keep aware of what's what in the world.    I review and adjust my giving sometimes. I even try to be polite to the telephone chuggers.  But please, no more annoying calls from underpaid twenty-somethings who sound as if they have no more interest in the cause they represent than I do in reading the Hong Kong phone directory.

... I am going out shortly to buy myself a nice new book to use as a reflective journal!

For the first two or three years of my engineering career, I had to maintain a 'training log book' - essentially a journal, writing about what I had learned each week and, in the parlance of nowadays, reflecting.  It was sometimes fun and sometimes a chore, and I did it dutifully, meeting training requirements and working towards the professional qualifications I still pay good money to maintain.

When I began studying theology they made us keep a reflective journal - but at least it was pretty much free-form, whatever struck you and whatever reflections arose.  I still have that bundle of A4 paper, with doodles, hymn words, prayers, postcards and miscellaneous outpourings of my journey through the MRC process to be allowed to start training for ministry.

So four more years of journalling through college, some free-form and personal in a notebook; some pastoral cycle and assessed, hand-written and then typed up...  Then three years of compulsory weekly reflections for my NAM period...  Then another four for what was meant to be a part time DPT but ended up an MPhil, one of which coincided with a year of doing it online for a training module on mentoring (something I've been well and truly over-trained in!).  Some overlaps for sure, but at least a decade of being made to keep journals.

A girl can have enough!  So for the last couple of years I have ceased keeping a reflective journal around ministry/church/spiritual stuff - which has been good, I needed a break (I do have a very private 'cancer journey' journal running to around a hundred sides of A4 typing so I guess I never quite stopped). 

Now, after a decent break, I feel the lack - the discipline of sitting down once a week for an hour or two to look back over what I've been doing, what hints of God's influence I can spot, what things I have learned about myself or others or the 'job', etc., is something I need to restore.  Not in a legalistic way.  Not rigidly following a pastoral cycle or any other model.  Not nicely formed.  Including doodles and diagrams and pictures and postcards.  With prayers and outpourings.  And of course, for once, no-one will be reading it except me (well, and God, obviously).  No-one will be checking to see if I have understood a method properly.  No-one is assessing my competence as a reflective practitioner.  It will be my journal: MINE!  And I am looking forward to it.

All of which means the self-indulgence of a trip to Paper Chase (other fancy stationers available) to buy a lovely notebook  in which to scribble, write, draw 'stuff' and, by dint of that to continue to learn and grow.  There, I said it - now I just have to do it!