Already some very generous friends have sponsored my walk in June, nominating some great musical tracks for me to listen to as I walk my training walks.  And because I use an 'Easy Fundraising' account to make no-cost-to-me donations to another charity (from various retailers), and link that each time I purchase an MP3 track then they too benefit, albeit to the tune (!) of a few pence a go.  Seems like everyone wins!

♫ ♫ ♪ ♫ I am walking to my training tunes, I am walking to my training tunes...

Safety note - if walking with headphones on please be extra alert to those around you :)

Last Sunday's gospel reading was the temptation of Jesus, so it seemed fitting to find a poem that reflected that.  By the woners of google, I found this one, which gave me pause, and maybe it will do the same for you?

Temptation in the Wired Wilderness

by Holly Ordway

Our Lord spent forty days and forty nights
Resisting Satan in the wilderness.
We picture barren rocks and sand; we might
Add in a scrubby tree or two. I guess
That’s where temptation ought to come, so we
Can see it from at least a mile away,
And be prepared, with Bibles, church retreats,
And exhortations to stand firm. 

Instead it wounds with cuts too small to see,
In this our wired wilderness. We play
And work in deserts of the digital:
Abuzz with locust-noise of clicks and tweets
And filled with lonely crowds. Our enemy
Is faced and fought right here, or not at all.

from http://godandnature.asa3.org/poem-temptation-in-the-wired-wilderness.html

The eagle-eyed will have spotted the "just giving button" underneath the celtic cross on my sidebar.  I have just signed up to take part in a 20 mile walk for Breast Cancer Care at Scone Palace in June.  I totally understand that some readers are bored to the back teeth with this whole topic, but I have signed up because this is a genuine challenge for me... Before cancer I could have walked 20 miles without blinking, doing Ben Nevis two years ago showed me how much that has changed, and put me off trying anything substantial until now.

I'm not looking for huge sums of money, it is just as much about proving to myself I can actually walk 20 miles.  Borrowing an idea from someone else,  I am inviting people to nominate a track for my MP3 training playlist and sponsor me 1p per music-second.  I will then purchase the downloads and add them to my MP3 thingy.  So what do you fancy?  Classical?  Pop?  Sacred?  Something else?  The choice is yours!

One of the challenges I set myself for Lent was to post pictures that in some way symbolised or suggested 'hope'.  This one was taken three years ago when I was starting to get out and about after my cancer surgery and was enjoying the heralds of spring that are crocuses/croci (either is correct, all depends which etymology you favour).  If I'm brutally honest, I was far from convinced that I'd be here three years later, but that thought no longer filled me with terror, I simply learned to enjoy the 'here and now'  in a far more immediate way.

I am told by one of my neighbours that the crocus bulbs were planted to commemorate the Women's Suffrage Movement (centenary was 2008, which sounds about right) and the colours of purple, white and green were highly symbolic within that movement.

Whatever the back story, and whatever else this planting signifies or symbolises, the way these seemingly fragile plants burst into a carpet of colour, lenten violet mixed with festal gold and white on a green ground of ordinariness, shouts 'hope' and 'life' more eloqently than I ever could.

Today's PAYG is one of the best reflections on prayer I've ever listened to.  Unhurried and uncomplicated, it simply asks the right questions and opens avenues of thought...

Listen to it here