It's been interesting reading posts on social media, and listene=ing to/watching broadcast media, as people have reflected on 2022.  For some it has been charactersied by joy, happpiness, success and vitality.  For others is has been sadness, loss, disappointment and regret.  For most, I suspect, it's been just another year, with some highs, some lows and a lot of nothing much.

For me it has been very mixed - the good bits better and the bad bits worse than I might have imagined.  And not just in terms of ministry, but in life as a whole.

I find myself strangely reticent to name any of the specifics.

Today I caught the end of the film of C S Lewis 'Shadowlands' and was reminded of these words:

'Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers any more. Only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I’ve been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.'

In one of his books, 'The Four Loves' he wrote

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

This year has been characersied by a lot of loss as well as a lot of love... the two are inter-related.

I chose the photo here because it's a sunrise at or around thewinter solstice - even in the darkest days the sun rises and hope is born anew.

As we slip into 2023, the sun will rise, and the love of God will be as fresh new as it is every single day - and that's one certain promise to carry with me.

Wishing anyone who reads this a happy, hopeful, peaceful, joyful and above all love-filled New Year.

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.