Today's PAYG was based on a portion of Romans 14, with the speaker suggesting an overarching theme of interconnectedness, that whatever happens in the world is somehow directly relevant to us as individuals.  Well yes, but grounding that is not so easy - it's all too big, too complex and I am totally unaware of 99.9% (at least) of what happens on planet earth.

Yesterday's announcements about dockyard closures were reported in a way that was the opposite of this, setting England against Scotland, finding 'angry of Portsmouth' to spout vitriol towards those north of Hadrian's wall (and 'Moderate of Govan' to give a far more gracious comment).  It's fine and dandy to assert theologically that we are interconnected but working that out in day-to-day life is very tricky.

Media protrayal both sides of Hadrians' wall is biased, people of both nations are being 'misled' as to how people of the other one think and feel.  Daily Wail views arise even from those who would self-define as Torygraph, Grauniad or any other perspective thinkers .  It gets heated - I get heated, defending each nation to the other, and getting increasingly annoyed with the media.

So if we are interconnected, if in microcosm this is how the world works, what does that mean?

PAYG ended with the reminder that interconnected or not, we will each have to account for our own choices.  I like to imagine judgement not as 'innocent or guilty' but more in the 'sheep dog trials' (Susan Howatch quoting a real sermon) idea of scoring based on performance.  That gives me pause for thought, as I ponder the score I would award myself!

Anyway, I feel I have to apologise to my Scottish readers for the xenophobic vitriol spouted on the BBC news yesterday AND to express to my defence industry readers my concern for them as the implications of the decisions are worked out, bringing hardship to many.  Maybe interconnectedness is partly recognising that it is 'both/and' not 'either/or'?

The new Rector of IBTS has been named today as Revd Dr Stuart Blythe - I am thrilled for him and am sure he will be a real asset to the European Baptist scene.  I am sad that he will be lost to the BUS and SBC though.  Quite a contrast to Keith Jones who has been an excellent Rector, but maybe that's what's needed?

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Brrr, the temperature has dropped over the last few days.  After a glorious but cold Monday we had a dreich and cold Tuesday, now it is a gloomy-with-a-forecast-of-sun Wednesday.  All of which is leading me to contemplate getting out my red duffle coat!

In some ways it is hard to recapture the way I felt when I bought it - being three years on from that place of abject terror and now in a state of reasonable contentment.  In other ways it feels like it was only yesterday, wondering if there would be a second winter never mind a third or a fourth.

It would be wrong to say I am totally anxiety free, that there are no moments of uncertainty, but on the whole things are in a healthy perspective. 

I have two bank current accounts, each with debit cards, one which expires in 2014 and the other in 2016.  Three years ago I honestly doubted I'd live to see the first one expire, now I have all sorts of plans booked and paid for in 2014.  If I'm totally honest, there remains an element of uncertainty over the 2016 one, I don't feel I can assume I will see that one expire - but that won't stop me living life to the max in the meantime, and the more time passes the further ahead it feels safe to look.

So, time to defy the greyness of late autumn, time to express life and hope... time to get out the red duffle coat for another season!

One of the biggest challenges for Remembrance Sunday is timing... how to land the start if the two minute silence bang on eleven o'clock, and how to allow for the inevitable unexpected occurences on a Sunday morning.  So, I am currently working at 8 minutes for gathering song, notices, call to worship, hymn, explanation and words of the Act of Remembrance.  That gives us two minutes for moving around, starting slightly late, extra notices or me tripping over my feet.

I am very glad we don't have chiming clocks to contend with, which would reveal the errors of timing.

On the plus side, animated PowerPoint slides offer a great way of timing the silence to exactly two minutes!

Compared with these challenges the reflection will be a doddle - well maybe!

I have to be honest and say that I found last night's theological reflection on hope hard work.  People were generous and engaged in conversation but I felt we never really got to the nub of it, which is how we endeavour to live the hope we have in the here and now.  I think that means I didn't do a very job as facilitator as much as anything.

However, it did give me things to think about, which is the purpose of such a discussion/meeting, and that has to be good.

Christian hope seems to fall into two categories, (i) what happens to me when I die and (ii) how will it all end?  These are both wrapped up in eshcatological considerations, and maybe that's the tricky bit - some people in the group are keen on deconstructing and demystifying what is ultimately mystery.  If some parts of Christianity have erred too far to the personal (my salvation, my eternal bliss, etc.) almost all have lost sight of the eschatological visions that inspired the ancients - the 'all things new' of, among others Isaiah(s) and mystic 'John the Divine'.

Living hopefully, to me anyway, is about glimsping the inbreaking Kindom of God (a kind of inaugurated eschatology) and trying anticipate it, to 'live tomorrow's life today' as the hymn expresses it.  We are shown vision of a world - a cosmos - restored; where death, sorrow, sin and sickness have no place, having been swallowed up be God.  We are given a glimspe of a society free from discrimination, from violence, from nationlalism, from injustice, from poverty.  We are given a glimpse of what might just be possible - a source of hope, a horizon to aim for.  Living hopefully is about working towards that goal, not as mere humanitarian response, but inspired by our faith in Christ.

A more helpful, for me, aspect of our conversation explored the possibility of communal hope, or of being a hopeful community, from which came the idea of 'a priesthood of all hopers' - that I will hope for you when you feel hopeless, and you will hope for me, and we will hope with and for each other.

We teased around the edge of the interface of 'faith' and 'hope' and didn't get very far - I have to admit after a decade of pondering this interface I am still not sure the two are separable.  Maybe we 'have faith in' and 'have hope that', but maybe that's just semantics at its worst?

For the record, I do believe the words I say at funerals about 'sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life in Christ our Lord'; they are not just beautiful words to make people feel better (pace the person who suggested they might be). I hold that hope in conjunction with a fuller, brighter hope that at the eschaton, when the inbreaking Kingdom is fully established, the new creation will be even nore wonderful than the glimspses we see in the prophets and apocalyptists.  Like the New Narnia of C S lewsi, it will be deeper and brighter and more wonderful.  If I can take even one step on the road to that hope, if I can live hopefully, and encourage others to so likewise, I will have done something right!