August 1st - which means I am now starting the second month of my sabbatical - it is sure as anything running away very quickly!

In terms of what I planned to do in this first month I have:

• visited two churches to find out about their ministry-and-mission in urban contexts
• visited two churches to attend worship as a 'normal' person (OK, 'normal' is debateable...)
• got about half way through looking at the results of my empirical research - this is less than I had hoped to achieve by now, but it has been richer than I anticipated
• visited some friends

I have also read four or five novels, which has been a wonderful extravagance, and which I think is also helping me strengthen my 'concentration muscles' which are still pretty weak and flabby.

In terms of 'work done' I have failed to achieve as much as I had planned, but I think I have gained more than I hoped for. 

Today's PAYG was based on the Exodus account of how God's presence was symbolised by cloud and fire and in relation to the tabernacle (or 'God's gazebo' as my mind decided to label it).  One of the questions was about how we hear/see/discern God... which for me includes the 'shove in the back', the 'I can do no other' and 'the things that make you go hmm...'  The last twenty four hours have been a bit full of the last of these, not least the arrival of an email as I was typing this stuff advertising a theolgoy conference in New Zealand next February, entitled "Symposium on Theology, Spirituality and Cancer", and a suggestion that I might want to attend or even submit... hmmm... not sure it would be feasible, but it sounds amazing...  maybe I do have something to contribute to this field?  Much mulling needed!

Today I am going to take a day out from thinking hard about anything and pay a visit to the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life in town, a place I have visited many times, but which I enjoy.  If the rain holds off, I will also have a lovely wander in the Glasgow necropolis with its fascinating memorials.

As month two begins, I am aware that I still have a lot of slowing down to do, but at the same time, I am getting better at living in the moment and going with the flow.  I think that's positive!!

Today I have done nothing I planned to do, but feel that I have, after all, achieved more than I hoped for (even in sabbaticals, the interruptions can be the most meaningful, it seems).

All of which reminded me of this prayer:

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.

I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health, that I might do greater things.

I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.

I asked for riches, that I might be happy.

I was given poverty, that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of men.

I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life.

I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for but got everything I had hoped for.

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

I am, among all people, most richly blessed.

I am getting back into the swing of starting my day with PAYG... how easy it is to let 'spiritual disciplines' slide, especially in an age of instant everyhting.  Anyhow, today's passage was part of Philippians 3, including Paul's assertion that:

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him (Phil 3:8b NRSV)

Oh dear, sorry Paul, I cannot regard all things as rubbish, not even if I restrict that to the material, and absolutely not if I allow the more abstract things that delight...

Thank you, God, for Pauline rubbish:

For the warm, soft fur of pussy-cat cuddles

The sunlight playing on the chimney stacks of Victorian houses

The summer breeze tousling hair and tickling skin

The soaring crescendo of birdsong, and pop-song, and symphonic works

Thank you, God, for Pauline rubbish

For the laughter of a shared ridiclous experience

The 'aha' moments of new knowledge or insight

The heartaching privilege of sharing others' pain

The gentle silence of contentment

Thank you, God, for Pauline rubbish

Your outrageously geneous gifts of grace

Physical

Emotional

Spiritual

Better is one day lived in a Pauline rubbish dump, than a thousand elsewhere.

This morning PAYG centred on Jesus' explanation of the parable usually referred to as 'wheat and weeds' as found in Matthew's gospel (ch 13).  It's a parable I have preached on a few times, drawing out the justification for leaving the weeds/darnel in place until harvest (pulling them out would risk uprooting 'good' plants) and the divine acceptance that pulling them out has consequences ('good' plants may be choked or their growth inhibited, the 'good harvest' is less than it might otherwise be). 

What PAYG offered today was another angle, that, as well as referring to the world as that which is 'out there', the parable could refer to our own 'inner world', our hearts and minds.

This inner focus is, I think, both helpful and challenging.  It is helpful because it precludes any kind of 'us and them' attitude - it is not simply the case of 'Christians (my kind) = good; everyone else = bad', rather it recognises the inner blend of good and evil within each one of us.  This must surely force us to be a little more humble and a little less judgemental.

Reading the parable this way offers a more gentle counterpoint to the extreme approach of amputation mooted in Matt 5 (hands, eyes etc. to be removed to prevent sin) suggesting instead that we are all a complex blend of intellectual and emotional factros, that we are influenced and shaped by our context and our epxeriences.  As a result, it isn't straight forward to 'dig out' that which may be 'bad'; indeed it may be preferrable to allow the 'good' to be less than it might be rather than risk losing it all together.

When bad things happen in the world - as they do all too often - the cry goes up 'if there is a God why doens't he do something' or 'I can't believe in a God who would allow this to happen.'  But this parable, understood personally or corporately offers us a hint of a response.  It's not that good needs bad in order to flourish (that would be crazy), but that routing out bad as soon as it popped up might take with it actual, or potential good.  This does not mean. lest anyone wonders, that bad doesn't matter nor that we should adopt a fatalisitic attitude towards evil.  On the contrary, evil needs to be named, injustice addressed, lessons learned.

What it does mean is that we acknowledge that in our broken and disordered world, and in our frail and finite lives, the two can be so closely intertwined, and sometimes so similar in appearance, that identifying and dealing with sin is not always so easy.

This feels like a clumsy reflection, one very open to the 'ah but' type questions... I think what I am mindful of is that at a personal level, it may be that God allows my 'tares' to remain in place for now because to excise them might damage or uproot the 'seedlings' of hope or good that coexist.  Rather than complacent, or lazy, that makes me look at myself more realistically and perhaps a little more kindly -  and that's no bad thing.

This week I need to concentrate on working with the results of my research questionnaire.  This morning I have spent a good three hours doing that, albeit with a half hour break after the first two in order to make, spill and mop up a mug of tea!  Note to self, large mugs full of tea, cluttered desks and the search for a pencil sharpener (failed) do not go together all that well.

My questionnaire was quite long and it was mostly qualitative - in hindsight that may not have been so clever for many reasons:

• anyone suffering from fatigue or going through intense treatment would struggle to get through it (unfortunately the £200 version of the software didn't allow partial responses to be saved and revisited - bah)
• tick boxes are much, much quicker to collate and interpret, and would possibly have given answers that more directly the questions I thought I was asking - as it is I find that the answer to what I menat in, say, question 7 is actually given at question 15, or vice versa.
• Exporting the results to suitable software to do any electronic searching, whilst possible, is not ideal - I seem to spend a lot of time reformatting the results to make them legible/usable.
• A lot of time is needed to correct typos, not because I feel a need to but (a) because if it is ever published and I have quoted someone I don't want them to feel embarrassed if they recognise themselves and (b) someone left a comment about my own typos and gramamtical errors, maybe tongue in cheek, but I found it hurtful and lacking empathy.
• I'm sure there are others but I forgot them - that's not me being flippant, it's something that remains true: I still find, after all this time that ideas fall out of my head before I can write them down; that as I reach the point in the sentence where I need to put the 'good word' I have forgotten it and can't find it; that my brain may be 90% recovered but the 10% that's addled was actually rather useful.

At the moment I am undertaking a largely mechanistic approach, bringing into dialogue snippets from my own experience with the questionnaire replies.  It is proving interesting and lots and lots of thoughts, ideas  and questions are finding their way onto one of the few pieces of paper that escaped the tea-deluge (poor old BPW got drowned (baptised in tea?)for the second time since I bought it back in 1999).  I am sure there are more creative and more interesting things that could/should/will be done, but for now it's a case of plodding on... well as much as I can when Holly decides to lend her assistance to the procedings: