Is it just me?  Am I getting old(er) and more grumpy?  Or are more and more people spelling the word 'definitely' incorrectly?  I know there's a fashion for pronouncing it defin-ately but do we have to mis-spell it too?

I begin to wonder when I find English teachers (as in teachers of English, not merely, or exclusively, those of South British nationality) spelling the word with an 'a' in place of the seoncd 'i'.

Mutter, mutter, mutter

At some point today, I will have a third attempt at writing my sermon for Sunday. I'm sure attempt number one would have 'done' and attempt number two is 'better' but it is only now that I feel I know for sure where I ought to be going with it.

All of which makes me ponder the iterative - at least sometimes - nature of inspiration.  I won't repeat the old joke about the preacher who was told to trust God to tell him what to say rather than spending hours preparing a sermon, but it's 'moral' that we can only get 'out' what we put 'in' is self-evident.  Sometimes I find that as I write my sermons - I am someone who thinks by writing - they take a life of their own and words flow easily.  Sometimes I find it a halting process, each paragraph dragged from my subconscious and wrestled into submission.  Sometimes I find I have written way too much.  Other times.. no, not too little... I read it back and decide it's twaddle.

This week I knew pretty much what I wanted to work with... some feedback from last week, three Bible passages and a little book called Seven Spiritual Gifts of Waiting by Holly W Whitcomb (pub. Augsburg Books 2005).  Attempt number one involved a bit of expositing of one of the passages... which meant the grounding of the seven facets became clumsy and contrived.  Attempt number two, yesterday, ploughed its way systematically through the seven facets, linking obliquely to the passages, becoming long-winded and frankly rather tedious as well as lacking any real depth. Overnight my mind has mulled away (another way it works!) and I think I now know what I want to do, choosing two or three facets of what I'm calling a 'meantime spirituality' and exploring them with reference to the passages I've chosen and insights from the Hebrew concept of 'dayeinu'.  Not saying any more just now, but feeling, in retrospect, that this iterative inspriation is actually an example of meantime spirituality in and of itself.

I fully understand why Wikipedia is blacked out today, and it is effective, serving to show just how much we (or I) have come to take it for granted.  I googled something and of course up popped the wiki answer... and the black screen.  Then I got cunning - I used the 'cache' option and, lo, I could see the page I wanted from Google's latest cache.  Probably not quite in the right spirit, but it helped me find what I was looking for.

I guess today students everywhere are having to do their own research... unless they, too, use the 'cache' facility in their search engine?

As one who contributes small sums to the upkeep opf Wikipedia, I shall be glad when it's properly back  - and hope they don't blacklist me for beating the blackout!

This morning PAYG focussed on the story of the man with the withered hand in Mark 3, and drew attention to the hardness of heart of the people who hoped to trap Jesus. I found myself pondering that it was far easier to restore a shrivelled hand than to melt hard hearts... and then went off on a little sidetrack to contemplate withered hands and withered hearts. I checked the Greek - alas the same word is not used, so the writer missed a trick there perhaps. Shrivelled, withered, dried up, gnarled, hardened ... I sense something of a parallel there between the man's hand and the people's hearts (I also found myself contemplating the poor fig tree that Mark tells us Jesus killed with a withering look). Which is easier - to cure, or at least alleivate, physical suffering or to engender compassion in the hearts of self-righteous people? Seemingly the former. Which gives me, anyway, pause for thought.

Let me explain. I was in the coffee shop opposite church picking up my early morning latte on my way in around 7:45.  They have a giant TV screen always tuned to BBC news 24 (or whatever it's called these days) with the sound switched off and subtitles on.  They also have some sort of 'gold' radio station playing so the music is of 'my' era, which is quite pleasant.  On the TV news was an interview about so-called smart meters and how these may, or may not, lead to reduced energy consumption.  I'm not sure how the subtitles are done these days, whether it is some sort of voice recognition software or something with predictive text, but there are regularly some entertaining, if incomprehenisble, howlers to be seen.  And this was one such.... 'most consumers don't have thimbles...'

It does, I suspect, reflect our 'zap pow' instant lifestyle, whereby the few seconds it would take for someone to type, and check, the subtitles is deemed too long.  Also, by and large, the once valued skills of audio-typing have largely disappeared, so we are left with people who, like me, use half of their fingers, and watch the keyboard, not the screen...

As a church, we are spending some time thinking about 'active waiting' about the 'meantime' which can seem long, slow and relentless... patience is out of fashion (though listen to any automated telephone answering thing and you will be asked to exercise it!).  Perhaps the subtitles this morning serve as a reminder of the dangers of rushing ahead, that we will inevitably end up with things that make perfect sense at one level but are totally meaningless at another.  Most consumers probably don't have thimbles, decorative or functional, but neither is relevant to their consumption of gas or electricity, so far as I can ascertain. 

Whilst I wonder what was actually said in the interview, I am challenged in my own typing, thinking and doing to remember that 'more haste, less speed' is as true as it ever was.  Does that mean I'll be making typo-howler free posts from now on?  Probably not - indeed I've been tempted to leave one or two in this one just for authenticity's sake.  But a timely reminder to be in less of a hurry.