One manse moggy at around 5 a.m. ... Check those scary eyes!!!

It's harvest thanksgiving today, and yes, the time stamp on this post is correct... the manse moggy in her wisdom dragged me from my slumbers at some unearthly hour demanding food.  Unusually I gave in!

As I type the Brazilian honey cake is baking in the oven and a lovely smell is wafting my way... said moggy is of course fast asleep once more!

A very world-wide harvest celebration today as we have three different focuses!

Firstly, we are collecting tins and packets for Glasgow City Mission, to support the vital work they do among disadvantaged and homeless people.

Secondly, our children are participating in the Just Trading Scotland rice challenge, selling 90kg of rice, which will enable one Malawian farmer to send one child to secondary school for one year.

Thirdly, we are supporting Operation Agri, in their 50th birthday year, with an envelope collection, and using their material to focus on a honey project in Brazil (hence the cake, their recipe), a coffee project in Thailand and a project to train farmers in Uganda.

In our multi-ethnic, multi-national church that all feels very appropriate.

Hopefully everyone will feel part of the service and we will each find space for gratitude and response to the Lord of the Harvest

All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above

So thank the Lord, oh thank the Lord, for all God's love.

PS No ploughing fields or scattering... (i) we're urban (ii) since when did you scatter seeds in October?!

A fun afternoon lunching with the ladies from the bcc forums who live in central Scotland.  Most of us had never met before, but it was a happy and relaxed event, with enjoyable food, lots of laughter and good conversation.  Inevitably some of the conversation was about our shared (or not) experience, and the majority of us were sporting very similar hair styles.  It was nice to be out with a group of others who were every bit as likely as I was to need to fan themselves with a menu or to mop their faces, nice not to feel any need to explain why you did or did not eat certain things, nice to put faces and names to avatars, and actually nice, just to get out and meet new people.

I do wonder what the waiter made of us - a group of women with sticky labels each of which had a first name and an online pseudonym, laughing and talking as if we'd known each other for ages.

One of the things I especially liked was the sense that everyone equally owned the afternoon and that the edges of the group were 'fuzzy'.

Some good converations and interesting questions about how my faith had played a part in my experiences.

A different kind of 'intentional community' but food, sharing conversation, having something that unites us beyond what might otherwise separate us... echoes of what church can be.

Good fun... and I hope there'll be a 'next time'

Sorry, this is a boring post - a bit kind of niche or hobby horse or soap-boxy or some-such.

Today is Macmillan Cancer Care coffee morning day.  The one day a year when people are invited to hold special fund-raisers for this important charity.  Tomorrow is the start of breast cancer awareness month and I have decided, for one month only, to change my blog colour scheme to pink in order to mark this.  I'm not a pink kind of a girl, I don't do "pink and fluffy" but there feels something right about turning this blog pink for four weeks just to act as an awareness kind of a thing.... just why would Catriona turn her blog pink... whether it works is another matter, but tyg, it will 'cost' me to see my blog turn pink and that's part of the point really.

Tomorrow I am meeting up with a group of women from the Glasgow area who I 'met' online through the bcc forum for lunch.  It will good to put faces and voices to avatars and posts.  It will be good to laugh and share stories and 'be boring' if we so wish/need without having to think about the impact our boringness has on others.

So, on the eve of bc awareness month, my perennial boring reminder.... check yourself, take the screening, report anything odd, if you're young and worried then SHOUT very loudly.  90% of problems turn out to be benign but if you are in the 10% take the treatment and choose life, whatever that looks like, however long ot short it may be.

Soap box away for now!

Lots of 'stuff' affecting lots of people just now.

Those who knew Kerr Spiers will know he often quoted Julian of Norwich (though ascribing it to someone else, I can't recall who) that "all will be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well."  I find this quote, if basically comforting, rather confusing... but then mystic I'm not.  However, I do like the sentiments that, ultimately, all will be well.

For me, these sentiments are echoed in the lovely hymn set to the Welsh tune Ar Hyd Yr Nos (All through the night) ...

Through the love of God our Saviour
all will be well.
Free and changeless is his favour;
all, all is well.
Precious is the blood that healed us,
perfect is the grace that sealed us,
strong the hand stretched forth to shield us;
all must be well.

Though we pass through tribulation,
all will be well.
Ours is such a full salvation,
all, all is well.
Happy still in God confiding,
fruitful, if in Christ abiding,
holy, through the Spirit's guiding;
all must be well.

We expect a bright tomorrow;
all will be well.
Faith can sing through days of sorrow
All, all is well.
On our Father's love relying,
Jesus every need supplying,
or in living or in dying,
all must be well.

Mary Peters (1813-1856)

If you're a reader affected/afflicted by 'stuff' then I do pray that you will be assured that 'all is well, and all will be well'

Post editted to correct my error in wrongly ascribing the Julian quotation!