Is now available as an ebook (glorious technicolor or thereabouts) or a real book (lovely grey scale).  Ideal pressie for you fave minister-type person and with celebrity endorsements from, erm me, among others (still shocked Jon asked me, but chuffed)

Can't wait for my copy to arrive - well I can, I will, but it'll be great.

There is lots of other 'cool stuff' (I think that's the right phrase!!) you can buy for your favourite minister-type person from Jon's website and 10% of profits from the book go to Frontier Youth Trust so you can combine a good laugh, some deep thought and help others - what more would you want?

So, last Sunday we had a little look at Matthew 18 in order to hear his sheep parable in a wider, textual context.  We thought a little bit about what the postulate of a Matthean community, or at least a local gathering of believers in Jesus for whom this particular gospel was constructed, rather than some mythical target audience (let alone an 'ideal reader' for those, like me, who get side-tracked with literary theory).  Next Sunday our broad banner is 'stories Jesus told about plants' and we are staying in Matthew to pick up three parables with a clear agricultural/horticultural basis.  As is often the case, variants of these parables are found in the other synoptics, so once more part of thinking has to be, why does this gospel writer put the story in this place?  But also maybe we need to go a bit further and say, how does what we learn hear fit with what we learned last week?

I am having fun playing with the stories, and also mildly amused that those of my collegues/friends in churches and traditions that use the RCL will be pondering some of the same material, as this is the year of Matthew, and the chapter we will be visiting (chapter 13 if anyone wnats to read it ahead of time) currently has a starring role in the Lectionary.

Why did my electricity supplier need to change my perfectly functional, small, discreet meter for one that is larger and decidely clunky looking?  Why has the legal colour for 240V cables changed since my flat was built (roughly a decade ago) so that he also had to replace the perfectly functional grey shrouded cable with brown and blue, each of which is also labelled just in case you don't know brown is live and blue is neutral (or maybe in case you're colour blind).  And why does he leave me with said cables to dispose of when I already went to the recycling centre this morning and don't want to go again for ages?  And why do utility companies need you to dedicate a whole 6 hour period for them to turn up when the supermarkets can do it to within 60 minutes?  These are my questions for today - along with 'why am I spending my day off on chores'?!  At least the meter man came early enough that I can get out for part of the day.

PS I realise this has the feel of 'sweating small stuff' which isn't my intent - I just happen to be a bit bewildered by the need to fix things that aren't broken and wondering if this is, in part, why fuel bills keep rising...  That's it, splurged and gone... on to the next thing! ;-)

When I saw the oncologist last week, I mentioned the relentless hot flushes and asked if there was anything that might alleviate them.  Having already tried taking my drugs at various times of day, with no benefit, her last remaining non-drug option was to try splitting the dose.  Not wanting to be mid-experiment yesterday, I opted to wait until today to start this.  The idea is to take half a tablet at breakfast time and half at tea time.  That's all fine until you see a Tamoxifen tablet!  They are small, they are fiddly, they have a nice 'line' across them but snap in two they won't.  So it was a knife and some reasonable pressure to get my 'half a dose' to go with my weetabix!

Now, I am fortunate.  I am fairly dextrous.  The mild chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy I got in my non-dominant hand has long gone.  But not everyone is so fortunate.  Some people just would not be able to break the thing in half, let alone pick up the spare bit to put back in the packet for later.

Whether it will work in reducing the side effects only time will tell.  These little pills come in packs of thirty, and I've just started a new pack, so I will continue the experiment until I need a new prescription and, if it hasn't made a substantial difference, will talk to my GP then.  If nothing else by then I will be a deft pill cutter!

I think that's really what Brueggemann's scheme is about.  He is honest about its limitations, that a different person might assign them, even within his headings, to different places, but it is a useful model to work with. 

Anyway here's what I think it boils down to:

• psalms for when life is chugging along, confident songs that express the reliability and dependability of God, of creation and the life-giving aspects of Torah.  Psalms that teach truths and express trust.
• psalms for when life is *expletive deleted*, songs that express rage, fear, despair, confusion, bewilderment.  Psalms that lament the disorder that exists despite what we believe about God
• psalms of reflection on the complexity of life.  Psalms that hold together the realities of the struggles with the faith in which the writer lives.  Psalms written some time 'after the event' when the raw emotion of pain, loss, anger, etc. has passed, when events have run their course and a 'new normal' has been achieved and a different understanding of chugging along has been established

Whether or not you agree with Brueggemann or my interpretation of his model, it seems there is a basic principle that runs through it all; whatever the 'weather' or 'season', sing about it to God.  Athenticity - my buzz word of the moment!