A couple of interesting links this morning. 

For those who bemoan the paucity of some (much?) Baptist preaching then Steve Holmes is worth a quick look see here.  Steve is another ex-pat English Baptist in Scotland, teaching and researching at St Andrews.  Of course, should he worship at the Gathering Place he'd fine we do use decent chunks of scripture week on week... :-)

Sticking with my 'authenticity' theme HT Angela for this little video which should make you smile... and maybe think a little:

Whoo!  I finally learned to embed video!! 

I guess it is a song created from a 'good' place rather than a 'dark' place but even so it recognises the potential for darkness (and of course I could be wrong...).  And even if I'm not wild about the word 'fight' I think I get what they're saying.

Here are the words...

I wanna soar with you up on wings like eagles
But I'll crawl with you too
When the dark and lonely questions come
I wanna stand true
No matter what's new or comes through
I cant stand still
Whatever hits I'll keep making movements to you
I'm running fast and free to you,

Cos your love is the movement and fight in me
I'm running fast and free to you,

Cos you are my home where I wanna be

I wanna float with you, the currents driving me
But I'll paddle hard too
When the waves and rapids overcome
I wanna stand firm
When my mind is weak and my emotions squirm
I must stand true
Whatever hits I'll keep making movements to you
Won’t walk away, I won’t walk away

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!