This cartoon from ASBO Jesus made me smile and seemed apposite...

One of the tricky aspects of minister deprogramming is the equivalent congregational deprogramming ... whether it's a planned sabbatical or enforced extended sick leave our lives become so entwined that the temporary separation is hard to manage.  But then, no one said it wuold be easy... and I think I'm kinda glad it's not.

Today as I sit at the top of Mt Chemo my limbs are stiff and the after effects of St Eroid's last hurrah leave me rather weary.  As I look back whence I have come, it is remarkable how quickly and how slowly the last sixteen weeks have elapsed... in one sense I can no longer remember a time before I entered this strange new world and I have forgotten what it was like not to live with a diary full of medical appointments; there are moments when I'm not even sure I'm the same person who began this climb.  It has been a strange time for sure, and one from which there is no returning to life before it began.

I realise now I am part of a 'one third world' within the western 'one third world' - for all our wealth and prosperity, a third of us live with cancer, and it is, it feels, a world within a world.  I have been surprised how upsetting it has been to hear of the deaths of Brian Hanrahan or Peter Postlethwaite, fellow inhabitants of this world within a world.  It's not that I ever met them or knew much about them, just the knowledge that they, too, climbed this mountain but for them it was not enough... the vulnerability of those who travel this path is all too evident and yet so commonplace that from outside it slips by almost unobserved.  A strange new world indeed.  I have so much to be grateful for - my climb seems to have been successful and largely struggle-free and it is a strange moment to celebrate that with appropriate humility.

Along the way I have already learned a lot of 'stuff' about this world and how to live within and beyond it.  At some point it will be right to share some of that, but for now it is good simply to pause, to look back down the slope and realise that it is now behind me.

This morning I listened to yesterday's service online.  It's something I do from time to time anyway to see how I sound and if what I say makes any sense!  Yesterday's service was an importnat one, the first of the New Year, entrusted to a student who demonstrated so clearly her calling to preach that surely no-one could deny it.  Gently spoken yet with authority; carefully prepared but with flexibility... a blessing to listen to and a reassurance that 'all will be well.'

I hope our visitor was blessed in her ministry too as she goes forward trusting and obeying the God who has called her.

Once a pastor always a pastor... even when God moves you on to pastor anew.  So it is when this morning I received an email from Dibley telling me of the death of one of their folk on Christmas Day, the serious illness of another and the death of a member of D+1 on Christmas Eve.  A tough time for two little churches.  Each of these folk is/was quite elderly, none being under 80 and one well over 90, nonetheless very sad for those who have known and loved them.  My thoughts with these churches whose futures are ever more precarious.

Today at the Gathering Place something special happens as the first of the Scottish Baptist College students to plug the gap of my absence preaches.  I am excited because we have four of the sixteen Sundays covered by women (not all Baptist), and today is the first... how rare this is in a Scottish Baptist Church has to be seen to be believed.  Today a final year woman student and in a couple  of weeks a woman former student still seeking settlement (an experience I knew too well even in the relative ease of England).  We also have a black male Baptist student booked to preach... can you imagine that ever being an issue?  Alas it is for some churches up here.  I am thrilled for our black folk that they will see a black preacher in a largely white church (we have black stewards, readers and prayers).

So, some endings, some beginnings, and in it all God is active and in some weird and wonderful way so is my ministry despite everything...

HT Angela for this one which moves us from the (rightly) truncated form used by George VI at the start of war to a version more fitting for life as we experience it now (copyright unknown, formatting as per web so may be inaccurate)...