The first triple is triple B... Broadband Behaving Badly, which it has been doing all day today.  If it stays up for three mintues at a time I'm pleased!  No idea what the problem is, just seem to have to keep resetting this and that... maybe its the rain, maybe it's a butterfly in outer Mongolia.  Anyway, it seems to be a little more stable now so I'll blog while I  can!

Sunday coming we are finishing our series on the Bible with a service called 'Bible Inspired Living' a rather grand title for the thoughts I will share, but one that seems fitting as an end to a few weeks that have been fun and challenging.  Three lots of triples I want to hold together, and not sure if that makes it a 'cubic' (for those who think I'm a bit algebraic ;-) ) or what.  Anyway....

Triple 1 - the three persons of the Trinity

Triple 2 - faith, hope and love

Triple 3 - upwards, inwards, outwards

Not quite sure where it'll go yet, but it's fun playing with the ideas.

(And amazingly my broadband conection has stayed up long enough to type this!)

Is the official day of today in at least three contexts I connect with.

On the first Tuesday of each month our local C of S friends have breakfast at 8 a.m. followed by prayers and then a minister's meeting.  I am invited and usually try to get along; recent events mess that up a lot but today I will endeavour to get there for a while before returning home to do a little more flopping.

First Tuesday is also the day Scripture Union set aside as a prayer day, so their email landed in my inbox this morning, full of new ideas and products and with requests for prayer as they seek to bring the Good News to all sorts of poeple.

Then today is also the first meeting of the newly reshuffled Baptist minister's gathering in North Glasgow.  Alas to go to this would be too much today, but these are good guys seeking to serve their churches often in tough settings, and I pray they will find some fellowship and support as they gather.

For me, in my personal three-weekly cycle, first Tuesday is when I wait for the "dimmer switch" to turn up again and my energy levels to pick up.  It is a tad frustrating having to say 'no' to things I'd normally do, or having to leave early, but I know it is for a season and I know I am learning stuff as I go along the way.

More on that some other time, it is almost 8a.m. and my second breakfast beckons...!

PS apologies if there are even more typos than usual, blame it on brain-mush and left-armed vein-pain

Statistics.

Have to be careful when I talk about stats - for many years they were the way I earned my living, or at least the raw data that fed the way I earned my living, and now I have a Stats Prof among my congregation.

The advantage/disadvantage of having worked professionally with stats is knowing how to read them - or at least how to guess what questions to ask about how to read them.  But all that knowledge is a double-edged sword when you become part of the stats rather than a mere observer of them.  It sharpens your 'hermeneutic of suspicion' as to how the data are compiled and how much smoothing of complex multivariate stuff goes on to give some general figures.

I think it struck me most when I read that 'every 11 minutes someone in the UK is diagnosed with breast cancer,' which is blatantly not true as no clinic is open 24/7 which would be needed for this to be the case.  46,000 a year (give or take) is equivalent to one every eleven minutes, but that's not how it works.  Today roughly 125 women and 1 man will be given this diagnosis - not neatly eleven minutes apart and not evenly spread throughout the nation.  Most will be over 50 and the oldest among them will have other age-related health issues but some will be in their twenties with everything to live for.  126 worlds turned upside down.

And then the are the other stats that arrive regularly - a child dies every 3 seconds in poverty, one every 15 seconds from lack of clean water; a women in the USA is beaten roughly every 15 seconds, and so on and so forth.  Again, not neatly defined, not equally spread, and not tidily 24/7 but whole clumps and communities devastated by disaster.  People in the poorest or most disadvantaged places, people for whom suffering is often normative.  People whose worlds I can never know or really imagine.

There's a point to the averages of course - a child dying every three seconds is something we can imagine, six-ish people an hour receiving a medical diagnosis is conceivable.  But it is all, ultimately, too big for our minds to process - we can only take in so much, can only care beyond the superficial for so many people or causes.  Maybe we don't need more numbers, or even better ways of presenting them, maybe what we need is time and space to think of the real people they represent.  On balance of probability, this afternoon in Glasgow someone will be told she (or he) has breast cancer... on balance whilst I've typed this stuff the equivalent of a whole primary school has died in some part of Africa... these are real people with real stories.  I can't know these people; I can't help them, but I can at least be aware of them.

... I thought it sounded better than 'drugged Monday' and slightly less likely to attract weird comments.  Last post-drug Monday I didn't post and it caused a good deal of anxiety among some of my most loyal and caring readers, so this week I thought I'd better say a quick 'hello.'

Always the danger of the plethoric blogger - do I own it or it me?  As one who refuses to go down the lines of twitter or facebook (I waste too much time on reading blogs already) I guess this is a rod I've made for my own back.  Ironically, just as I link Dave Walker's cartoon blog he gets a bout of blogger's block and has ten days off from posting - it's an occupational hazard.

Anyway, today will be anything but Manic Monday, as I rest after yesterday's great fun but rather tiring morning.  I may begin the mound of Christmas cards I need choose to write to people all over the UK (and some beyond) whose paths have crossed mine and continue to interwine with it to varying degrees.  I like this task - it brings back memories of times shared, good and bad, and reminds me why people I may not have seen in decades remain on my Christmas list.  Inevitably each year there are deletions but there are additions too, all part of the story we write as we wander through life.

So, off to flop a bit and then start the card writing...

Btw, it's a GLORIOUS morning in Glasgow (in joke)

This evening people from local churches meet to share in an annual service of "Grieving and Gratitude" at one of the C of S churches.  Last year I helped lead the service; this year I am exercising a ministry of flopping on my settee.  I am sad I can't go to the service as there are people I wanted to remember who this year slipped from this life to the life of eternity.  Of course we don't need a special framework to remember, and I don't need to be with others in some formalised rite, so I am sitting on my settee recalling those from my story who died this year.

So I start with B, and overlap from last year, a diamond in the rough whose second marriage I conducted, and for whom I had deep affection, who this time last year died very suddenly.

Just weeks later came L, a lovely Brummy who had was already terminally ill when I moved north, and whose parting wish was that I would take his funeral.  A delightful and funny man, whose mischeivous smile and open tears on my (metaphorical) shoulder I will not forget.

There was D, my local MP from down south, a man of principle who understood deeply what constituency politics was about who, too, suddenly died on Boxing Day whilst out walking with his family.

Then F, in her early twenties, a young mission partner who I'd met when she visited Dibley with BMS and who I had encouraged to explore a call to full time Christian service.  At the time I felt guilty that these words of mine had played a part in her dying so far from home; ten months on the guilt has given way to privilege in having met this amazing youung woman.

J was a gatherer, the only one I've yet had to farewell.  After a couple of years of burying 'my' flock in ever increasing numbers, it has been good to do so less; yet for folk here this was one more in a year of heavy losses.  She was a special member of our church with her trademark topknot and irrepressible humour; I am glad I knew her, if only in passing.

Lastly is M, who at 49 years 364 days older than me (a fact she loved to quote to me) was the second oldest of my Dibley flock, and the oldest, if nowhere near longest served, actual church member.  She combined practical wisdom and deep faith with a healthy measure of mining-community grit; she loved owls (her flat was full of pictures and ornaments of them) and she loved life.  I have always remembered the essence of her words spoken to me during an illness, "I'm ready either way, to live is good, to die is fine" - she showed me how Paul's injunction could indeed find expression.

So, tonight as I sit on my settee, in my imagination I light candles to remember these saints, now at rest, giving thanks for all the light they brought to my life...

For all the saints, who from their labours rest,

Who Thee, by faith, before the world confessed

Thy name, Oh Jesus, beforever blessed:

Alleluia, alleulia!