Every Sunday when I get home from church I resist the temptation to blog how great it's been.  I don't want to become a boastful minister but my church is just a fab place to be on a Sunday.

Today we had the temporary, industrial grade, gas heater blasting hot air in to the Gathering Place and there as barely a murmur as people relocated themselves to available seating.  Granted, given the snow the frailest and oldest had wisely stayed home, the outliers were all snowed in so couldn't get in anyway, but we still had around fifty adults and a good number of small children.  We offered tea and coffee both ends of the service, so those who'd got cold coming in could warm up, and we had fleecy blankets for chilly knees.  So there was no clever sound recording, so we were a little less slick than usual, but so what?  It was good to be together.

It was my Sunday to go with Sunday School rather than preach, so I had fun with the children who were begining to think about how to tell the story to the adults in a few weeks time.

The student lunch was just brilliant - we had a good dozen or so students, even though some were away, including a two or three who'd been invited along by friends, and a similar number of church folk.  We enjoyed several varieties of homemade soup, bread, cheese, hummus, marmite (yeay!) and home baking.  I loved watching the students, some of whom only ever meet at church, just chatting and taking group photos.  And at the end they all mucked in to help clear up, thanked us for lunch and headed off laughing in to the snow.

You don't have to be a trendy church to be a place students will come to, you have to be a hospitable church.  Our students know we love them just as they are - searchers, questioners, doubters, fundies, mixed and muddled - and we are just delighted to have them among us.  Truly a souper Sunday morning.

The Hopeful Imagination Advent blog begins today.  Congratulations Andy on filling every day with conotributors.  Thank you Jim for kicking things off.

Advent, adventure, words with a common etymological root yet often poles apart.

Advent, the time when we anticipate Christmas, when we anticipate the eschaton, when we prepare to celebrate the incarnation, when we race around like headless chickens preparing to celebrate tinselmas.

Adventure, an exciting journey to new or exotic places, a chosen or unchosen diversion from the familiar, something that challenges, inspires or informs the participants.

Yet there is something that connects the two, at least where they are chosen... the moment just before it begins when, with the advance preparation done you must take the first step.

I love long distance walks, I love the planning and preparing, the anticipating and I love the experience of doing them, but there is always a moment, just a fleeting one between ending the preparation and starting the walking when a little voice says 'do you really want to do this?'

Do I really want this adventure, which will demand much of me in return for the unpredictable rewards?

Do I really want this Advent, which should demand much of me with no certainty of reward?

24 days, give or take, depending how the year falls, which to tread carefully a path that I think I know well but actually have never yet seen.  24 days to travel inwards and upwards and outwards towards a moment which only might prove meaningful.  Yet not to make the journey would preclude the possibility of finding that moment.

Advent 1, I step out on the path in search of... adventure!

Whilst I sincerely hope there is not 50mm snow on our 'doomed roof', I did delight to wake to a world in white this morning.  I think maybe I need to take a basic photography class at some point so I can discover how to take photos when it's dark, but here are a couple from this morning...

Maybe as a December-born I have an unusual love of snow and cold, and maybe being born into the 1962/63 winter influences that, but for me this morning is very beautiful.

And it reminds me of a litlte song I learned at around the age of six:

Snowy flakes are falling softly

Clothing all the world in white

High above the stars are shining

Twinkling through the wintry night.

Was it just like this, we wonder,

Starry bright and crisp and cold,

That joyous Chrimas night of old?

There is a second verse, I think, that is more overtly 'Christian', which I cannot recall, and purists will get hoity toity about the elision of Christmas with snow (though I think the song leaves the presence of snow as an unanswered question and makes no reference to where it might have been snowing).

Anyway, I love snow in an almost childlike way and it does make Glasgow look pretty.  

So, after this morning's urgent planning meeting - amply supplied with scones (said as 'skon' not 'skown' btw) and mincepies - we are all set for our advent adventure, still in our own 'backyard' but with a hired in heater until we get our system fixed.

It was a great meeting - everyone's determination to keep the show on the road and all planned activities on target was inspiring.  As was the commitment of those who took time to to come along or to phone/email their thoughts if they couldn't.  What a great congregation!  What a great God!

The fun part, for my perverted sense of fun, is that the heater is located in the part of the Gathering Place known as 'the snug' a little area near the servery where late comers hide and quite a few early birds choose to lurk just beyond reach.  It's a great place for people with tinies as they can breast feed unobserved by 'tutters' if needed.  And it's a great place for newcomers and visitors to watch from a safe distance.   But it is now out of commission for the foreseeable.  These people will have to be adventurous in one of two ways... either join the main body of the church (which will mean other people have to change seats) or climb the stairs to our upper deck*.  The meanie within me is intrigued to see what happens on Sunday as people have to sit in new places.  But the pastor within me knows that it'll be fine, that people will cope well and understand the reasons for the change.

If Advent and adventure are meant to go together, well it looks like we're on the way... Just please God, don't send 2" of snow on the 'doomed roof' before Sunday...

* It is worth noting our 'upper deck' was used recently as an overflow even with the Snug in service, we are agrowing...