I'd love to claim this was an orignal thought but it isn't.  Unfortunately I can't remember where I came across it so I can't give credit where it's due.  Job's friends get a bad press, and God doesn't seem to have been impressed by them, but one thing they got right... and it's easily missed.

Job 2:13 "They sat there on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights without saying a word, because they saw how much he was suffering." (GNB)

One thing that seven years of pastoral ministry preceded by four years of training has taught me is the value of sitting in silence sharing the bewilderment.  So often there are no words that can be spoken, but knowing that someone - sometimes me, sometimes you - is there makes all the difference.  And Job's friends canonise the rightness of that, whatever else they may or may not have done.

When I do real life long distance footpaths, I buy OS maps, I buy the route map and I buy one or more guides.  This means I know how far apart the landmarks are, what I'm likely to encounter on the way and roughly how long each section might take.  My journey is uniquely mine, but it is well charted territory.  The metaphor doesn't work so neatly for life in general, or what I'm 'walking' in particular.  There is an itinerary and there are landmarks but no one can say with any precision how far apart they are or when I will reach them.  So the reality is that I develop my own map and, whilst some general features will be there for others to find, a guidebook based on my 'journey' is of no use to anyone but me.

It seems that the chemotherapy path *might* be a zig-zag hill climb, presumably getting steeper as it goes along, and with those horrid steep turns that only zig-zag paths can have.  The first dose left me lethargic for about five days after which I felt fine, not 100% maybe 98% and more aware of tiring, and with a couple of weeks of steady travel before the next bend.  I am taking life easy, but enjoying doing many of things I usually do.

Somewhere between the first and second bends is a stile, but no one can say quite where it lies.  Indeed for some people it lies after the second bend.  But I won't be some people.  No one can describe the stile either, for some it is tall and sudden, for others it is preceded by a marshy mire, and I'm not yet clear which it is, only that I am at it.  The stile of hair loss.

Today it begins and I have no way of knowing if it will be slow or fast, patchy or even, only that it will continue until it is complete.  Kind of weird knowing and not knowing.  I'm glad I put in place the necessary practical preparations even if I'm not so sure how to feel.

It's a bit like so much else in life that we know is on our own horizon - it is inevitable and we do what we can to prepare ourselves but no one has been here before, no one has mapped the territory and no one has a guidebook.  Ultimately we are all pioneers of a sort.

Last Sunday lots of churches did 'Back To Church Sunday' or the BUGB version (because Baptists had objected to the words 'back', 'to' 'church' and 'Sunday'!) 'The Bigger Welcome'.  We didn't.  Not because we or I am opposed to it - we did it quite effectively in Dibley.  And not because I'd already booked it as a 'free' Sunday. We didn't do it because, without meaning to be arrogant, we do it anyway.  Granted, we aren't all always inviting people to come (or come back) to church/events/activities on Sunday/any day, but we do seem to understand the whole thing about welcome.

Sunday coming is our harvest thanksgiving service, when we will be supporting Operation Agri and Glasgow City Mission.  We also have a student soup lunch which has been organised with great enthusiasm by various folk... including one who has been with us for two weeks!  One thing that visitors to the Gathering Place comment on is the sense of welcome they receive, and many mention the welcoming atmosphere too.  Not everyone comes back - some are seeking a more lively or charismatic style of worship, some seek a more prescriptive style of preaching, some are just passing through anyway - but no one ever runs out of the door the moment the blessing ends because it has been simply too awful for words.

We're not perfect - I've been grouched at by stewards, and I've occasionally seen visitors standing alone clutching their mug of tea - but we do our best to make sure that welcome is for life, not just for B2CS.  I'm not claiming any uniqueness about that, just a sense that whilst B2CS is a good start, it's what comes next that really matters... which is why we need to work hard to sustain our new student connections.

Yesterday evening someone was aksing me how things were going, and commented that the drugs are, afterall, poisons.  I observed that one of the drugs I'm currently receiving is related, chemically, to mustard gas - a bizarre link with chemical warfare, though I find 'battle' language unhelpful as a metaphor for the challenges of treatment.

All of which got me thinking about the fuzzy boundaries that always exist between swords and ploughshares.  Having worked in the nuclear industry it was a tension and a fuzziness I lived with daily... the reality that the same basic technology could produce weapons of mass destruction, (relatively) clean electricity and the radio-isotopes on which so much diagnostic and therapeutic medicine depends.  X-rays, CT scans, bone scans... they all depend on radiation and they all employ sources that come from the nuclear industry, in all its flawed beauty.

Whether it is our nonstick saucepan or the high refractive index glass that means highly myopic people like me can have thin lenses in their glasses, it is out of swords that these ploughshares have been made.  It would lovely to think that humanity would make such discoveries without the "need" for swords, but in a disordered world, we have to live with the blurry boundaries and delight in the good that, by the grace of God, can come out of the things that disturb us.

Chemical warfare is an attrocity, make no mistake, but I'm not sorry that the skills to develop such evil can also be used to discover chemicals that, through controlled toxicity, can bring hope and health.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to one of my minister friends about the regime I was about to embark on, replete as it is with dietary, hygiene, medical and lifestyle rules.  'Sounds like a lot of "thou shalt nots"' was the response.  This weekend another of my minister friends came up for the weekend, a long planned visit that had an element of divine timing about it, we chatted about the rules and I commented, flippantly, that Leviticus has nothing on the Oncologist.  All of which got me thinking about the importance of context, the risks of misinterpretation of shorthand and the challenges of discerning principles and particulars.

"Thou shalt not eat lemons, oranges, lime or pineapples" or "avoid citrus and acidic fruits as they will hurt, and possibly attack your already weakened mouth and throat linings".  The intent is the same, but out of context the former becomes some kind of 'dietary law' to delineate those 'in' from those 'out'

"Thou shalt only use Sainbury's non-bio washing tablets" or "make sure you don't change your washing powder because the drugs will make your skin more sensitive and we need to be sure what causes any rashes or skin-reactions."  Not a mandate to shop at this supermarket only, but an important principle - reduce the unknowns to a minimum.

And so it goes on.

So, yesterday when my friend and I went out for brunch, it had to be to a cafe I know and I had to eat something I'd had before.  When I choose from the after service refreshments at church, I opt for the bought biscuits rather than the homemade cakes :-(

It means I dutifully check those parts of my anatomy I have been told to check and carry the phone number of the High Priest, I mean doctor, at all times just in case.  It means I make myself sit down and do nothing for hours at a time... hard though it is for anyone to believe that I will.

And it makes me think about the more bizarre Leviticus codes in a new, and kinder, way as I imagine a group of people in a strange new world trying to stay healthy, trying to ensure their survival into future generations and trying to get it right.  Context matters, and so does the discernment of timeless principles; working out which is which is not always so easy several thousand years later.