Yesterday's morning service was very special for all of us at the Gathering Place.  We were full as ever, with extra seats needed to accommodate family and friends of the baby we were welcoming.  Our choir was back after a month's well earned break and in great voice.

What a joy and privilege it is hold in your arms a young child, made in God's image and likeness, and pray God's blessing on him at the beginning of his life.  What an assurance for the family to have their church stand with them and say 'yes, we'll help you the best we can' in caring for your child.  What a sense of oneness as we 'gently applauded' this little one.

Sharing around the Lord's Table is always special - even for a stubborn memorialist like me!  Imagining how Jesus felt on that night, and uniting our hearts to be together for the days ahead were important for us yesterday.  Did my hands tremble a little as I broke the bread?  Quite probably.  Certainly they did as I lifted the chalice.  It didn't matter, we were together in the remembering and anticipating.

It's quite normal for me to feel tired even a bit drained, after leading worship.  Yesterday I was wrung out.  But in a good way.  As we stood together, singing of God's promises, sharing life in its highs and its lows, there was a sense that this is as good as it gets, that this church in its incredible ethnic and theological diversity is, for me, simply the best place on earth right now.

Among the things the Bible says about love are these:

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength

Love you neighbour as you love yourself

Love your enemies

This kind of loving is not a feeling, it's a choice, a conscious undertaking to seek good not evil.  It presumes an important tenet/axiom/principle, that love is stronger than hate.

I have chosen to love my tumour.  I have chosen to name it as mine rather than distance it from myself as 'the tumour.'

I cannot hate it, because it is 'flesh of my flesh.'  I don't like it, and I know it needs to go in due course, but it is my tumour, and I choose to love it.

Language of 'battle' and 'fight' is prevalent in the world I am entering, and I understand why - to see cancer as a foe to be destroyed gives its host a reason to stay strong.  And whilst it is helpful for many people, I am uneasy about such language in relation to my own body.  It is not that my body is a 'thing' that has turned against some inner 'me', I abandoned that kind of dualism long ago.  If I broke my arm I wouldn't see a fracture as an enemy and I wouldn't hate my arm; if I had a mental illness I wouldn't see my mind as an enemy.  The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 speaks of 'treating with special honour' those parts of the body which are less presentable.'   We all assume he means genitals, sphincters and the like, and we're probably correct.  But I am choosing to 'treat with special honour' my tumour, tending it gently until such time as it is ready to leave my body, allowing me to live on without it.

From time to time I may need to be reminded of this, but today I choose to love.

Every now and then life throws you a curved ball.  This week one landed fair and square in my world.  By the time this post appears online the vast majority of people I know reasonably well in the real world, and certainly all the essential ones, will know about it, but I have deliberately held back from posting until now both to allow the news to reach some key people and to start to get my head around it all.  Indeed, part of my logic for posting at all is that there will be an inevitable effect on my blog - both in terms of frequency of posting and in content.

Deep breath.

This week I was diagnosed with breast cancer and have been undergoing tests to help the experts determine how best to treat it; treatment should begin within the next couple of weeks and will last about a year if all goes to plan.  My consultant has told me that my cancer is 'treatable', and whilst he obviously can't give any guarantees, he is hopeful of a good outcome. I ought to note that at the moment I am otherwise completely fit and well and, hospital appointments notwithstanding, racing around Glasgow as madly as ever.

As treatment progresses, there will be stuff I write that is not suitable for public consumption, and that will form a private, personal journal.  At the same time, I think there is a need for honest Christian writing about facing such challenges - I hear and see too much Pollyanna stuff that feels inauthentic and causes we lesser mortals to feel bad about not sailing serenely through the stuff life sends our way, free from anxiety,  singing hymns and praising God for the opportunity.  Even as I type that, I know it could be misheard - I don't want to dismiss what is authentic for other people but I don't want to have to pretend: right now I am scared and I'm not about to claim otherwise; I am also surrounded by the most wonderful network of love and support a person could wish for.  Whilst not every truth has to be told, in order to be authentic I need to be truthful, and that isn't always an easy balance.

I don't want my blog to become purely an account of my illness, to do that would give it greater prominence in my life than I want to.  This blog has always been a place where I ramble about church life, theology and other random bits: I want that to continue.  Some general updates on this 'journey' (cliche of the millennium I reckon) will be available on the Gathering Place website via our newsletter and I may from time to time post significant (in my view) events.  Certainly there will be some of the thoughts this experience prompts from a theological/spiritual perspective.  The deal is that I will spare you excessive detail so long as you are willing to accept the honesty of struggle and not expect me to view this is as some kind of divinely ordained test of my faith.  I firmly believe that God is with me in this and will accompany me through it.  I've a feeling Gethsemane and even Gehenna might be stopping off point in the months ahead, but these are places/states God has been (and/or is) so it will be copable.

The Bible record is replete with honesty in adversity, the ancients seem not to been afraid to tell it as it was, knowing that God could cope. Unlike God, we humans are easily bruised and can all too easily bruise others.  Being a public figure, a minister, brings responsibility as well as privilege, so I will try to get it right, and ask you to forgive me when, as it sometimes will be, what I say is offensive, insensitive or bruising.

My little church in Dibley introduced me to the Kendrick song/hymn For the joys and for the sorrows with its chorus 'for this I have Jesus.'  It is a song that sustained us through many challenges whilst I was there, and its truth will help me in what lies ahead:

For the joys and for the sorrows

The best and worst of times

For this moment, for tomorrow,

For all that lies behind;

Fears that crowd around me

For the failure of my plans

For the dreams of all I hope to be

The truth of what I am

For this, I have Jesus,

For this, I have Jesus,

For this, I have Jesus

I have Jesus.

For the tears that flow in secret

In the broken times

For the moments of elation

Or the troubled mind

For all the disappointments

Or the sting of old regrets

All my prayers and longings

That seem unanswered yet...

For the weakness of my body

The burdens of each day

For the nights of doubt and worry

When sleep has fled away

Needing reassurance

And the will to start again

A steely-eyed endurance

The strength to fight and win...

Graham Kendrick (c) Make Way Music

It's an intriguing song, can speak to many situations, and I hope in it you find something for your own challenges.

This post will appear just as the Gatherers and I begin Sunday worship together.  We will be celebrating the gift of life as we welcome a new baby in to our family.  We will also be celebrating God's defeat of evil, sin and death as we meet around the Lord's Table.  My one real prayer for today is that joy and hope will triumph, not in a twee way that denies reality, but in a God-honouring one that makes a beautiful rainbow of sunshine through the rain, laughter through tears.

Tomorrow, being the first Sunday of the month, it is Communion, and as is my practice I have been writing a new liturgy to fit with our service.  This time I found myself wondering how Jesus felt that night as he gathered his frineds for the meal that would be his last.  Presuambly he knew what he was going to tell them, or at least had an idea.  He knew, or had a pretty good inkling, of what lay ahead of him (whether we think he was prescient or whether it was just self-evident that events had reached an inevitable conlcusion).  So how did he feel?

Was his stomach churning as he climbed the stairs?

Did he taste the lamb prepared for his meal, or might he as well have chewed a piece of leather?

Did his voice quiver, even everso slightly, as he spoke words he'd spoken many times before?

Did his hand shake, if imperceptibly, as he tore the bread?

Did the wine slop in the cup as he gave an involuntary shiver?

Did the words of the psalm pierce his heart as they foretold his pain?

If I'm honest, the Jesus of my imagination has always been strong at this point.  I have 'seen' him agonise in Gethsemane and I have 'heard' the cry of dereliction from the cross.  But until now it has never crossed my mind that, "on the night of his arrest the Lord Jesus experienced anxiety as he took bread...."

Yesterday our new midweek Bible study group met for the first time.  We were a disaparate group - in age, theology, nationality - but it seemed to gel.  We are using the Nick Fawcett guide Women of Faith: What They Can Teach Us and the first study was on Ruth, the voice of an outsider.  Our conversations seemed natural and flowed quite well.  We ended with tea/coffee and Waitrose cupcakes - it seemed fitting to mark our first meeting with a special treat.  One person was surprised we were ending with cakes - but seemed reassured when I told her I'm sure Jesus would have had cupcakes if they'd had such things in his day.

I think people enjoyed the afternoon together.  Someone suggested we take it in turn to bring the cakes.  Someone else was inspired to go home and read the rest of Ruth.  Someone else was free to admit aloud that there are bits of the Bible she doesn't understand.  Everyone shared something of herself.  We are not a 'women's' Bible study group but yesterday we were all women meeting to share and to listen and to pray.  That was good.