Last night's Glasgow Baptist Prayer Gathering was very well attended and even if not everything went quite as I'd imagined or hoped most people from other churches seemed to have found it a broadly positive experience.  I had tried to reflect the model I'd experienced at the last one (my first) whilst being true to who and what we are and I am.

One thing left me puzzled, and that was just how loud some of these people were.  Our pianist was playing beautiful music as people arrived, music totally drowned out by loud voices.  And at the end the very moment we spoke the final 'amen' a cacophony of voices began chattering without any pause for private prayer or contemplation.  Never, ever before had I experienced the latter before.  In almost every church I've been to (and that's a lot) after the final 'amen' everyone sits down quietly.  Some people pray on for a few moments.  Some people quietly collect their thoughts and their belongings.   Some slip away quietly to make the tea or to retrieve children from Sunday School.

At the start of the service I read Psalm 46 with its injunction to 'shut up and focus on the one who is I AM' (crude paraphrase).  Part of me wonders if that fell on some deaf ears.  Part of me feels that's judgemental.

There were some high spots... the flickering tealights representing the Baptist churches in Glasgow and showing the obvious gaps in our mission (the poor and tricky east side of the city)... the singing of the Taize chant 'within out darkest night' with only the light of our votive candles to see by... the near stillness as I led intercession for a broken world.  My highpoint was singing in the dark, standing, as it happened, right at the back, watching the flames defying the gloom and sensing that this is how God's presence is experienced in our weary, sin-sick yet beloved and beautiful world.

I love all kinds of worship.  I can do loud, hand-clappy, hand-wavy.  I can do total silence.  I can do all points in between.  I just can't do with an inability to take 'just a moment' of silence and stillness, just 'a goodly number of seconds' as Ang put it to remind ourselves just what this is really about.

Today it is gloriously sunny in Glasgow.  And apparently it is pouring with rain in South East England.  There, is seems, justice if you wait patiently.  Clear blue skies and soaring temperatures (at least by local standards) and smiling people abroad stravaigin or just going abut their daily lives.

This morning as I was walking to Coffee Club I couldn't help notice that the tress are just beginning to turn from green to gold, green to brown, green to red.  Subtle changes that mark the transition from summer to autumn.  The dew on the ground is just a little heavier, lasts just a little longer.  The morning light is a little less intense, more golden than azure.  It's a change I have noticed annually for a couple of decades, yet it never fails to intrigue and delight me.

Often we - or I - speak of seasons as if they have sharp definitions, the kind that lead to the annual debates over the date of the first day of spring or midsummer.  But that's not right.  One season silently slips away as a new one emerges.  So it is with history, so it is with changes in church life, so it is with life more generally.  There are significant moments, signposts and markers, but on the whole the changes are subtle and progressive until, almost unawares, we find ourselves in a new season.  To every time there is a season... turn, turn, turn: somewhere between the Bible and the song writer there's a profound truth methinks.

"Let's keep a moment of silence" is a phrase often heard at the start of an act of worship.  It's one I used regularly in my old chuch and have used recently in leading evening services.

"Let's keep a moment of silence" for what?  Usually I say something like "to become aware of being in the presence of God" or "to still our hearts and minds" or something else that sounds good and means well - but may actually not mean all that much to most people.  I choose my words carefully - we are not entering the divine presence as if to a building but attuning ourselves to its pre-existence.  I have a very low - or very high - theology of 'place'.  I don't 'do' sacred places, I 'do' a sacred universe.  God is lurking everywhere, has just been everywhere, will soon be everywhere... In those seconds of silence I try to remind myself of that. ('Thinness' of place is a conversation for another occasion)

On Sunday someone commented on my 'moment of silence' experienced two successive weeks.  The first, they told me, was too short, so the second (which was far longer because someone came in just as it began and I gave them time to find a seat!) about right but they didn't use it because the first one had been too short, so why bother?  So how long is a 'moment'?  How long should we leave as silent gaps for private prayer in intercessions?  When is a 'pause' a pause, and when is it a 'moment'?  And how subjective is it all anyway?  I understand the frustration of the commenter, I have been in services where the leader has literally said, 'let us keep a moment of silence, we will now sing hymn number 25.'  I have been in services where the gaps between petitions in the intercessions have been too short for me to gather my thoughts never mind name before God those who are sick or unemployed or whatever before joining the guided response, 'Lord in your mercy...'.  I was once told that 17 seconds is about right for a silence of the kind I'm talking about.  A bizarre concept - not least as 17 is evidently the most popular 'random' number people think of.  I don't time my 'moments' or my 'pauses' or my 'gaps', I tend to go on instinct.  I have learned that it probably feels longer to me than to the congregation, that sometimes there is a palpable sense of 'stay quiet' or 'for goodness sake say something' but usually there isn't.  So, as a general rule, I wait what feels about right to me, then wait what feels about the same again, then speak.

So now you know!  A moment - about twice as long as half a moment!

On Sunday we sang 'For the Beauty of the Earth' to the Rutter tune; it was divine, and not a little self-indulgent.

This morning I was awake at 5 a.m. listening to the torrential rain outside my window (is that stoating?  I can't remember.)  Usually I roll over and go back to sleep but today I got up to watch the break of day - hard to call it sunrise when the sun is so obscured by cloud.  And it was beautiful.

Thick black clouds poured rain onto the quiet earth but away on the horizon was a sliver of faintest blue, a gap in the darkness.  As my eyes acclimatised I began to discern silhouettes of buildings 'across the water' and a single light in one window of the (Children's?) Hospital pierced the gloom.  The blue widened and tiny, faint, fluffy clouds came into view: text book cumulus.  Slowly, the shapes of buildings took on detail and the shades of green on nearby trees came into view.  The dark clouds rolled away and the rain eased.  A train hurtled along the track.  A seagull squawked and flew overhead (sometimes I feel as if I live at the seaside!) and other birds soared skywards.

The world slept on.

And God conducted the symphony of the dawn to an audience of one.

Other old hymns came to mind, each celebrating the wonder and beauty of God's creation.

Every now and then people who have never visited Glasgow baulk at the idea of living in a third floor flat. If they had the views I enjoy, they'd soon change their minds.

This morning I had a very apologetic phone call from the secretary of a tiny church, asking if it was now too late to send me prayer information for a joint Baptist gathering later this week.  They don't 'do' email, a fact I'd realised fairly late on, so had had to contact them by letter.  One way and another this little church has been through the mill in the last couple of years and they are bravely facing an uncertain future.

This was the only church to ask that we prayed for a world in need.

She then apologised for the selfishness of asking for prayer about their future...

Nuff said.