This afternoon I took a young couple to the Registry Office in County Hall for a 3p.m. appointment to complete their wedding paperwork.  I knew they were cutting it fine - and did not appreciate the fact that the registrar told me off!  This was my fault how precisely?!  The date was fixed a year ago but due to their personalities they left everything until the last possible moment which meant our local registry office had no appointments left and the one I took them to (because they have no transport) could only offer the last slot of the day... on the last day they could register to marry on their chosen date.  I know I don't do late (big time) but surely for something this important it was cutting things just a bit too fine by anyone's standards - what if there had been a hitch (and there so nearly was)?  I dunno, the youf of today...

Just spent two days on the BUGB racial justice training course.  It's important stuff and the content was good, if at times a little intense with inadequate time to reflect and a quite a lot of closing down issues if the temperature rose slightly.  I came away not quite sure how to feel really - justice issues operate at so many levels and impact so many people.  The danger is that they seem to set one group of 'victims' over against another as they vie for who has it worse.  I think I'd have liked an extra day, some more time to reflect and smoe proper space for in depth conversations.  But then someone else said it could all have been done in one day...

In the evening I was at GB finishing off a series of 'stories that Jesus told' and used the Good Samaritan and some of the ideas from the course.  I was impressed by the natural sense of justice my girls expressed and the oh so open vulnerability of the one who gets bullied at school because she has incontinence problems.  I hope they know we love them and value them in all their diversity.  Most of these girls grow up in relative poverty on a sink estate where drugs, alcohol and incest are prevalent.  Who will be their voice?  At least we can welcome them and encourage them.

Courses are safe, hypothetical and clean; life is messy and dirty.  So long as it feels like a battle to see who is more unjustly treated we are getting it wrong.  Only when we all admit we get a lot of it wrong but that we are trying to get it right will any real progress be made.

It was good whilst at Hothorpe to catch up with a few readers/bloggers putting faces to names and sound to image.  Now back to the mundane of everyday ministerial life.

One of the threads in yesterday's service was about rainbows - how I got there from Jesus sleeping in a boat and Paul's catalogue of character forming suffering is not immediately obvious, and certainly it came via my chocie of 'O love that wilt not let me go' as for post sermon hymn.

Somewhere along the line, it struck me that you can't have a rainbow without rain.  Yes, OK, everyone else thinks that's soooo obvious now I've said it, but have you ever thought it?  OK, you had, so it' just me.  Storms are (part) of what makes rainbows possible: no storm, no beautiful colours in the sky.

Using an electronic concordance and the word 'rainbow' I landed in Ezekiel and found my link: 'beholds, the brightness of God's glory is like a rainbow after the storm.'

Our opening prayers picked up something of this rainbow theme.  A quick internet search found a few ideas which I adapted and extended.  This isn't great poetry or even great liturgy but hopefully you can see what I tried to do...

Ezekiel 1:22b, 26, 27b-28a

I saw something that was sparkling like ice, and it reminded me of a dome.  I then saw what looked like a throne made of sapphire, and sitting on the throne was a figure in the shape of a human.  The figure was surrounded by a bright light, as colourful as a rainbow that appears after a storm.  I realised I was seeing the brightness of the LORD's glory!

Prayer

Behold, the brightness of God’s glory is like a rainbow after a storm.

Glorious God we approach your presence in awe and wonder, afraid to behold your face because we know our own unrighteousness.  And yet, in mercy, in grace and in tender love you reach out and draw us close, like a mother lifts her child to the security of her lap.  And so we bring you our prayers, rainbow coloured reflections of thanksgiving and praise.

We thank you, oh Lord, for all things red – the ladybird’s back and the rose’s velvet petals; the fragile poppy and the sweet flesh of strawberries.  For lips to speak and to kiss; for life-blood coursing in our bodies; for hearts of love.  We thank you, oh Lord, for all things red.

We thank you, oh Lord, for all things orange – the crunch of carrots and sweet stickiness of satsumas; the marigold’s flower and setting sun’s glow.  For tropical goldfish; for wild dandelions; for the warmth of flames and the value of gold.  We thank you, oh Lord, for all things orange.

We thank you, oh Lord, for all things yellow – the curve of bananas and the mellow flesh of melons; the fur of the lion and the butterfly’s wings.  For golden-haired toddlers; for the summer sun; for sandy beaches and ice-cream cones.  We thank you, oh Lord, for all things yellow.

We thank you, oh Lord, for all things green – for tiny shoots peeping through the earth in spring and summer’s tall grasses; for cabbages and broad beans, broccoli and peas.  For budgerigars; for traffic lights; for forests and meadows.  We thank you, oh Lord, for all things green.

We thank you, oh Lord, for all things blue – for the bright summer sky and the kingfisher’s shiny plumage; for tiny forget-me-nots and mountains streams.  For the muted blue of elderly eyes; for the lights on emergency vehicles; for ocean waves and millpond seas.  We thank you, oh Lord, for all things blue.

We thank you, oh lord, for all things indigo – for midnight skies spangled with stars, for juicy blueberries; for shiny aubergines.  For the comfort of denim jeans; for exotic patterns from far away lands; for mystery and wonder.  We thank you, oh Lord, for all things indigo.

We thank you, oh Lord, for all thing violet – for tiny crocuses defying the winter’s cold, for mountains in the twilight, for the scent our grandmother’s wore.  For old women who wear purple, and old men who whistle; for evening stillness and morning dew.  We thank you, oh Lord, for all things violet.

We thank you, oh Lord, in whom all things hold together, for your countless blessings to us each day.  As we offer our rainbow-hued prayers, may we become more aware of your glory surrounding and embracing us, and may our worship be acceptable to you as we offer it in the name of Christ.  Amen.

People, especially Celts, speak of 'thin places', places where the gap between earth and heaven is palpably less than elsewhere.  I'm never sure that this is a geographical thing so much as an inner, spiritual or even dare I say emotional one, but I kind of get what they mean.  (If there are thin places there are also dense places - those places of forboding where birds don't sing and death or agony hangs heavy.  But that's another story).

Theologians speak of kairos moments, of points in history where God pierces human history in startling and wonderful ways.  Again, I'm not always sure this so much a surge in divine activity as a greater human openness to the ever-active work of God.

Whether they are thin places or kairos moments or just a sense of being caught up in 'something significant that is happening' they do happen.  Just sometimes there is a sense of being in tune with God in a more significant way - what people sometimes call mountain top moments - not because you feel deliriously happy (though you may) but you sense something more is, hmm, what is the word?  Abounding maybe?  The only word I have is mystery, mysterion, the wonder that saucer-eyed children express so wonderfully.

Christians get a bit funny about the word 'coincidence' suggesting it means random chance when actually, etymologically and in risk assessment language, it simply means happening at the same time (or for risk assessors within a specified, short time window).  God-incidence is a kind of twee Christianised version to make it ok to spot them.  But they happen.  And this week they've been happening.

On Saturday 18th June 2005 the final service took place in Dibley Baptist Church before we closed it.  On Friday 19th June 2009 the final bricks were razed as demolition was completed.  Co/God-incidence?  Kairos?  Thinness?  Maybe.

On Saturday 18th June 2005 a journey of ministry in the 'wilderness' of being a church without any walls began.  On Saturday 20th June 2009 the call to leave that ministry and go to a new place came.  A kairos point?  A thin place?  God breaking through?  I think so.

On Friday 19th June 2009 a task reached completion.  On Saturday 20th June 2009 a new one began.  How's that for timing?

Is it all too tidy, this near exactness of four years?  Or is it God's humour for a woman who loves order and symmetry?

Is this a mountain top moment, a hill head experience, as one friend has wittily pointed out?

After the rising and sleeping, rising and sleeping of meantime ministry these last five and a half years has the plant grown to harvest?

This is an odd post because this is an odd day.  A good day.  A God day.  But odd no less.

At 3p.m. my congregation will told that I have accepted a call to another church, far away.  It is the end of a process we have shared because it has been an odd process: Dibley Baptist Church is small and elderly and even with maximum HMF support can no longer afford to employ me.  I am almost halfway through a period of notice to terminate the pastorate on financial grounds, and so have sought a new pastorate with the full knowledge of my folk.  They have faced their decision with courage and humility: I am proud of them.  I am excited about my new call - it is far, far away from Dibley (and if you read closely a clue as to where is in this post!) to a very different groups of disciples on a very different journey (even if it does include another building project!) and will bring new opportunities and new challenges (as well as new readers!)

This post will appear online at 15:05 BST, just after I tell my folk.  The folk far, far away will know at 11:00 BST.

Some of you already know some of this, for others it is new news.  Some have shared the journey so far, others will share the next stages.

I have no idea if this is a kairos moment or just more chronos into which I'm reading things, no clue if the razing of the chapel rendered nextdoor a thin place or just a dusty one.  But I do feel as if something significant, something of God, some mystery is abroad and for now I am content to dwell within it.

The New Connexion of General Baptists began life not far from where I live, in Barton in the Beans.  According to what little of their history is readily available, they used to hold at least some of their Assemblies in "Dibley."  Yesterday it struck me that these probably took place literally opposite my house in the farmhouse-cum-inn I have looked out on (except when looking out on the chapel) these last five and a half years.

So if this is where Baptist Assembly once was...

Then maybe people should come on pilgrimages to see it!

Trouble is it's hardly ever open and has changed hands umpteen times in my time.

Rather than seaside venues maybe "back to our roots" in either Nottinghamshire (for the original General Baptists (Particulars probably came later out of some sort of primeval stew)) or Leicestershire (New Connexion) would be appropriate.