I am starting to outline the service for Trinity Sunday - that most unloved and avoided theme within the litrugical year.  Last year I focussed on relational trinity models and my 'divine reel of three leading to a missional grand chain' image.  This year, partly because I had a (semi-serious) request that we sit in a triangle, and partly because D+1 are with us, I have decided to go with something that I thought was more straight forward - until I tried to think of or find Bible texts to go with it!

My flash of inspiration (?) was to build the sermon slot around the words from the Book of Hours (I think)

Glory be to the Father

And to the Son

And to the Holy Spirit

As it was in the beginning

Is now

And shall be forever

So, there would be three shortish reflections around the co-equal, co-eternal Trinity.

In the beginning - Genesis 1 and John 1

Is now - John 14:15 - 22, Matthew 28:16 - 20

Shall be forever.... er..... 2 Corinthians 13:14 sprang to mind but does not have the 'for evermore' we add when we use it as a blessing.  I can't seem to find an obvious trinitarian reference in Revelation.

Anyone care to enlighten me?  I may well cheat and use the 2 Corinthians bit anyway but I'd like something else if possible.

PS The dreaded green hymnbook actually came into its own as it actually has a section of hymns on the theme of Trinity - not something SOF or MP or even BPW seems so hot on!

There was a time when the Baptist Times used to find the most tortuous connections between the stories they told and Baptist life - you know the kind of thing Mr X lived nextdoor to Mrs Y who just happened to have bought her pedigree dog from the same breeder as the former president of the Baptist Union.  So here's one that I spotted today... courtesy of Sainsbury's 140th birthday magazine supplement:

During World War II "the East Grinstead store was so badly bombed it traded temporarily from the local Baptist church" (Sainsbury's Magazine, Souvenir Supplement, third page).  So that explains why so many Baptist ministers shop at Sainsbury's!!!  (Whether or not this was a BUGB church I cannot tell but, hey, it never seemed to worry the BT...)

Whilst in there today I picked up a pack of Fry's Chocolate Cream bars for one of my ninety somethings who recalls the days when she used to buy them from vending machines on the railway station in Dibley (well the adjacent town anyway) when she went to Leicester with her husband to watch the races.  Ironic that having had a Stephenson built railway Mr Beeching stole it from us.

Pastoral care, nostalgia and weird Baptist connections - not a bad afternoon's work!

The demolition crew dismantling our former chapel building are a friendly bunch and very graciously allow me on site pretty much whenever I want to in order to photograph the process.  Although due to my holiday I missed the "window" to get inside the shell and take pictures, there is still plenty to see despite the larger machinery having arrived on site to demolish what 134 years ago was a brand new Baptist day school backing onto a brand new church.  In the photo the school part is now almost gone leaving a big hole into the former sanctuary.  The vestry, complete with its evil 1950's wall paper is still (at the time of the photo) extant and just behind the arm of the digger.

This afternoon I was visiting one of my ninety-somethings who has recently been in hospital and she was recalling how her grandfather had remembered the 'old' (wooden) chapel that stood on our grave yard and had attended the Baptist school when it was a shiny new - presumably state of the art - place.

This picture - downloaded from the web where it had been uploaded from some archives held my my folk - shows what school looked like in 1913 - hard to imagine how they fitted so many children in such a small space as it was, but they clearly did.  Hard, too, to imagine that in this photo are parents of some of my older people.  Seemingly, before free education exisited,  people paid 1d a week for reading and 1d a week for writing (no record of what they were charged for arithmetic!) so it was hardly a cheap option for miners with large families.  Running costs were subsidised by an annual 'Sermons' Sunday.

The advent of free state education meant the Baptist school closed fairly soon after the opening of this shiny new building... and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

This week is final preparations for our annual Pentecost Party - something we began four years ago and which now seems fairly well established as a Churches Together outreach.  In the next day or two I must dig out my face paints, the giant jenga and various other outdoor games in readiness for Saturday's community fun day part of it.  I must also purchase birthday candles and balloons for the Sunday open air service - that and prepare a series of short reflections including how being "spirit-filled Christians" will impact our voting in the upcoming elections!  (I have to say I was pleased when Last Sunday's intercessions touched on this thorny topic!).

I do enjoy this weekend - it is hard work for sure, but it is always rewarding.  There is something special about seeing people enjoying a free lo-tech afternoon of fun and games, and of hoping like crazy that Sunday will be dry for the outdoor service!

Of course, Pentecost this weekend means Trinity the one afterwards - which sees D+1 join with us and an Easter-tide promise to be kept to arrange the chairs in a triangle!  Hey ho.

Whilst walking the West Highland Way we passed through a place called Tyndrum.  It is almost a bend in the road, though has a fairly new municipal cemetry with exactly one grave stone to date!  Significant is that it consists of three shops - a little general store, a place called The Green Welly Stop and another called the Real Food Cafe.  The last of these was where we ate one evening, and it intrigued me more than somewhat - essentially it is an ethical chip shop serving the usual range of deep fried fare but with a conscience.  All the hot drinks are fairly traded, the disposables from sustainable sources, the fish, potatoes, meat etc. locally and/or organically sourced.  They offer gluten free batter for those who need it.  Central to the cafe are two high, communal eating tables where diners sit together to enjoy their repast.  Fresh water is freely available in jugs filled at a nearby butler sink.

The story of The Real Food cafe us told in panels on the wall - how a failing Little Chef restaurant was bought up and redeveloped as the fulfilment of a dream of a couple; how the dream was captured by those they employed and how when one of the owners died suddenly the dream was sustained by those who shared it.  Maybe there's a parable in there somewhere?

I certainly enjoyed my pie and chips washed down with lashings of tea and followed with a chunk of  homemade flapjack.  Should I be up that way again I imagine I'll stop by because there's something intrinsically yet intangibly good about ethical fast food!