My conclusion that it took four days to scaffold the church building was wrong - it took ten.  Having finally completed the process the people arrived to make holes to let out the bats and block holes to keep out the birds (no, I don't get it either).  So, this morning when I looked out of my bedroom window what greeted me was this:

Delightful!  The bottom layer of tiles has been taken from the roof and what looks like a gigantic green hairnet cast over the building.  Allegedly this will keep the birds out.

Part of the same process is an exercise to 'tidy up the site.'  This too has impacted on the view from my window.

For five years I have looked out on this:

As of today I look out on this:

What seems to have happened is that all the birds that sat in the conifer have decamped into the unspecified overgrown shrub at the bottom of my decidedly unkempt garden where they sit and wait from me to offer them food in return for their choral enterprise.

I knew the conifer had to go (it will be under a house at some point in the next year) and logic says it had to be before the breeding season got underway, it was just a bit of a surprise to hear it being lopped yesterday - and I only just the picture done before it vanished.

Btw, finally gave in a bought a digital camera on the premise of recording the unbuilding of the building!

Last night I met with my Barbadian church member and his nephew (who has the most amazing Lenny Henry laugh) to plan the funeral for their brother/father.  I was interested to see what might be chosen by way of music since whilst David* is very British in his hymnody there will be relatives flying in from Barbados.  They want a British style service (rats! I could have enjoyed a good West Indian funeral) but there are just a few hints of something special.  One of the hymns chosen is 'Shall We Gather at the River' which I know but have never sung which feels really authentic.  The almost kairos moment though was when we were choosing in/out music for the crem.  After opting for 'organ music' on the way in  David and I simultaneously had the same thought for 'out' music - the test match special theme tune which has a wonderful Caribbean feel to it and is really uplifting.  In a bizarre way I'm looking forward to walking out of the 'worstest' crem on my patch to something so bouncy!

Apologies, it'll be rattling round all your heads all day now - but why should I be alone?  If you want to hear it just type it into Google and lots of versions will appear.

* Name changed

Today my copy of Baptist Theology A Four Century Study arrived.  It is an impressively fat book for the money - and on case anyone is puzzled by the typo in the image on Amazon (where theology is mis-spelled) it is correct on the book itself.  It certainly represents one heck of a lot of work by the author and in due course I will get round to reading it - well after all the other things I haven't read yet...

For some reason, the book has only one index - an index of persons which is almost exclusively an index of men (a few women, mostly writers of secondary sources, are identified).  Why?  I can buy it up to the mid-twentieth century but not thereafter.  Surely someone like Anna Maffei should be in there somewhere?  Feels like it may turn out to be another book of Baptist blokes afterall.

At the Church AGM last week we agreed to scrap deacons meetings - at least for the time being - as we are down to three deacons and it seems totally silly to hold a meeting with just these people, especially at a time when we need to increase the frequency of general Church Meetings.

What this means is that in the last five years we have increased from four to six and now to eight the number Members' Meetings (I'd like to open them up but that's a whole minefield of its own) and decreased the number of Deacons' Meetings from eight to five to zero.  On some ways I'll miss the Deacs' meetings - they has become quite open and frank with a balance of humour and careful thought, whilst the Members' meetings, although infinitely different from the first one or two I experienced remain much harder work.

Still, having cut down my number of meetings of this kind from 12 to 11 to 8 I think I've done something constructive!!

Life - or more precisely, death - goes on in Dibley and instead of slowing down for spring it seems to be increasingly impacting my little church.  (As I type that I suddenly feel self-conscious, I recently heard another minister saying it annoyed them for other ministers to refer to churches as 'mine'.  I think I get his drift but what other word should I say?  'Our' perhaps).  Yesterday I had two visits to a Leicester hospital where one of my folk is spending their final days/weeks because the professionals thought that yesterday might be 'it' (as it happened it wasn't) fitted around two services (D+1 (cluster pulpit swap) and the local Penties), today I am interring the ashes of another and on Friday conduct the funeral for the brother of yet another.  Updating some my folk yesterday, one of them said 'make it stop, I'm bored of death now.'

This made me think.  Why is it we become like little children wanting nasty (as we perceive it) things to stop or go away?  Why is it that despite our oft quoted Christian hope we still find death so difficult?  And is it OK to get 'bored' with it?

One day last week a few of us were talking about the requests for last week's funeral (ashes today) that everyone wear something red, and got onto the mechanics of funerals at crematoria.  I commented that I quite often have to deal with mis-concpetions such as 'the coffin goes through' i.e. straight into the cremator, the moment the curtains close or people who think they can collect the ashes on their way out as well as all the myths about district heating, reused coffins and mixed up remains.  One person stated very strongly 'I'd rather not know.'  And I found myself wondering 'why?'

It seems to me that in 21st century Britain (and most of 20th century Britain) we have got too far removed from death - it mainly happens in hospital, the last offices are carried out by a nurse, the undertaker does all the work of preparation and, for the most part, we arrive at a clinical crematorium to greet a shiny wooden box adorned with several hundred pounds worth of hot house flowers.  Add to this the general decline in a sense of hope beyond the grave - how many people actually have a clue what I mean when I speak of 'sure and certain hope' - and the incredible efforts to extend/prolong life at all costs (or so it seems) and it is no wonder people want it all to go away.

What a marked shift from the wonderful description of death in the hymn 'All creatures of our God and King':

And thou, most kind and gentle death

Waiting to hush our latest breath

O praise him, alleluia

Thou leadest home the child of God

And Christ, the Lord, the way hath trod

O praise him, alleluia

One of my favourite explorations (no, I don't mean explanations) of death is in the children's bereavement book 'Waterbugs and Dragonflys' which sees it as absolutely natural and a mere, but inevitable, transition from one form of life to another.

Make it stop?  Sorry, no can do.  And on reflection why would I want to anyway?  As the 'teacher' in Ecclesiastes says "there is a time to be born and a time to die."  I wouldn't mind a few less two-part funerals all at once, and I wouldn't mind it all being shared a little more widely than this shrinking little church, but I think what is really needed is a change in our thinking not a change in in the natural order of things.