Today is, according to a Radio 2 Pause for Thought this last week from a Baptist minister, so it must be right (sorry whoever you were I've forgotten your name), Refreshment Sunday.  The fourth Sunday in Lent is one when people were given respite from their Lenten abstinences for one day before they continued on towards Holy Week.

We focused our thoughts on the Markan account of Jesus being anointed at Bethany (Mark 14) and I tried to explore something about how the home of the leper Simon (how did manage to retain a home if he had this disease - was he wealthy?  Was he a lonely man with few friends/visitors because of his disease and consequent ritual uncleanliness?) provided a place of refreshment for Jesus, and the significance of the moment when Jesus allowed himself to receive the refreshing of anointing by an unnamed woman.  We pondered whether we would actually be like those who berated her for waste and found themselves shocked that Jesus, the advocate for the poor, praised her actions.  There is a tension between doing what Jesus calls us to do and being refreshed for that service.  Sometimes, I concluded what we need is not more words but less; sometimes what we don't need is another hymn or song but a time of silence.  So we did just that - we spent three minutes (the average length of a hymn)  in silence, after which I read a few verses from 2 Corinthians 4 (treasure in clay pots) and gave everyone a lovely illustrated text of 2 Cor 4:7 I'd found online.

It seemed to do whatever was needful - some shed a few tears, others simply relaxed in the stillness.  Baptists are not known for our use of silence or stillness; sometimes I think maybe we fear it.  Whatever the truth may be, for us today needing refreshment for our own journeys, it was the right thing to have done.

The crematorium where I was this morning, like so many others nowadays is phasing out real live organists (though we had one) in favour of automated computer systems, notably one called Wesley (after John or Charles maybe?).  The advantage is that rather than home-burned CDs that fail to play, scratched ones that skip or tapes that get chewed the music can be downloaded and plays clearly.  What happens when the computer goes on the blink is another matter altogether - but we nearly found out this morning.  For some reason, this particular place expects the Funeral Directors to control the music via a touch-screen at the back of the chapel (which for us meant him having to move some of the people to get to it) rather than their staff doing it behind mirrored glass.  For some reason he had to press the start button four times before the music began and was starting to look rather worried by the time the strains of 'soul limbo' began to fill the air.

The upside was that as the music started a murmour of gentle laughter rippled through the chapel and people began to smile again.  It was hard to walk slowly and in a dignified manner to such bouncy music but as I exited the chilly chapel into the warm spring sunshine it felt like a "good job jobbed" - even drawing praise from a fiery West Indian lay preacher!

What Mr Wesley might make of his name being used for the infernal machine I have no idea, but suspect he'd have liked the tune as he is one of the many allegedly to have denied Satan royalities on good tunes.

Dibley Baptist is a very old-fangled place in many ways.  We have a traditional roll book which each member signs as they are received into membership.  It's a good tradition, which promotes a sense of continuity - at least as far back as the opening of the now closed building!

This morning, for the second time in a fortnight, I've had to update the book, adding the final date for one of our members, whose name now appears on another roll in another dimension.  Having to leaf back several pages past the angular biro of recent years to the beautiful copperplate of the 1940's I passed over two hundred names to find this name received 'on profession of faith' and add the date of death.  How many have passed through the portals of this place in those intervening years, and where are they all now, I wondered?

It is a weird sense of privilege to open this book and record the deaths of those who make up this little church in this little corner of God's world.

Rest well, companion in Christ, your work is done.

This from ASBO Jesus made me smile...

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!