A typical week in Lent in Dibley.  In my kitchen two cauldrons (well, OK, slow cookers) are bubbling away with homemade vegetable broth for the Lent prayers and lunch, which this year is based on material from The Leprosy Mission, to which we will give the money raised.  We'll also eat a lot of cheese - I have folk who will put 4oz of stilton on one cracker and wonder why they have cholesterol problems, hmm!  I am looking forward to it - good fellowship and great fun as well as anticipated to raise over £100 for charity in the six weeks its runs.  I can look back with fondness to the little Methodist church near Warrington whose annual Christian Aid lunches were the inspiration for this.

Tomorrow is the first Churches Together Lent Meeting on Christ and the Chocolaterie, which I am leading.  After Sunday's great turn out for the film, I am feeling quite optimistic about it.  I might even nip to the Co-op for some Fairtrade cookies for everyone to eat (just in case Andy J is checking!).  It is six years since I used this study at a Baptist church in south Manchester and have to confess that memories of how it went there encouraged me to offer it here.

Saturday is Girls' Brigade Young Leaders training, and I am assigned 'communication skills.'  Working with each of the three levels (any one who has been out of GB for more than a few years will not realise that the days of Grades 1, 2, 3 and Warrant Officer are no more, replaced by Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced!).  With the youngest group I am doing 'story telling' and have found myself thinking back to those who taught me how to read and tell stories effectively.  Whilst recitation at primary school (it was still around in the late 60's and early 70's) was a chore, at least we learned how to be expressive, and I have fond memories of Sunday School teachers and GB leaders who encouraged me to read in church, to lead devotions and who taught me about voice and facial expression in story telling.  With the two older groups I'm doing stuff on non-verbal communication (for good and ill) and visual aids.  For some reason Girls' Brigade seem to think that people still need to know about flannelgraphs - something I never encountered until someone cleared out a cupboard here in Dibley.  Happy memories of GB training at Grendon Hall in Northamptonshire and Lake House Bexhill sit alongside recalling the girls I've trained in various counties over almost three decades (scary!)

Sunday we mark the end of Fairtrade Fortnight with a dedicated service at church.  I am hoping that just maybe, after over five years of being a Fairtrade church, we might actually agree to register as one!  Recalling the awful apology for coffee we drank 20 years ago and looking at the amazing range of products available now, remembering Rachel preaching on Fairtrade at college almost a decade ago and even the struggles I had five years ago to convince people to try Fairtrade coffee which they'd 'tried once years ago and it was awful' - what a long way it has come from the Christian fringe to mainstream supermarket fayre.

In between are the usual round of hospital and care home visits, funerals, the 'Lunch Club' and 'Thing in a Pub' to keep me from idleness.

On Friday I am due to post at Hopeful Imagination on a book that has shaped my spiritual thinking.  This is interesting, because as I think back I realise it is memories of the books, not what they actually say, that has stayed with me.  And it may be this, among other things, that has prompted me to spot connections running through my life, memories which are uniquely mine, filtered through my 'eyes' and my understanding, whilst simultaneously shaping the person I am.

Today's prayer meeting will begin with a recording of (part of) the Barber Adagio for Strings, the haunting strains of which always lead me to reflect on my life (maybe because it is used a lot at crems?).  Not sure I'd want 'Cheese, Chocolate and Coffee' on my tombstone (assuming of course that when the time comes I change my mind and get buried rather than burned and freed to the four winds) but it is good to look back in gratitude on the people and places, as well as the books, that have shaped me and, through me, shape others.

This is funny!  HT Baptist Bookworm

A good evening in Dibley!  As a run in to our Churches Together Lent studies using Christ and the Chocolaterie we showed the film at the parish church this evening.  The Anglicans supplied popcorn, lollipops, tea, coffee and soft drinks as well as virtual surround sound and a good sized screen.  I supplied the all important DVD!

Excellent fun - about forty people present including a few who'd come with their church going spice (spouses) - yes!

I was relieved when no-one was offended by the odd expletive or the slightly explicit bits.

Pretty well everyone agreed it was worth doing again with another film to be followed by conversation - or even just for fun.

A good night all in all.

Yesterday was almost a day off - I won't disclose how many work phone calls interrupted it (despite the answerphone) - and included a trip to Borders at Fosse Park (for once devoid of other Baptists so far as I could tell!) to browse the shelves and pick up a few novels for relaxation.  I bought four and by the end of the day had devoured two of them!

The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson, Portobello 2009 (not the only book of this title it seems from a check on Amazon) is a very quick read (took about 90 minutes) slightly quirky and definitely in the 'feel good' genre which is 'a moving story of the final moment of a life and of a lifelong romance.'  Gentle without being twee, it was enough to generate a little bit of thought whilst providing relaxation.

By contrast, Before I Die by Jenny Downham, Black Swan 2008, is more challenging.  It is a first person narrative of a sixteen year-old girl with terminal illness as she works through her list of things she wants to do before her death.  Definitely not a children's book (some fairly explicit, if elegantly written, sex scenes as well as drugs and law breaking!) but feels authentic as a teenage narrator.  I found lots of resonance with questions I've pondered at various times over the years - how would the final weeks be spent?  Do the 'rules' change when time runs out?  What might those final days or moments be like?  The story is never ghoulish or mawkish, rather it draws it reader into Tessa's world - or is it maybe that of our own inner-teenager - as well as that of her family and friends.  I found myself oddly reminded of the biblical story of Jephthah's daughter, who went off to spend her final days with her friends before being slaughtered to fulfil her foolish father's vow, simply because it raises the questions of what constitutes a fulfilled life.

The other two books aren't (ostensibly) about death and dying but we shall see!

Children sing of it at Christmas - 'the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay' - and the synoptic gospels tell of it 'the grown up Lord Jesus asleep in a boat' and this morning I found myself recalling a sermon I heard in a small church in Manchester almost six years ago that explored this theme.

In childhood we learned to sing 'with Jesus in the vessel you can smile at the storm' but of course adult life shows you it isn't always like that - certainly it wasn't for the little church where the sermon was preached, and although now that storm is long past and they did indeed weather it, there was a lot of pain and struggle on the way.

The Markan accounts are often noted for their 'zap, pow' pace and brevity, but every now and then an adjective or detail slips in that nuances the whole thing - whether it is people sitting on green grass (6:39) or Jesus sleeping on a cushion (4:38) as the boat risks being swamped in the storm.  I have no idea what a first century cushion was like, but the implication seems clear enough - Jesus is comfortable and relaxed, sparked out after his preaching and teaching whilst the disciples presumably are awake and sitting in the boat, maybe even sailing it.  They see the storm brewing (not something that unusual on Lake Genessaret), they get cold and wet and frightened and 'grown up Lord Jesus'?  'Just z's he makes!'  So they have to wake him up - incensed that he is blissfully slumbering while they fear death by drowning (the worst conceivable fate).

The preacher who spoke on this passage reminded her congregation that though it seems Jesus is indeed in the land of nod, he is present in the boat, in the storms they face.  But just maybe, she noted, he needs to be shaken awake!  Not because he doesn't care, but because we need to be real, to admit and express our fears of drowning.

Life for churches, individuals and whole nations is incredibly stormy at the moment - and maybe this story, with a Jesus who is present but seems as much use as a chocolate teapot in his somnulent state has resonance.  Maybe we need to rouse him (or at least our perception of him) risking the accusation of 'little faith' (though he also says that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains) and hear him 'shush' the wind and waves, or at least 'shush' the inner storms of our hearts and minds.

Desist! Be aware of I AM God - I WILL BE, exalted among all the nations, in the whole of creation (Psalm 46:10, my paraphrase)