This from Lucy attracted my attention with its powerful idea of the sense of a 'God who doesn't turn up' when expected - or act as we might desire - and what they might say about how we understand (or don't) God.  It made me ponder again the concept of 'real absence' and some of the ideas in the apophatic tradition.  Good stuff to be pondering, and so relevant for the many I know who are experiencing their own 'dark nights' at the moment.

I will continue to mull over the idea of God not turning up - not least in relation to those servcies I sometimes go to where the leader invites Jesus/God/Holy Spirit to come and meet us, rather than inviting us to become aware of the presence of God who is more real than we are...

Thanks Lucy, for making me think.  Hope the 'unsettlement' process is going OK for you.

Later this morning I will be conducting a funeral for D+1.  An elderly woman who'd suffered with dememtia for almost a decade, and who had outlived by around 18 months a husband whose funeral I conducted last year.  Until I sat down to type this, I had not grasped the fact that this is the first time I will conduct the second funeral of a couple - I've done a fair few siblings and cousins, but not until today a 'surviving' partner of someone I'd farewelled.

Tomorrow I will be interring her ashes in the Anglican graveyard (!) along with those of her husband.  The intention of the family, is that the two sets of ashes will be mingled in a single casket, a powerful symbol of reunion, and an action that brings to mind the creation story of Genesis 2, almost in reverse, as the two become one, bone-dust blended and laid to rest in the security of the good earth from which they were, in some sense, formed.

Evidently this ash-burying area requires that biodegradable containers be used, so that in time the contents will indeed mingle with the earth, and that, too feels good.

I am told that Ernest* has spent the last 18 months in the boot of his son's car, whilst Elsie* will be brought straight from the crematorium.  I am glad that they will, in some metaphorical sense, be reunited, and that in some truly mystic sense something of God's intent is glimpsed.

* Names have been changed.

Last night I watched the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance.  It is something of a tradition: as a child it meant being allowed to stay up late, to listen to stirring military bands (which I still enjoy whether it's PC or not!) and to watch the solemnity of falling poppy petals.  I can vaguely recall being told off once for thinking it funny that a petal landed on a young soldier's face and he simply had to let it stay there, tickling his skin.  The event has changed over the years - or at least what is shown on television has.  It feels at once more reflective and more contemporary - scarlet coated guardsmen playing base guitar on the one hand and stories of the human cost - civilian and military - on the other.  There are parts of the event that give me cause for question, but there are also powerful and poignant symbols and traditions.  I find the drumhead altar a powerful expression of impermanence, and the falling of the poppy petals is always moving.  Not an obvious visual spectacle, cameras pan around searching for something to show - piles of red on the white of a naval rating's hat, a war widow with a single petal adhering to her hair, poppy petals sliding over the book of remembrance which lies on the topmost drum.  And, this year, a shot of feet, ankle deep in crimson petals: a powerful image of the oceans of blood shed in war.

The balance between remembering and glorification is a fine one, just as is the balance between celebration and mourning a life ended.

It is deeply troubling that 90 years after the Armistice there is only one year in which a UK service-person has not been killed, and no year in which there has been no war or conflict.  There are lots of questions about the British Legion commemorations - and rightly so - but the image of shiny black leather swimming in poppy petals will stay with me for some time.

Tomorrow's Remembrance Sunday service is finally ready to go now that I have managed to sneak some sound files of Last Post and the Rouse (evidently it's not Reveille) from the good old www having discovered that the church laptop and the CD I bought last year (from some entrepreneurial chap on Ebay who was selling recordings of his own bugle playing for 99p) won't speak to each other.  Running through the slide show to check the auto-timings work, the two-minute silence during which I will be projecting the names copied from our Great War memorial plaque (an which spends most of its time on the floor of my office), it was quite powerful just to read names against a plain background with a narrow border of a poppy field at its base.  Having done my homework, I know that not one of these men was a church member, though one evidently played the church organ, and two are buried in our graveyard because they died having been sent home sick.  I haven't managed to find out anything about them, yet they were somebody's sons, somebody's brothers, who had hopes and dreams that lie buried with them somewhere overseas.

We will also be remembering our own loved ones, and I now have 10 personalised candles.  We will remember with gratitude a Regional Minister and a former minister of this fellowship, two of our members who died this summer, some parents, spouses and siblings.  Some of these people I never met, others I knew well and some I still miss - such is the nature of what we are doing.

Some one will bring a stainless steel sundae dish in which are located some rather elderly poppies, her annual contribution to the event, a tradition precious to her, if the cause of sniggering by others.  Someone will tut at the lighting of candles, this is not (evidently) what Baptists do, but some Baptists will light a candle and find hope renewed as the flickering light blurs with tears.  Someone will remember the cousin who never came home from WWII and someone her children in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Someone will question the purpose of such a service, someone will find war abhorrent while someone delight in battle imagery in relation to Christian faith.

Remembering is an important Biblical theme, and I pray that our remembering might be meaningful rather than mere tradition.

So, just days after its third birthday, this blog reaches its one thousandth post.  Probably this should be marked in some way, but beyond noting the fact, I'm not sure how.

Last night our 'thing in a pub' had no speaker, and yet still there were six of us, and those who came seem to enjoy simply chatting and being together.  We shared our sandwiches with three young care-workers having and after work drink and spoke to an older man having a quiet pint in the corner.  Apart from my vicar-disguise to keep the church folk happy, there was nothing really to advertise who we were, but it felt positive,a nd the conversation flowed quite freely, around loosely church/faith topics.  I think it served/serve a useful purpose in giving my younger widower and another lone male a place to go out on their own without pressures to do or be other than who they are.  Perhaps I should advcoate pastoral care as pub visits?!

This morning I am due to drive to Fed-Ex to collect 200 Christmas crackers and the like ready for our big outreach events.  Last night we chatted about how many of lunch club folk now think we are their church, even though they only ever come when specially invited or if we go to them.  So, mission as mince-pies maybe?

Once I have done my collecting, it will be time to head to Fosse Park for a skinny fairtrade latte, and maybe a skinny muffin, in the food court.  A time to relax and reflect, some time for me simply to be, to watch the people who mill around, and who knows, even to meet God in the midst of it all.  Enough ramblings for one day, for one thousand posts even.  Whoever and wherever you are, I hope yours is good day, and thank you for dropping by.