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.

The Baptist Union has been ordaining women to ministry for something like 80 years, yet whilst late-comer Christian traditions have reached parity on ordinations of men and women, female Baptist ministers remain a minority in a tradition where many churches oppose our existence.  It is a sad fact that there is a need for 'places' where those of us who have survived the perils of the path to ministry, and the ongoing thorns and thistles of doing/being what God has called us to, can gather not to whinge, not to huddle in some kind of holy-coven, but to share, celebrate, commiserate, affirm and encourage each other.  I wish such fora were not needed, but they are.

There was much that was great about the day - some inspiring stories of work individuals are doing, some honest sharing of struggles and heartbreak, some laughter, and some calorie-free chocolate biscuits.  OK I made up the last bit, but it was overall a good day.  Particularly good was to have the two men ministers who are part of our Regional Team with us, two men who are good advocates for justice in ministerial recognition and whose support and encouragement have been, and are, valued by many of us.

Less good was the sense that the Union is struggling to address this issue, that it is not seen as having the same priority as some other issues.  I think if these other issues were world hunger or people trafficking or supporting those on the margins of our own societies, I'd be sympathetic, but they aren't.  Many more eloquent speakers have spoken on this topic and many/most women of my generation are reluctantly drawn into the idea that this is an issue, because in 'the real world' it wasn't - for the most part we aren't rabid feminists (or not rabid anyway ;0) )and just long to be affirmed in the work to which God has called us.  To be fair, I think the Union does recognise that it is the women ministers, students and single blokes who get the toughest churches, and that among these are some of the finest ministers we have.  What is harder is to challenge a culture that sees small, elderly, HMF, inner city, rural, mutli-ethnic, deprived area (etc) churches as the ones that either are what you do on the way to something better (for which read bigger, more prosperous, nicer area) or because you can't get anything better in the first place.  This is an insult to churches and ministers alike.  I wonder what God thinks, looking at the Church and seeing its divisions not by theology or tradition but by 'successful' 'unsuccessful' demarcation, knowing that those in the tougher contexts are often those God has gifted especially?

Travelling home with a friend, I asked her if she felt 'affirmed and celebrated' the title of the day.  She said, and I would concur, that she felt affirmed and encouraged, but was less sure about the celebration aspect.  Perhaps it is semantics, and perhaps it needs more church-wide acknowledgement recognition of the ongoing role of women in God's work - from Shiphrah and Puah, Deborah, Rahab, Ruth, Hannah, Mary, Elizabeth, Johanna, Eunice and Lois to Mary Jones, Lottie Moon, Catherine Branwell Booth, Mother Theresa, Miss Rennant, Miss Timmis and so on.  Oh, and if there are any of these names you don't know, I rest my case!

Overall, a good day, worth repeating, but needs care to keep its focus Godwards and its approach reflexive as time goes by.

Lunch Club day today - one of the highlights of my month.  It was proper driecht (which I still cannot remember how to spell, depsite having been told by real Scots several times) this morning, and by the time we returned home, fine, chilling rain was falling.  I was glad of stew and dumplings followed by rice pudding and jam - proper comfort food!

For several of our folk this was the first time they'd been out this week - and would probably be the last unless the weather improved.  Sobering to think what a high spot this monthly lunch is for so many people.

This month we had an unusually high number of sickness absences - another sign that winter is on its way - and the really sad task of refunding an advance payment for the Christmas dinner to someone who will be dead by then.  There was something very poignant about that, not least because this person has relatively recently found happiness in a new romantic relationship.  Such is the fragility and tentative nature of golden years romance.

We also had a new member, a woman who has an MBE and is remarkably proud of the fact, and makes sure everyone knows, something which annoys several others.  It is a shame that we can't always look fast the veneer to see the frail and frightened human inside, the lonely woman who has fund-raised tirelessly for charity and now faces long, empty days herself.

The whole event seemed to have a cosy glow about it, an unhurried pace, a sense of wellbeing and welcome.  I hope that in some small measure we brought into the lives of these folk the Light that cannot be extinguished and the hope that is beyond age.