"If Father Quinn did carry out a blessing or some form of religious event, then it was wrong and it has absolutely no validity in the eyes of the Catholic Church and in the eyes of the Lord."  So says Father Ostigoni according to the Daily Record, when referring to the Rooney wedding at a deconsecrated monastery.   I can live with his views with respect to the catholic church or even civil law, afterall under UK law a marriage to be legally recognised has (at the moment) to take place in appropriately licenced premises and be conducted by, or in the presence of, a suitably authorised person.  But, having said that, I recall my horror when the RC priest I worked with recorded martial status of the parents of a baby he was about to baptise as 'unmarried' because they had been married in a registry office.  Maybe it's back to the 'irregular but not invalid' argument?

What really grates is the claim that God doesn't recognise the marriage.  Without wishing to start up the whole debate of what God does recognise as a marriage, never mind go near the area the Anglicans are embroiled with, I just wish we could all learn to be a little less keen to tell people what God won't like or acknowledge, then just maybe they might feel a little more inclined to give church a chance.  I know it's not easy, and the church should stand up for what it believes to be right, I just can't help feeling a little more humility might be helpful.  Somehow I can't imagine Jesus at Cana checking that the minutiae of local legal niceties had been followed before sending the servants off to fill those enormous water jars...

Last night I was phoned to help out my 12 year old niece with her science homework, which was an A-Z of terms associated with fuels and energy (allegedly, some of the questions clearly weren't!).  To my shame, I failed on one question which was 'thermal d...'

As it was read out over the phone, and as I don't know what the topic actually was, and as I don't recall the Year 7 'lie' I can't be sure what the intent was.  But does anyone have a four-letter (polite!) d-word for thermal in their vocabulary?

I was just quite pleased that I could instantly answer the question 'solvent for chewing gum' beginning with 'x' as xylene - but only because that's the only solvent I could think of beginning with that letter!  And I had to smile that my sister had not sussed that a word beginning with 'y' for a cold, sooty bunsen flame was yellow!  All good fun.

I am now a third of the way through reworking my essay - not fast progress, but progress, and I have a clearer idea of how to do the next third.  So I am allowed one post as a reward!!!

Yesterday I bumped into a couple of my folk in the building society in town where we paying money into our respective accounts.  These are good, honest people in fairly lowly paid jobs (he a postie, she a library assistant) who are working lots of overtime to pay off the costs of their daughter's modest wedding last autumn.  Seeing them quietly get on with life, and give to church and to charities, I found it very hard to sympathise with people striking for four days because they want a 13% pay rise.  Not that the people concerned don't work hard, or work long hours or even accept some level of risk to life and limb (so, actually do posties!  Beware postie-eating squirrels), it's just hard to understand how £36k - around 50% above the national average - is not enough to live on.

In a few minutes I will be walking round to deliver an 18th birthday card for the daughter of one of our church folk, so that it arrives before they all go out for the day to celebrate.  This is a family that has recently taken delivery of a brand new car for the first time ever, and only because one member is now entitled to a mobility allowance because of illness.  It took them many hours of soul-searching to accept this facility, rather simply buying another secondhand vehicle, because they know that, compared to many people, they are quite well off.

Tomorrow I face the task of trying to find a dentist - any dentist - who can repair or remove a tooth that broke on Friday morning.  Thankfully it is not painful but the rough edges are shredding my tongue!  Despite various attempts over the last four years I have failed to find an NHS dentist with any vacancies, and it seems the God who can turn fillings to gold for charismatics doesn't repair the teeth of HMF funded ministers!  Recently I met someone who is an NHS salaried dentist 'and proud of it', perhaps it is no surpise he is also a committed Christian.  Unfortunately he is over 100 miles away, so I can't call upon his services!!

All of this makes me think about the difference being a disicple of Jesus makes to attitudes, and how sometimes, when all is just pootling along, I fail to notice the quiet transformation of those among whom I minister.

PS I don't think God should fix my tooth, it would just be so convenient if God did!

I love the technical episcopalian (in the broad sense of the word, not any denomination of a similar title) description of free church ordination as 'irregular but not invalid.'  I do wonder if, at a stretch, I could claim mine ought to seen as 'regular' since one of the people who laid hands on me was an Anglican priest, but hey, who really cares?!

This week in the course of various conversations, various thorny topics have arisen to which this same phrase offers some helpful - I think - perspective.  (None of this gets my essay done, but it will happen, honestly!)

So, for example, someone was involved in a churches together forum discussing inter-faith marriage and was sharing how there had been some 'textual ping-pong' over the apparent prohibition of the 'unequal yoke' the concept of salvation via a believing spouse and some of the OT occasions where the Israelites were commanded to intermarry.  Having married a couple of (nominally) different faiths in an overtly Christian ceremony, maybe I'm already irredeemably compromised, but I am convinced that if 'unusual' (a softer word than irregular) the marriage is 100% valid not just in law, but also in the sight of God.  And in any case, I still hope God turns out to be universalist, despite doctrines otherwise and my own inability to get there theologically.

Another example was about infant Baptism in an LEP and what part the Baptist minister ought to play - assuming that she/he was not willing to baptise infants.  The question that especially fascinated me was at what stage (deliberate choice of word rather than 'age') a request regarding a minor should be seen as believer Baptism rather than infant Baptism?  Some of all of this depends on what one believes Baptism 'does' (if anything other than get the person extremely wet).  This isn't a simplistic 'sacrament v ordinance' argument since there seem to be a whole range of variations of theologies within each of those broad perspectives.  Maybe I am an even bigger heretic, but as a literal anabaptist (Methodist infant, Baptist believer) and having thought long and hard (10+ years!) before being Baptised/re-baptised (depending on your take on it all) I am very loathe to dismiss as automatically invalid a rite that expresses something important theologically - even if many theologies of infant baptism I cannot begin to subscribe to.  My own view on requests from younger 'minors' for Baptism would probably echo those of many of my peers in other traditions to requests for confirmation: I'd spend some time carefully exploring with the young person what their request meant and then (because in my heretic theology there is no salvific function in Baptism so delay doesn't matter (cf the RC priest who said of my niece at her baptism, this means that she is now guaranteed to go to heaven, and presumably wasn't beforehand)) ask them to come back to me in 6 months to a years time if they still wished to proceed, whilst in the meantime endeavouring to support their nurture.  This isn't about doubting their sincerity, but acknowledging the reality that in young children there can be intense, shortlived passions.  I know that Corrie ten Boom made a profund faith commitment at the age of 5, but I suspect she still accepted the disciplines of her church.  When does it stop being infant baptism and become believer baptism - that is a really fascinating question!

I like weeks that stir my grey cells a little.  Although I wouldn't choose to drive the great part of 1000 miles during a working week, it has given me some thinking space, which has been valuable.  Now I really must stop the distraction tactics and do some work!

Sometimes a blog is useful just as a space to dump stuff that is unprocessed or even trivial but is 'better out than in.'

It's been an odd week.  So far I driven about 450 miles, I have about another 250 tomorrow.  I have seen a lot of motorway, burned a lot of diesel and listened to a fair amount of Radio2 and Classic FM.  I have seen lots of people, some I know well, some I met for the first time, and have talked about all manner of things to do with church life and ministry.  At the time of typing I have just concluded a deacons' meeting that was blooming hard work.  As I closed the door and banged my head (gently) against the wall, I reflected that I'd almost prefer a 'bad' deacons meeting to a turgid one.  Sorry lovely deacon-type people, I know you are all tired and stressed and probably would rather have stayed home with a bottle of wine than signed umpteen legal documents and talked about all the things that are struggling due to lack of personnel.

The thing that has troubled me most today was the man who was killed in a queue in Sainsbury's.  I can't quite get my head around how two families went out to do their shopping, and now all their lives are irrevocably changed.  Clearly neither of them went out to pick a fight, and neither went out to kill or be killed.  Now one man lies in a mortuary and the other has been arrested for his killing.  I have a mental image of orange plastic carrier bags, dented tins, broken glass and spilled milk strewn across a shop floor as some kind of grotesque marker of what happened.  I find myself needing to pray for both families.  And I am left with an unanswerable question of how someone can go out to do their food shop and end up killing someone else.  This man's life, too, is in tatters, his dreams destroyed, his future redefined.  It's one of those situations that drives you to the psalms in search of words to express the questions to which you know you will not find answers.

I still haven't started on my essay re-write - it's scheduled to start on Saturday, so I hope for a good productive day.  So still not much posting for a while longer.  Whilst I can honestly say I haven't exactly missed posting, it is also good to know that this channel is here should I need somewhere to dump stuff.  It has also been good over the last few days to put faces to few more of you loyal readers and connect up a few more of the dots in this weird family of Baptists!