Wednesday 13 June 2012

Two years of the dance...

It's just been the second anniversary of starting ministry in Bute and Cowal.  Two years of the business of being a priest in a church community, trying to make sense of it all.

Things have changed for me, in leaving a curacy, and leaving the Church of England.  Things that really seemed to matter are held more lightly.  Things that didn't seem so interesting before are now critically important.  Boringly, I can't really say which are which, not in an open blog post at any rate!

And who knows where the next two years of the dance will take my family, my churches and I?  I suspect and intend that we will still be in Cowal and Bute, trying to make sense of it all.  But what will have changed, evolved this time?

The unexpected sherry and cake after the eucharist on Sunday on Bute was a lovely surprise.  There are still plenty of those in this life, I am delighted to report.  And God: God is there in all sorts of ways.  One has to remember to keep on looking, all the same...

Transformation



Tired after eight years of sun, rain, ice and all that England then Scotland can throw at it, poor old Dalriada's red paintwork was long since brown with yellowish patches (the latter largely from an inadvisable experiment with marine cutting compound some three or more years ago).

But no more!  Fresh from the heady delights of last week's Scottish Episcopal Church General Synod, this week I am painting a narrowboat red!  A spot of dial-in meeting to Oban has varied the pattern a little, as has collecting and delivering Elly from her S4 work placement in the Glasgow Riverside aka Jaggy-roofed Transport Museum. A little close manoeuvring in the 60 foot boat to turn the sides has been rather good for me, to remind myself that I can still do it!

And the rain has held off enough (by Weds evening) for both starboard and one of the port coats to have been applied.  That really IS a miracle in Kirkintilloch in June.

And to reflect upon all this in the context of life? Elly will be goine soon, in a couple of years, to we know not what.  And by then the shiny red paint will be rather browner than it is today.  It all continues, it all fades, and we find ourselves back again, in our metaphorical white coveralls (of which more another day) doing it all over again!  

Thanks be to God!