Yesterday the clocks changed. We sprang forward an hour, which means we have daylight until at least seven thirty tonight and probably eight o’clock.
There was a miracle attached to this happening. Just a small one, but a miracle none the less.
Yesterday was the fifth Sunday of March, so we had a joint service, with all six parishes of our benefice (group) meeting together in one of the churches for a Communion service.
And here’s the miracle – nobody turned up an hour late! The clocks always change on a Saturday night, so church always gets clobbered. People turn up an hour late in the Spring and an hour early in the Autumn. But yesterday everyone was on time! How about that?
Perhaps it was because two thirds of the usual congregation take a day off when it’s a fifth Sunday. Not that I blame them. The weather was good and the great outdoors was calling and no doubt they found God in the garden.
It’s definitely the wind down (or should that be wind up?) now for Easter. Next week is Holy Week, when I don’t have time to breathe, but once Easter is over, it’s relaxation for the rest of the year.
Well, nearly. No more major festivals until Harvest, just the weddings, baptisms and funerals….
All good fun if you don’t weaken.
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Just joined Twitter. Daft, I know. You’d think I had better things to do with my time than looking for friends to play with on the net, but if you happen to be on Twitter (or are thinking of joining) do look me up. Would love to twitter inanely with blog friends.
Our big traffic roundabout is now finished, after eight months of road works. But it’s well worth it. You can now turn right out of the village onto the main road (remember we drive on the left over here) without taking your life in your hands. Previously it was a quick prayer and an even quicker dash. It was the number of accidents, several of them fatal, which eventually persuaded the authorities that something had to be done. Of course, they’re refusing to light the roundabout. They’ve put in the necessary cable, but refuse to install lights until they see whether they’re necessary. So that means a few more accidents in the dead of winter, I suppose, before we get any lighting. The village is up in arms about that, but yesterday an ancient milestone was inserted as a kind of ‘topping out’ ceremony and we are all extremely thankful that the roundabout is completed, open for business and working well.
Not that I’ll get a huge amount of use out of it since I retire in August and needs must move away. Oh well. C’est la vie.
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The Ladyday service with the Deanery Mothers’ Union was yesterday.
Ladyday is the also called ‘The Annunciation’, for it’s the day when the Angel Gabriel informed Mary (hence ‘Lady’ day) that she was to become pregnant with Jesus. Must have happened extremely quickly after that – count the months and you’ll see what I mean!
In the Church of England, the country is divided into geographical areas roughly corresponding to English counties, called ‘Dioceses’. Every diocese is subdivided into geographical areas corresponding to nothing, called ‘Deaneries’. every Deanery is subdivided into areas roughly corresponding to villages, called ‘parishes.’ Each parish used to have its own priest, but nowadays parishes are grouped together into ‘benefices’. There are six active parishes and two parishes with redundant churches in my benefice and altogether, seven benefices with thirty two parishes in this deanery.
Back to the Mothers’ Union – a worldwide Anglican organisation dedicated to promoting and strengthening family life.
The deanery members met yesterday for their Ladyday service – there were about fifty, including two men (who make interesting mothers.)
I preached the sermon about the rape of Tamar and its consequences – Absalom’s insurgence against his father David, resulting in Absalom’s death – and they loved it! I guess they don’t get too much of the shocking material from the Bible in the normal course of events.
Today I’m taking assembly with nine to eleven year olds, so I shall tell them a story about Prince Agadir and see what they make of that!
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Took Home Communion to M. today. I haven’t been to her since December, because she was whisked off into hospital in January with a chest infection and remained there for around six weeks or so.
M. was ninety-seven last Wednesday. She’s back in her own home, living alone, but today for the first time since I’ve been taking her Home Communion in ten years, I made the tea. We always have a cup of tea together after the little service and M. has always got the cups and saucers ready on a tray.
There’s a kind of ritual to make perfect tea and M. is a dab hand at it. First she boils the kettle, then pours a little hot water into the teapot to warm it, then she spoons in the loose tea (never tea bags!), puts milk in the cups, then comes and sits down again for four minutes while the tea brews. Then she’s up again, it’s a final stir and she pours out the tea and carries each cup in one at a time. Then we sip our tea and she tells me all about the latest exploits of the family.
But today! Today she is much thinner. Today she remained sat in her chair and when I offered to make tea, she let me. It wasn’t anything like as good as her tea since I failed to warm the pot and couldn’t be bothered to wait for the full four minutes, but she didn’t complain. Then she let me take the cups out and wash everything up.
So I’m now wondering. Is M. beginning to fail? I do hope not – it would be so sad – but I guess I can’t really expect anything else.
That’s over, then. Mothering Sunday, that is. Ah, yours may not be. But over here in dear old Blighty, we celebrate Mothering Sunday on the fourth Sunday in Lent, which was yesterday. (We had it first, by the way! Started in the seventeenth century, when servant boys and girls were allowed a day off to visit their parents and were often given a Simnel cake to take with them. Simnel? An old couple, Simon and Nell, who were always arguing. They wanted to make a fruit cake, which he said should be boiled but she said should be baked. Since they couldn’t agree, they did both.)
We had a few children in church, so I started with a quiz about mothers which I filched off the internet. Questions like, what was the longest interval between siblings produced by the same mother? Answer: an unbelievable 41years! First child born when the mother was nineteen, last born when she was sixty. Or how about this one? The largest number of children born to one woman? Answer: again unbelievably, sixty nine! Several sets of twins and triplets and two sets of quads amongst the brood.
It all made for a bit of fun, but I made the mistake of joking that if I had that many children I’d have to call them by a number, rather than a name. One of our lovely older members came up to me afterwards with tears in his eyes, telling me that he’d been brought up in an institution (Barnardos) where he’d been number twenty five for as long as he could remember. Oops! Shan’t make that mistake again.
There were posies for everyone present in church, made of daffodils and carnations, given out by the children.
When we got home, our eldest daughter and family came over (complete with a bunch of flowers and a bottle of wine – very acceptable) and our son proffered a large box of chocolates, so a good day.
I took a baptism in the afternoon and have decided that baptising the first child in a family is much easier than baptising any subsequent babies. By the time you get to the second child, the first is around three and has many little friends also around three, who shout and yell and run round the church in great glee. Not easy trying to take a baptism under those circumstances.
Still, I live to tell the tale and have another baptism next Sunday afternoon. Happily, that’s a first child. Must be easier. Mustn’t it?
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