Consequences

If I write, and send, over 150 letters and e-mails in a short space of time, the chances are I will be inundated with replies – all in a short space of time!

Eating badly, too late in the evening has consequences that I’m not going to describe. I think now there was a bit of a nasty bug as well….

Eating poorly puts me in a bad mood. This I know, but occasionally ignore. Now is not the time to ignore it. So, a mega-huge pan of home-made veggie soup is on the agenda for tomorrow, and fruit and yogurt smoothies are likely to be made. This is soothing stuff after the consequences of yesterday, and makes up for the almost total lack of food over the last 24 hour. The carrot and coriander soup was nice, though.

Tomorrow, I am going to take myself off to collect a long awaited new book, deliver the last three letters, and then have a lazy three days after the cooking session. I might even ignore both phones and e-mails.

Giggling at the lectionary.

I have been in the practice of saying Morning and Evening Prayer for more years than I really want to think about. Mostly with others, sometimes on my own. Sometimes, when I’m having a good sulk I’ll reluctantly read a psalm and a reading, and other times, it’ll be a slow, meditative process. Sometimes, I’ll not do them at all, and rarely last more than a few days! Mostly, however, it’s a normal regular part of my day, I’m used to it, and like it.

For lots of reasons, it’s hard going at the moment, and one of the reasons is I’m saying it with someone who has ideas about how to do it that are very different from mine, and it’s been difficult finding a middle ground that works. One of the main difficulties has been the number of readings per office, and the compromise is we omit one of the two readings at Morning Prayer, but have both at Evening Prayer.

So, I generally have a catchup read of all the readings I’ve missed in the week over the weekend. I had good intentions of doing them each day before I got to Morning Prayer, but… well, let’s just say I should never have good intentions about what I do before I’ve had at least two cups of coffee, and been awake properly for two hours.

Actually, the good thing about it is I do get to read chunks of the Bible in one go, which is something I’ve rarely done, and am now doing more of.

So, what had me giggling this morning? Job. It’s going to take me a while to think just exactly why because it wasn’t just one bit, but it definitely did, and had me thinking yet again how often the right thing emerges at the right time in the lectionary readings.

I feel quite restored and ready for battle tomorrow.

News from the Shredding Department

The job continues… I’m now onto the baker’s dozen of bin-liners filled with shredded paper, two shopping trolley loads of unshredded paper and related material, (for alas, I do have to walk with all this lot along to the recycling bins) and I do believe the end is in sight. For shredding, at least.

There are other delightful chores ahead of me, including dusting and cleaning in places I’ve not visited recently. mainly because now I’ve got rid of so much paper, and recycled so many things I can now, um, see the dust. I also moved the flipchart paper from the top of the wardrobe. That, too, was an error of judgement that revealed layers of dust I prefer not to have known about.

I have saved the pleasant task of sorting out my printed music until this evening.

Today we commemorate Josephine Butler, my favourite commemoration in the Church of England’s calendar, and I will reread the excellent biography by Jane Jordan some time over the next few days.

How can this be?

Bag is packed and ready for the off, in about an hour’s time. Apart from the last documents for reading through. Which are churning their way out of the printer as I type, and I’m also praying the printer is not going to chose now to die on me, as it’s sounding horribly terminally sick. (It heard me! It’s trying to fool me it’s not sick, as it’s now sounding a bit hoarse and breathless, but not death-rattly at the moment.)

But, being organised, well before time to go out? Must be important! Well, it is really. This is Most Humungous Discussion So Far Day. With Major Decision Confirmation Day being soon. So, I did have to make sure I had everything with me, and all carefully organised.

On to more interesting matters for now…

It was very reassuring to read, in my comments on the last post, that I’m not the only one with on-line identity issues! Thanks Ian, and Jack, that was helpful. Can’t resolve the Twitter issue for you, though, as it’s not something I can see any point me getting into, certainly at the moment. But, I can see why you might want a different name there, too.

I, somehow, in my vast music collection seem to have acquired far more copies of Joseph and the Amazing Techicolour Dream coat that even I can use or need! Same with King James Versions of the Bible. I never, ever use it. But, for some reason, whenever an aged member of the family dies, and no-one can think what to do with their Bible, it gets sent to me… Now, I know I’m also the family historian, and I love getting any other bits and pieces that I get sent for the tree, but there is a limit to how many KJV Bibles any one NRSV reading woman can use. (With occasional forays off into the Message, or the Youth Bible, or other translations as they present themselves to me! but, for everyday purposes, NRSV.) There are ten KJVs on my Bibles shelf!

This week coming, after the Bank Holiday as well as being a week where I am not required at any of my regular commitments and where I’ve mostly got the house to myself, is to be devoted to a Grand Shredding, Clearing, Finishing Up Admin Tasks, All Purpose Sort Out kind of set of activities.

I may well drown in a sea of paper work, and books, and old clothes. Lifeboats may be required. Definitely coffee, cake and chocolate, if nothing else. So, if I’m Missing in Action, that’s where I’ll be.

Gulps…

and prays hard. I have just booked myself onto a retreat. It’s the last thing on the To Do list I was presented with six weeks ago, and that I will be having to report on next week.

I have been resisting having an eight day individually guided retreat since the disastrous one I was coerced into having about seventeen years ago. I have a few days retreat most years, it’s always been on my own, silent, and away from people. I’ve always talked about it afterwards, but have preferred to be on my own.

I’ve been muttering for ages I don’t “do” Ignatian. I have trouble with imaginative prayer, I struggle with whether or not I’m “doing” it right, and as to what happens when my imagination runs riots…. I even thought by having a spiritual director who’s evangelical would help me continue to avoid Ignatius and all his works. Failed completely. I’m not getting away with it this time. I was smiled at gently, and had it suggested maybe it was time to let my imagination run riot with someone who might just understand it. God is very devious, methinks.

Actually, I’ve not quite managed all on my To Do list. But it’s not my fault I had a bit of a bruised hand crisis, and serious piano practice has been off the agenda for a few weeks. I returned to one of my regular piano playing paid jobs today, and I can still feel the bruising.

Anyway, I am organised for Lent! New books are purchased (One Bible Study, one Lent book I liked the look of! you have no idea what a treat this is) and Tractor Girl’s list for balance.

I wonder if it’s right to be selling Fair Trade chocolate on Ash Wednesday?

All change

I was going to have an active day, doing many things, but have done none of them! Other than go to the Supermarket of Choice and stock up on odds and ends.

I think the quiet day reading and taking stock has been better for me. Accounts will always be here to do, as will minutes of meetings. But, I know I’ll do them better when I’m less tired. It’s been a very emotional week, in many ways, and the person I’d choose to talk things through with is not available. Which, in a strange kind of way, is no bad thing. It meant I just had to write it all down, and he’ll get in touch when he can when he’s up to it.

Regardless of anything else that may or may not have happened this week, this is also the week when I would’ve begun to take several major steps back from much of what I’ve been doing at church to help out in a short-staffed era. I’m really quite pleased about it. It’s been good to have done, but it’s enormously helpful timing to stop most of it now. I’ve not felt obliged to go to the Christingle services, which I hate, neither have I felt obliged to turn up at events that I’d've gone to out of a sense of duty.

Actually, the most important thing of the week is I’ve begun reading again. Or rather, I’ve begun new books. I’ve only been re-reading old favourites for a while, as bedtime falling asleep stuff, but only in dribs and drabs. I didn’t exactly decide to stop, but it happened, and somehow it all became very symbolic. I’ve always been a prolific reader, and quite how I’ve not been reading is a great mystery to me. But, stop I did, and begin again I have done. It’s good. I feel much more myself again as a result.