Day of reckoning

Sounds suitably grim, for a dreich afternoon when we had all the lights on at 1 o'clock, though in fact I'm just referring to the fact that it is on this Sunday, which used to be known as the Last Before Advent and now celebrates Christ the King, that the number of attendees at church is reckoned. Funny, it's always a rather empty-pew day, as if people are saving themselves for Advent, or are put off by the weather, or have simply found something else that they want to do ...

And we were invited, in the little church whose tower you can just make out among the trees on the far side of the Unsafe Bridge,  to consider our choices - choices of what we put first in our lives. In the current political situation, it's too easy for someone like me to become obsessed with what's going on; my adherence to the routine of church even when other things beckon is part of my stability as well as my self-discipline. This afternoon, however, another regular demand had me out in the rain as if somehow spending the rest of the day in the warm, bright indoors with papers, books, work even - as if all these had to be earned.

You can tell I was brought up to a Presbyterian background ...