Anticipation

Appalling weather all day kept me in - as is becoming all too easy - until mid-afternoon today. Even then, I accepted a lift up to church because it's really cold and damp and turning up soaking - even if warmer to begin with - is not the best preparation for a recording session. However, things cheered up considerably when I realised that we were recording music for the first Sunday of Advent, for people watching the live Zoom service on Sunday afternoon to sing along with. Who would have thought back in March that we'd not be singing these as a congregation? But I have to confess that I thoroughly enjoyed recording O Come O Come Emmanuel and the Advent Prose - with Himself doing the main verses and me on the congregational responses. There may have been the sound of water dripping in the tower, and the lone radiant heater which only raised the temperature by a degree or two, but the fervour of my Advent anticipation was imbued with the longing for this miserable pandemic to be over. 

Linked to this was a strange conversation I came across on Facebook today on the timeline of a friend who is very obviously a clergyman. Someone expressed the opinion that "religious posts" had no place on "normal" Facebook, and a third party chimed in with the notion that people should stick to posting pictures of dogs. I added my tuppence worth to the effect that my timeline was about 50/50 religion (in one form or another) and politics - and so far there's been no reaction.

Thing is, I post innumerable photos linked to this church I was in today, because so much of my daily life is tied up with it. And behind that is something that came to me as an adult, rather than something I grew up with. I don't expect others to share what makes me do this, though every now and then a comment pops up which shows someone, as it were, singing from more or less the same song-sheet. I don't need anyone to point out that they don't have any faith, or whatever, any more than I need them to tell me they're not in love at the moment - because neither is any of my business. (And the two things aren't as far apart as one might think, and equally indescribable). 

Why am I writing this now? Because I'm tired of chronicling the tedium of my days, deep in the most horrid kind of November weather that Argyll can muster, unable to leave the wet west or see my family or even my hairdresser. Tomorrow? Well, the forecast suggests the rain might stop. I might get the washing done - hung out, even. And I have some church-based but entirely outdoors activity to undertake with my pal.

Who knows what might result?