Unexpected

In summary, today looks incredibly predictable: Usual rush to get out, church (with addition of doing the Intercessions), post-church hilarity and conversation over coffee with Di, walk, engage on and off with Twitter, collapse over telly. In the event, however, it was in many ways unexpected. 

The photo above shows the blessing of a new book of the Gospels, to be used in the place of the complete lectionary (either a small fat not-very-dignified-looking book or the huge-wrist-straining-might-collapse-at-the-spine lectern one) for the gospel procession. This wasn't expected, and nor was an amazingly powerful sermon nor the tenor at the back of the church soaring up the octave for the last hymn's final verse - and all these things contributed to this rather special difference.

The afternoon was rather different too, in that when the sun came out I decided that despite feeling knackered I needed a walk and went off on my own to Toward because Himself was going to visit someone up the road. I left the car at the school, did a brisk mile or so along to the Ardyne, and had the luxury of sitting on a sun-warmed bit of tree washed up on the beach listening to the birds and becoming aware of the thump of PS Waverley's paddles long before I could see her slipping along the coast of Bure and out into the main channel. I was tired and hot by the time I'd retraced my steps, so I dumped my windbreaker in the car, fished out my water bottle, and went and sat on a convenient iron seat overlooking the sea from a grassy area where the primary pupils sometimes play football. There were no seals today, but many swifts swooping around me. I felt strangely self-indulgent and autonomous and managed not to talk to myself ...

And lastly Twitter. All day I've been engaging in a mostly two-way conversation about how people envisage God, an interesting departure from the conventional expressions of theology and folk-tradition into the realms explored by R.S.Thomas and C.S.Lewis - I wonder if anyone reading this is familiar with the latter's trilogy that finishes with That Hideous Strength? I must re-read these books - I've just found and shared a passage that reminded me of what an extraordinary book it is.

So an interesting day, one that made me feel more than usually alive. Still exhausting though ...