Between The Worlds

Tw oservices today and it is bitterly cold in our churches. But for all that I have a sense of having worshipped. Nothing till evensong. I think I'll do some ironing.
But Hephzi meets me with the news that my mother-in-law is ill in Harrigate and my sister-in-law has rung. She is an oncologist and so I take her medical opinion seriously. I ring. 'This could be it',she says. My mother-in-law has been in only moderate health for some time and she is over 80, so if she is failing it wouldn't be entirely unexpected. But still...
I ring Fiona and she says she will sort evensong, I rung around to sort Imogen and what haooens when she gets back from the WCCYM weekend away in Hunstanton (must be FREEZING). Then I start texting Carrie in Dublin (girly weekend away) to warn her she may need to move her flight.
We set off for Harrogate and meet MILs other children at the hospital. Eventualy we find her in A&E. She is reasonably cheerful, but obviously in a lot more pain than she is admitting to. We hang around. The doctor comes, they give her morphine. She is now too drowsy to see us and the yget her up on to the ward.
We go to her house and have tea - and discuss other options than her living at home going blind (macular degeneration) with a failing heart. But in my heart of hearts I know she will keep going to the bitter end if she possibly can.
There doesn't seem much else to do - tests will reveal what they reveal in the next few days - so we come home.
I am shattered - but I'm still glad we did it - the day we don't will be the day that she dies. And these alarums are only to be expected...but how good it would be if only we could get her into somewhere sheltered.

I don't know where the New Year went. The whole of this last period was shadowed by Fiona, my Team vicar colleague, getting assaulted and knocked unconscious in the week before Christmas. She was quite badly hurt, but has been getting better, and tells me that she is allowed to go back to work part-time from next Tuesday.

did they catch the feller? Did they heck. The police think that he (man of medium build in a hoodie - she never saw his face, he hit her as she appraoched him) was not local as if he had been they reckon local criminal fraternity would have grassed him up as hitting vicars gives crime a bad name.

So how come I've got time to write now? because I've got a stinking cold and ear infection. Think I am a bit run down...

Had a big birthday last week - you work it out - and we now have a narrowboat! It needs quite a lot of work - but we are very happy about it. Looking for another berth, as the present one won't do for long.

Up all night
tootache = misery!
Dentistry one of the greatest glories of civilisation
And it is Sunday morning and I'm supposed to be preaching at 10.30 - butI'm off to see the emergency dentist at 9.30!
I shall have to tell colleagues to get going without me.

not a busy a day but a bitty one.
Still trying to get down to writing a sermon.
This is a frustrating process as I know only too well that I work best when I am up against a deadline but I really admire the people who can get their best out in a planned andorganised way. I usually find that my best is produced in a squeeze - so that I never really have the time to finish it properly or to polish it.
And sermons. Out here between the worlds we are miles and miles away from the mega-churches of the US - but sermons take as much time whether you are preaching to ten or ten thousand - well, not quite as much perhaps...
But you have still got to do the communicating - and imagining. Preaching is not only about exegeting the text - you have to exegete the congregation as well. But sermons to only a few are much more imtimate affairs - and you can tailor them to the congregation most of whom you will know well.
And the man came with more office furniture - and people needed colloecting - and lunch was to cook and so on and so forth...
So I'd better get back to it.

today has an unbelievable variety of things in it.
Paperwork looks accusingly at me from the desk - so I'll clear that. What is it? Cheques to go to parishes from undertakers, publicity things fro stuff happening around parishes various, leters to individuals - I do get frustrated by the people who think that I have nothing better to do than helpe them research their family histories.
Then there are household tasks to complete - some mine, some things that the children ought tobe helping with.
Teeneagers come and go - so interruptions are relatively frequent.
And then under it all is the knowledge that one parishioner is dying, and I will need to go and see him later today Bank Holiday or no Bank Holiday. I don't resent it - being with him is a huge privilege.

There is a lovely prayer in one book that goes
O God, who brought us to birth and in whose arms we die...
I love the sense of the whole of our lives being held by God. Rod asks me last night what I think about dying, and I tell him I don't mind the idea, and he says that Christians often say that to him. But it is true - I don't mind the idea of death, because I think I have come from God - he was there holding me before I was born - and I will go to God - so there is this extraordinary sense that I sometimes have when I am with people who are dying that the process is not dissimilar to birth.

So death may be part of today's life..