more bits and pieces

Sunday I was taking a baptism service in Dudley. That was fine in theory, but

• we we're out for a meal with friends on Saturday night making us later than we might otherwise have been
  
• we got home to find that one of the dogs had got a dose of the trots & the floor needed cleaning. He had us up 3 more times in the night.
  
• The clocks changed and we lost an hour.
• Dudley is an hour away
• I hadn't seen the order of service I was using
• The heating in the church wasn't working...

In the event it all worked out well. For the sermon I talked with the baptism families about what they wanted their children to grow into. A part from the inevitable "rich" and the rather obscure "a biker" it was things like healthy, happy, lovable, content... This, I suggested was all about wholeness and what the risen Jesus in the morning's gospel reading was offering to the disciples was "shalom", wholeness and so much more than the rather ineffectual word used in most translations of "peace". That is what the risen Jesus still offers.

The rest of the week was supposed to be a bit quieter.

Monday I had a meeting with colleagues in the local churches. That evening we had friends visit. She's been off work with what her GP would like to call OFSTEDitis. The number of people in education I meet who have been badly damaged by successive governments' rather pathetic attempts to raise classroom standards is frightening. I wish someone would do some detailed research into how many teachers have significant problems with stress.

Tuesday we celebrated the feast of St Joseph - normally 19 March it was moved this year because of the date of Easter. April Fool's day is appropriate. What Mary had to tell Joseph, "An angel told me I'm going to have a baby and the Father is God," is significantly less plausible than many April Fools. Yesterday evening there was an NFU meeting

Today I caught up with some correspondence, went to the livestock market and had a meeting about delivering mental health support to people in rural areas.

The good news is that the dog's digestion has improved.
The bad news is the cough/cold that I struggled with over Easter and thought I was rid of has come back.