sheep and stones

Two Sundays ago the readings were about Jesus as a shepherd. At Cotheridge and Wilden we thought about first century Palestinian shepherds who didn't have the the advantages of hedges and walls & who had to lead their sheep from pasture to pasture. It was a very much closer relationship & the role of the shepherd was very tough. One commentator recently said it's bad enough the many modern western Christians have cuddly images of sheep. It's even worse that they have cuddly images of shepherds. Jesus & cuddly don't go together!

Last week was a certain amount of reviewing where I am - a meeting with my spiritual director, another with my line manager. The week also included meetings about the Three Counties Show, celebrating different ethnic groups, preparing bids for funding from the English Rural Development Plan and being after dinner speaker at Tenbury NFU annual dinner.

This Sunday I was at Bishampton and Knightwick and we focussed on the reading in 1Peter where he talks about being built together as living stones. It always strikes me as a wonderful image of both individuality (& that we're all different) and community (that we belong together) having different complementary roles.

walking with

The gospel reading for last Sunday was the disciples on the road to Emmaus discovering that in their confusion it had been Jesus walking with them. This is the philosophy of Farm Crisis Network, and formed the basis of my sermons at Knightwick chapel and at Catshill.
Ironically I have had occasion to phone PC World rather a lot recently. They tell me my motherboard has failed & have sold me a new computer. So far I am distinctly underwhelmed by Vista!
PC World's automated impersonal phone message greets you with "PC World, with you every step of the way..." before inviting you to press button 1, 2, 3.... and eventually speaking to a human being who refers you to a website or another helpline.
I'm sure Jesus, being with the disciples every step of the way, was much more help!

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.