Advent around the world

This morning, I stood in for Fr Martin Colton, celebrating the midweek Eucharist at St Catherine's Church, not far from home. After lunch, I was taken to Thornhill Crematorium to conduct a funeral service, and had enough time for a cup of tea before setting out to St Mike's to celebrate the Eucharist for students on their penultimate day of term. I stayed in College for supper, as I'd been asked to attend a Christmas concert for members of the Llandaff Society in the College chapel, and offer a prayer and blessing at the end. As I was there early, I was able to help Pauline light scores of tea-light candles to give the place a seasonal ambience.

The Oriana womens' choir performed not only choral works, but a series of readings about Christmas selected from Louisa May Alcott's 'Little Women'. The chapel, with room for just eighty people, was completely full. It was a delightful experience, much appreciated, to judge from the smiles afterwards. 

Peter Sedgewick, Principal of St Mikes, fresh back from his sabbatical term brought his mother to the concert. He's looking very well and refreshed after a few months of study and reading, based in a quiet village outside Cambridge, well away from all the daily challenges of College life, here or there. Already he wants to know if I'm willing to carry on next term with the tutor group. That's something I need to think about over the weekend. It's been a stimulating experience for me, even if I have on times wondered whether I've been doing what's actually expected of me. There's hardly a training manual, and I wonder what students make of this as a requirement of College life. Perhaps I should ask them.

When I got home, I was catching up on the news when I had a Skype notification that Rachel over in Canada just before sunset, was on-line, so we had a great chat for 20 minutes. Just as I was about to switch off, another notification appeared. Claudine had just switched on her iPad over in Bangkok, just about to start her day at six in the morning (Thursday), so we had an even longer catch up chat, about the flooding there, about her work visits to Yangon in Burma. It turned out she'd received the Christmas parcel Clare had posted to her last Saturday yesterday morning (her Wednesday). Four days, Cardiff to Bangkok by mail. That's amazing, if you think how often people complain about the inefficiencies of the modern postal network.