Today's Sunday duties had me driving early out into the Vale to celebrated with the congregations of St Marychurch and St Hilary in the Cowbridge Benefice, as ever a real pleasure. After cooking lunch for myself, I drove up into Blaenau Gwent to the Parish of Blaina & Nantyglo to listen to a sermon preached by Chris, one of the students in my tutor group at St Mike's, on Parish Placement there. It was a long journey but the sermon was well worth while.
The drive, almost all the way in darkness, took an hour. It would have been so beautiful in daylight, but I left home too late for that. Thankfully, I was well informed about the location of St Ann's church, so all I had to do was keep going until I spotted a road sign for Nantyglo, which happened only in the last couple of miles of the journey. Quite an adventure if I'm honest. It's a place I never visited in the seven years I travelled Wales on behalf of USPG.
Nick Perry the Vicar warmly welcomed me and said that he knew all about me because he'd worked previously in Merthyr F.E. College with my cousin Ros. It's such a small world. He had a delightful rapport with the twenty strong congregation. His opening welcome and announcements in the middle took the form of a relaxed humorous spontaneous conversation with the congregation as a group. What a delightful loving welcoming community they were.
I took special pleasure in hearing the melodious accents of grassroots Valleys people, including their voluntary priest Fr Clive, who celebrated the Eucharist. They reminded me of where I came from - me with my homogenised middle class accent, far more Vale than Valleys, more Jon Humphries than Ystrad Mynach after decades of ministry outside Wales. It made me happy and proud in an uncomplicated way to know where I come from in this excessively mobile age.
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