Drove Clare to the Steiner School in Llandaff North for her classes this morning, then made my way East through the suburbs to reach Lakeside in time to celebrate a St Mark's Day Eucharist for seven faithful people. Then headed in to town, and left the car in the assigned parking place under the Motorpoint Arena where it had been arranged I would rendezvous with Ashley for another trip to Chepstow. As I was early, I made a trip to the Co-op Bank to complete a transfer of funds I'd only done half of during yesterday's bank visit to deal with a savings account come to maturity. This was followed by a visit to Santander's nearest banking station to arrange an account status change and take advantage of their latest offer. Then, back to the office to collect some equipment and set out for our radio suppliers' HQ in Chepstow.
It was good to have time to chat things over in the quiet of the car during our pleasant journey there and back. We got our new Dell tablet configured for remote access to the SafetyNet server as needed and retrieved the Asus Transformer which proved unsuitable to access a Windows VPN in the way it's been set up. It'll still be a superb platform for an on-line file library to make office facilities accessible in any location. Moreover, I get to take it home and figure out how to get it to play with our office system. All this new technology requires a good deal of thinking though to get the most out of it. Just when you've got used to a new way of doing things, another presents itself. For every innovation there are new complications, and everything has to be looked at with total security in mind. So there's never much room for uncritical enthusiasm when making adjustments to the total system.
We got back to Motorpoint car park and unloaded the consignment of radios purchased on our last visit there, all configured ready for use, then it was time to head off to Llandaff in the evening traffic, with just enough time to get to St Michael's for Evensong with the special ceremony to license Fr Mark Clavier as Dean of Residential Training and Dr John Wilks as Director of Post-Graduate Training. The College chapel was packed with visitors and students. I felt very pleased to squeeze on to the end of a pew next to one of my tutees, having discharged my last responsibility as acting Dean by negotiating and producing the service sheet for the occasion.
It went off perfectly and the Archbishop preached in a way that did justice to contemporary biblical understanding of scripture. It was comforting to have such a positive message 'from the top' in the light of the last term's out-break of fundamentalist dogmatism, attempting to re-fight battles dismissed by the church catholic as irrelevent even before I occupied a pew in this chapel, three generations ago. It's just not good enough. The Church in Wales is a diverse body. But there are limits to diversity. Convictions about the nature of scriptural authority that contradict the freedom which the Gospel Jesus proclaimed are a challenge to everyone to think deeply about what gives confidence, purpose and openness to the journey as His disciples.
The dynamism of the Gospel and the richness of ways in which it is proclaimed offers both security and freedom to those who follow the way of Jesus - trusting in a living Word, as opposed to a very fixed idea of how God's mystery is to be understood and lived. Launching out into a different way of thinking may be for some a disconcerting exit from their comfort zone, but the blessings are beyond conception.
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