Holy Week - the first half

There was an hilarious April Fool prank on the Diocese in Europe Website this morning. An item about a new EC directive on standardisation of candle sizes to comply with Health and Safety requirements in European churches. It's worth a look. You'll find it here

This week my locum ministry duties lie in the familiar territory of Tongwynlais and Taff's Well. Fortunately, a new priest has already been appointed, Zoe King, moving from the far west of the diocese, but she won't arrive until June. Under the new strategic ministry plan for the diocese this parish is grouped with Radyr, Pentyrch and Groesfaen. It's a suburban district of Cardiff adjacent to the M4 corridor that will see a lot more fresh housing development in the next decade, but which is unlikely to get more than the present number of three clergy when it would be best served by double that number.

Already the existing clergy are starting plan and work together with the future in mind. For the first three days of Holy Week the have invited the congregations of the three Parishes to come together for an evening service in a place of worship belonging to each one in turn. As locum priest, they invited me to join them, taking a turn in preaching, leading worship and sitting in the congregation on the receiving end.

As none of these services were planned as Eucharists, I took myself to Llandaff Cathedral three mornings running for the 9.30am Eucharist, each celebrated by a retired colleague. The numbers attending varied between a dozen and twenty, also mostly retired people. Each of the three evenings there's another Eucharist with address, and I would imagine, no shortage of people to attend. Cathedral attendances are rising here, as in other parts of Britain.

On Monday evening, it rained and there was a very blustery wind for Evening Prayer at St John's Danescourt, yet there were twenty people present. The sound of the wind roaring intermittently through the trees in the churchyard outside sounded like that of waves breaking on the sea shore.

On Tuesday the weather was bright and sunny all day. I drove out to St David's Groesfaen for Compline and Address, graced by the setting sun streaming in through plain glass nave windows in this delightful country church. This time there were three dozen people present.

Tonight we were in St Michael's Tongwynlais for Evening Prayer at the same hour. Quite apart from the return of clouds and light rain, the position of the village at the entrance to the Taff Gorge means that dusk arrived earlier than it did at Groesfaen. Even so, twenty eight people were present. All three occasions, I'd say, were occasions of enouragement, both for the Jenny and Mike, the clergy and to their congregations. Both of them preached very well indeed, and I much enjoyed being on the receiving end.

This morning, Clare had the stitches removed from her wounds, all very healthy and neat. Six days since the operation, and I see progress in her every day. On the way back from the surgery we called into the Apothecary's shop on Llandaff Road, to seek out a herbal remedy to help her dispel side effects of anaesthesia. We returned home with several bags of herbs, seeds and berries for boiling up into a strange tasting concoction to drink. These things have a way of being quite efficaceous, so long as you have the right mixture. No harm in trying it out I guess.