Sunday 10 December 2017

St German's Advent Welcome to Bishop June

For the second week in a row, I celebrated and preached for a said Eucharist at St Catherine's, only this time it was at eight o'clock, and there were ten of us. I met Dylan, the third ordinand to be placed here for part time on-the-job training with St Padarn's Institute, which replaced St Michael's College Llandaff as the Church in Wales' ordination training centre last year. As a native Welsh speaker from near Llangollen, he spent the first half of his first year at Eglwys Dewi Sant, and is now getting quite a different, more common experience of settled urban Parish life in a benefice of Canton.

It started snowing during breakfast, but the temperature wasn't yet low enough for to cause problems on the roads, so rather than leave early and take the bus / no bus risk to get there on time, I drove over to St German's to join the congregation and Fr Phelim in welcoming our new diocesan Bishop June Osborne, presiding and preaching for the fisrt time. I was pleased to have an opportunity to meet her at last, and to see how happy people were on this historic occasion. She preached an encouraging and thoughtful sermon about prophets as solitary people standing apart from crowd in order to deliver the message of God. The future, under her fresh and different style of leadership will be interesting, not just to observe from the sidelines, but also to participate in. 

In our briefest of conversations, I raised with her the matter of the role of retired clerics in the life and work of the Diocese, and she said that she was aware of the extent of this, and intends to look afresh at what potential contribution might be made by the ranks of used aged volunteers. Given that many of us are fitter and active for much longer in life, but happy to have the freedom of a pensioner's life, there may be more we can do, as part of our Christian stewardship of time and talents, and be seen as part of the bigger strategic plan. Well, we'll see.

Later in the afternoon, I headed from home to the Stenier School in Llandaff North, for the school Community Choir's third pre Christmas concert. Despite the weather the audience was bigger, and the choir did very well indeed, singing a variety of material in Latin, Welsh and Old Engish. They were more confident, more cohesive, and thus clearer in delivery. My first carol singing opportuniy of the year, when in times past I'd have gone through half a dozen Carol services by now, and for this reason it was that much more a fresh enjoyable experience.
   

No comments:

Post a Comment