Sunny autumn Sunday

I presided and preached the Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning. Now that the Sunday school has re-started after the summer break, congregation numbers are returning to normal, with around thirty communicants, twenty children, and remarkably half a dozen young adults accompanying children who come up for a blessing. How to engage with them further and bring them to confirmation and full church membership is a key pastoral challenge for the parish. I think about this whenever I start preparing a sermon - not that this group hears me preach as they're normally in Sunday school with their offspring.

It was a lovely warm afternoon again when I went for my daily walk. For the most part, trees are still green, though with flecks or patches of golden leaves here and there, and occasionally a species that turn yellow earlier than others. The weather draws out groups of people picknicking, sometimes with games equipment for volleyball or rounders in between bouts of sandwiches and drinks. Saturdays, several cricket matches are played. 

I think the teams playing reflect local Asian language groupings. When passing the children's playground, I hear English and Welsh spoken, but also recently Spanish.  There are at least two young Spanish families in the vicinity of the park. Passing one picnic group, I heard the sound of a single acoustic guitar and a female voice singing a folk song in English. It could have been from a summer in our youth fifty five years ago. 

It's great to see our parks so well used these days. The litter bins fill to overflowing by Saturday, but not emptied until Monday, which is a pity. Most groups in the park tidy up after themselves. What we do suffer from a great deal is casual litter dropped by people passing through, as on the streets, every day, and occasionally, evidence of a small group sitting down with a supermarket pack of drinks, and leaving their litter behind on the spot - glass and plastic bottles, cans, paper and plastic cups, etc. Any day I go walking I expect to collect up to a dozen pieces and take them to the nearest bin. There are a fair number of bins in the parks fifty to a hundred metres apart, but on the streets one can walk three to five hundred metres without finding one. With the passage of time, I'm getting to know where each one is located.