State of Alarm - day Thirty Four

Twenty one degrees today, sunny but cloudy, and there were rumbles of thunder in the afternoon. For the first time I noticed a procession of tiny ants along my daily walking path. That'll please the lizards I imagine. I've seen even more lizards around the place today, a dozen and a half, especially smaller, younger brown ones, agile and moving very quickly.

After breakfast, I edited together the audio files of the readings which I received for tomorrow's Ministry of the Word, and once the first half was complete, I re-recorded the half of the service that uses the words of the Eucharist, and got both off to Dave by early evening. 

I restated at the start of the Lord's supper that it's possible to let familiar words awaken prayerful imagination, when we are not gathered to share bread and wine person to person. I realise this isn't easy for some, and there are mixed messages delivered from online services. As there's no single model approach, there is a risk of confusion. 

In some cases a priest can broadcast a live Eucharist from home, or an adjacent chapel as they don't live alone. For others that's not possible, so a service of the Word is offered perhaps with prayers for making a Spiritual Communion. A service of the Word is effectively what I do too, except for using familiar eucharistic prayers slightly adapted, to guide listeners to where they can make their own act of Spiritual Communion in silence, rather than use an adopted formula. 

Churches and clergy everywhere are experimenting with this, as it's never happened before. I believe it's good for us to have to think and work outside the usual frame of reference. I'm so grateful to participate in this process, not just observe from the sidelines, as I would be if I was back home in isolation.    

This afternoon I finally got around to filling the house water cistern. This involves visiting the pump house 25m beyond the finca boundary to power up the machine which lifts up water from the artesian well and sends it across the garden through a heavy duty hose, rising over the garden path and into the cistern three metres up the wall. 

My first attempt was a failure, the machine was drawing power from the mains, but I couldn't hear it working, and when I returned to the house, could feel neither vibration from the movement of water rising in the pipe, nor the faint buzz of an electric pump. I texted Rosi, and she confirmed that I'd followed the procedure properly. 

I returned to the pump house and repeated the start routine, and this time, the ammeter needle displayed ten times the previous amount of power being drawn by the pump. Back at the house, I felt faint vibration in the hose, then the more energetic sensation of the head of water as it reached me and established a flow. Half an hour later the cistern was as full as the day I arrived. I was nervous about making a mess of it and being stranded without water, so this success made my day. 

I felt so grateful to look down into the full tank that I said a blessing prayer over the water. Well, it's the sort of thing that happens in Eastertide anyway, when remembering our baptism, so why not?