Progress, for better and for worse

Another sunny morning for a walk to St Catherine's for the Eucharist. We were about thirty this week, and it was Fr Benedict's first appearance at a church service there. Emma preached a superb sermon evoking memories of childhood in the Valleys, talking about 'Our Mam's' ability to conjure up a plate of food for anyone who turned up, when often it seemed she had very little in the larder to conjure with. The context was the Gospel about feeding the five thousand. She also talked about moments when Jesus just wanted to be alone for a brief while, to absorb what was happening before re-engaging with the crowd. It rang true.

Good news! The mid-week Eucharists can resume this week. St Luke's on Tuesday, St Catherine's on Wednesday and St John's Thursday, all at 10.30, so there's a standard time to remember across the Parish. Socially distanced coffee and chat to follow - bring your own!

I walked to the Cathedral in the afternoon for the third Sunday in a row, and said Evening Prayer from my phone, just at the time Choral Evensong would normally be taking place. Will it ever return?

Mother Francis asked Clare if she would video herself reading in Welsh the section of the Song of Azariah which features as a canticle in the daily office of the Church in Wales. She was bewildered, as there were a few oddities in the Welsh text. She wanted to cross check with the English version that she'd understood it correctly so she could recite it correctly, but was even more bewilderment when she couldn't find it in her bible. 

She was looking in a Bible without the Apocrypha - that slim volume of scriptural texts regarded by some, though not all Protestants as of secondary significance because their origin was not in a Hebrew text, but a Greek one. They come from the three centuries before Christ, and played a part in Catholic and Orthodox Churches, whereas reformers regarded them with suspicion, alleging they were source of abuse and false doctrine. Hence they find their place as supplement in reputable translations, and are omitted from conservative ones like the KJV. 

I realised Clare doesn't have a Welsh Bible with Apocrypha, only a Testament Newydd. Anyway I was able to find her the right passage for checking. A phone call to Eleri revealed that the Welsh text of the canticle published in the new Prayer Book office contains two typos. And how many more, I wonder. That's disgraceful in a bilingual church, although these days one can always get away with laying the blame on digital text editing rather than inattention or ignorance.

The new Google blogger interface is awful to use, as its drop down menus and search facility are so slow. I hope this is a work in progress and that it will improve. It makes my old Chromebook almost unusable. It's also uncomfortably slow on my Windows workstation, which equally robs me of time forcing me to machine mind whenever it updates. They're all the same, these big tech corporations  taking a simple easy to get used to product and imposing changes unasked for and unwanted.