Blessing from a wedding

Heavy rain returned overnight and persisted all morning. The water level in the Taff was up by half a metre when I walked down there later in the day. I walked in full rain gear to St Catherine's for the Wednesday Eucharist which re-started today. There were eight of us present. It was good to hear the old Prayer Book liturgy recited again, even though I know it off by heart. 

Then, I transcribed a few more pages of my Jordan travel journal, about the day we visited Petra. I find it slow going because I used pencil, and the writing isn't high enough contrast to be easily read, due to sight deterioration because of cataracts. I need a strong lamp, but until I can shop for one in a real store, I won't trust shopping for this on line, I need a real life try-out first. For now I make do with a small LED torch. 

Before lunch I went out again to collect this week's veggies from the collection point in Conway Road. Our first cauliflower of the season, lifted straight from the ground this morning was in the bag. When we'd finished lunch, I stripped the cauli of its outer leaves, along with the  dark green leaves of this week's leeks, chopped them fine and pressure cooked them with veggie stock to make a green soup for supper. It was surprisingly flavoursome.

I was delighted to get an unexpected email this evening from Tatyana, at whose wedding blessing to Bruce I officiated in Montreux at the end of August 2018, just as the nightmare of my anal abscess was starting to give me a lot of pain and swelling. Making theirs wedding an Anglo-Bulgarian celebration was a challenge I relished, and I used lots of Slav Orthodox choral recordings to make her family feel at home. It was a big effort but it helped to take my mind off the pain. 

Tatyana was writing to tell me that they now have a baby boy, and she attached a photo of him, which gave me much good cheer. After the wedding she gave me a thank you gift, a CD of the choir she sang with in Bulgaria and a beautiful little Bogoroditsa icon, which has graced our dining room ever since I brought it home. It's rare to hear again from someone you have ministered to transiently, whether here locally or abroad. People appreciate the ministry a priest offers, but in helping them bond with each other in an act of worship, the officiant usually gets left out and soon forgotten in the emotions of the time.

Tonight, the final episode of a short series of unusual archaeological investigations. This time the subject was a cliff top site near South Shields which had been used on and off as a military installation since the nineteenth century until after the second world war. Among the volunteers on the dig were army veterans for whom military archaeology was part of their rehabilitation, and a local military historian. It's a great idea for a TV series, arousing much interest among local inhabitants. I'd enjoy more like this.