Ministry upheaval

Fortunately, no rain today, warmer with the sun peeping through the clouds occasionally. After the daily reflection upload, breakfast and prayers, a walk to the GP surgery to get my medication prescription and then pick up the pills from the pharmacy opposite. After lunch and a snooze, a walk around Thompson's Park and Llandaff Fields. On my way home, I saw a young girl with what I thought was a tiny sausage dog on a lead. When I looked more closely, I realised the creature was a handsome sleek coated ferret. It's something I've never seen before! 

The weekly Parish newsletter arrived this afternoon, announcing the departure of Fr Benedict, who is to join the Whitchurch Ministry Area for the rest of his curacy. In addition Mthr Emma is being seconded for three months to Fairwater Parish at the other end of our Ministry Area, for an interim ministry until a new parish priest is appointed there. Mthr Frances is still on sick leave. For her to return to a situation in which two colleagues have departed, leaving her as the sole full time priest is, to my mind, an insensitive move. The three of us who are retired clergy living in the Benefice will doubtless fill in some of the gaps in the everyday duties of ministry, but the burden of responsibility for the three churches still remains with the Rector. Surely there could have been a better way to deal with the situation?

After supper we sat and listened to the early Miles Davis album Walkin' together for the first time. Owain sent it to me in MP3 form last spring in Ibiza, along with several others of Miles, and that was the first time I'd listened to it since I was a teenager. When Clare went up early to bed, I watched another episode of 'Inspektor Falke' on my Chromebook, a morality tale about what happens to a neighbourhood watch group when vehement social media activists make it mutate into a vigilante group capable of criminal acts. We need reminders of the dangers of social media operating in a climate of uncertainty and fear, over all kinds of common concern.