Another glorious summer day with 23 degree heat at breakfast time and 30C by lunchtime. The Radio Four Sunday Worship service was from Senghenydd, the parish next to where I served my title as Curate in Penyrheol housing estate, now part of the Caerphilly Ministry Area. Mark Greenway Robbins Rector of Caerphilly is now Ministry Area Leader for the conurbation which covers the ancient Parish of Eglwysilan and that of Caerphilly. Bishop June preached, and among the other contributors was a community worker supported by the Citizen Church in Cathays Cardiff, which took over St Teilo's Parish Church, to provide a working base for an evangelical church planting 'resource church group' back by Holy Trinity Brompton in London.
The community worker is based at St Peter's Senghenydd, aiming revitalise it and work on regeneration of a deprived and marginalised community that never fully recovered from the loss of over five hundred miners in pit disasters a century ago, and the loss of its last pit Windsor Colliery, just after I left Penyrheol for Birmingham fifty years later. Only one contributor had a distinctive Valleys accent, a former miner at Windsor Colliery. The rest sounded as if they'd crossed Offa's Dyke to re-evangelise the Welsh. Sure, the idea is to 'reach the unreached', in a secular society. I wish them well, but is this enterprise now beyond us natives? Are we being shamed by these enthusiastic in-comers? Is Welsh zeal reserved only for sports and music-making nowadays? How can we rekindle indigenous zeal for a real relevant Christianization of our national culture?
I took my choir robes with me conscientiously to St Catherine's for the Eucharist, and was relieved that it was decided not to robe up, as it was only just a little cooler in church than outdoors. Archbishop Rowan celebrated and preached. It was lovely listening to him again, he has such a relaxed and thoughtful style and always good insights to share. He was talking about Jesus re-inventing the idea of humanity, by abolishing all divisions of status, wealth, power and ethnicity - the ultimate 'levelling-up'. It's not just me that mocks Boris' latest content free catchphrase.
It was good, singing in the choir, such a change from presiding or sitting in the congregation. It keeps you on the alert and aware of others in addition to the celebrant. I think I'll do more of this in future on the Sundays I don't have other duties, but it will be September before I can make my next appearance in choir, as all but one of the August Sundays I'm at St German's, and the other one I'm preaching at St Luke's. Next week we're down in Oxwich Bay with Owain, Kath and Anto.
Hilary was outside after the service with the first church garden courgettes of the season and a pot of blackberry jam for sale, both of which we bought. For lunch we had the first fruits of the French beans which were grown from seed. Summer delights!
My walk in the afternoon heat took me almost entirely under tree cover through Pontcanna Fields. over the Taff and back through the woods in Bute Park At a guess, there were a couple of hundred people on the pebble beaches along the river or messing about in the water at Blackweir. Hundreds more, in small groups found shader trees or erected their own canopies for shelter. I was accosted by a teenage couple in Bute Park, when the young man noticed the Olympus OMD I was carrying, and asked what type it was. I chatted with them for a while. I think they were at sixth form college. I was wearing my summer beret, which attracted curiosity and conversation about Spain. The girl had visited Fuengirola when her granny was the Church of Scotland Minister of the ex-pat community in Andalusia, around the time I was on locum duty there with the Costa del Sol East chaplaincy. Small world!
After supper we watched Antiques Road Show from Kenilworth Castle, which was very interesting and then the first episode of the second series of 'Baptiste'. An engaging if confusing plot line, as the story is told, switching between flashbacks and the present moment, a little confusing when it's not exactly clear if there's any point to this.
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