Blessing true commitment

A lovely hot and sunny start to the week, good for washing bed linen as well as the regular house cleaning tasks. Before cooking lunch I completed this week's Morning Prayer video and uploaded it to YouTube ready for Thursday. In the afternoon we went foraging for blackberries in Pontcanna Fields. It looks as if a lot of picking went on over the weekend, as there were fewer large ripe blackberries to be found, but we came home with nearly a kilo between us.

It was good to hear that the Governing Body of the Church in Wales has approved a proposal by a large and healthy majority of clergy and laity to add a service of blessing the civil partnerships of gay couples to the church's liturgical library. About time too. Next step, the full wedding service for gay couples. If any couple, regardless of gender want to dedicate their lives to each other in lifelong union before God, I see no reason why it can't be seen as marriage. 

The traditionalist view of marriage as the unique hallowed context for procreation doesn't oblige couples to have children. Some exercise the freedom to choose not to. This is also the same for gay couples who may choose to have children or not to have children. Every couple has to think about their role in family and community life, and this is rooted in the loving commitment they make to each other. Faithfulness in all its manifestations is something to give thanks for, and that is the purpose of a blessing service. It celebrates the grace that God has already given the couple. As is true for all of us - by their fruit they shall be known.

I was surprised and not a little troubled to learn that the electoral college came away from their three days of meeting to elect a new Bishop for Swansea and Brecon diocese without a consensus on any candidate. Heaven only knows what's going on here. Will the Welsh Bishops now select and present a candidate for the electoral college to approve? If they choose another from the Church of England, what will that say about their confidence in the Church in Wales to raise its own next generation leadership?

Another fascinating programme this evening about the work of conservators at the Victoria and Albert museum in London. It not only reveals the secrets of restoring worn and broken objects, but also the kind of detective work that sometimes goes into establishing the provenance of particular objects. In the first of the first series, shown again tonight on BBC Four, a seventeenth century snuff box with a lid containing an enamel portrait of a noble lady was examined, to try and identify who she was. 

It contained no inscription, so one of the team set about looking through catalogues of portraits of noble ladies of the period - none of this information was in a digital database - and eventually found a match to a portrait in a stately home. The portrait painter or someone of their workshop was most likely responsible for the enamel, which was remarkably similar in likeness. It was not uncommon for gentlemen obliged to travel away from home for long periods to take a miniature portrait of their beloved on their travels with them, just as we may do with a photo on the home screen of the mobile phone.