Family time

Last night, I was looking something up on my Chromebook in bed before settling down for the night, and fell soundly asleep with the light on and the Chromebook closed but still tucked into the duvet. I woke up at two thirty, clean my teeth and make sure everything was powered down for the night. Then, I slept until nine, and found I was first up. After breakfast Clare and Kath went for a walk while I wrote my Sunday sermon. 

Unusually, the right thoughts didn't come easily, which made me wonder about the reason for this. Due to covid it's a month since I last prepared a sermon. My Easter Vigil homily was improvised, and my Good Friday effort was prepared before covid. It made me realise how much I rely on taking time every week to think about the next Sunday's sermon, and the sequence of scriptural readings essential to it. In the same period, the war in Ukraine has dominated our everyday perspective, and I've not had much opportunity to reflect on stories from the conflict relating to Christ's passion. Covid and the war together have disrupted my thinking in an unexpected way.

Kath went out to meet her friend Mandy for a coffee at lunchtime, and I prepared a snack for Owain's arrival, expecting him around one. He arrived an hour later with Kath, having gone from the station to the place where Kath and Mandy were meeting. All four of us then went out for a walk to Bute Park and back, to enjoy the bluebells and wild garlic flowers now carpeting the woodland below Blackweir bridge. When we got back, Kath set about making a giant fish pie for supper.

Afterwards, we sat around the table and drank good wine until it was time for Owain to leave for the train back to Bristol. Kath and I stayed chatting for another hour, and amused ourselves with me reading aloud a chapter from 'Cancion de la Navidad' - Dickens' Christmas Carol in Spanish, and Kath working out if she could understand my pronunciation and interpret what I was reading. Having fun with language is certainly something she's inherited from Clare and I. Then, I printed off my sermon and we both made an effort to go to bed early. Clare retired straight after supper, following another day of alternate walking and lying down to cope with the back pain. Slowly it's easing. Very slowly indeed.