Late autumn butterflies

Another sunny start to the day. I was late waking up to post this week's Morning Prayer YouTube link to WhatsApp before breakfast. I phoned Sandra to check she was OK to receive a Home Communion visit, and finished off this week's Sway, my tenth and dispatched it by Mailchimp - all by eleven o'clock. It is getting easier now to remember the operating procedure for this routine. If any additions or corrections arrive late I can edit them into Sway without needing to re-issue the link, as it remains unchanged, and as the content doesn't have to be downloaded but is viewed on-line, it's more flexible in use.

I drove to Danescourt to take Communion to Sandra. A recently knitted bed jacket for a new born infant lay on a side table by her chair, one of a hundred and ten she's made this year alone. They are destined for the premature babies unit at the University Hospital of Wales. Amazing dedication!

I returned home and took Clare to lunch at Iona's. Sitting at table in Iona's kitchen looking out into the garden, I could see sparrows coming and going from a large bush and a couple of butterflies put in an appearance as well. It's not the first time I've seen butterflies this week. Astonishing when it's the last week in October, a consequence of milder autumn weather due to climate change. We discussed how it would be possible to improve communication within the Ministry Area with more active representation in the Area Council's affairs from every congregation. Dissolution of traditional parochial structures has proved damaging to morale among church members. Nevertheless, many have made huge efforts to ensure church life continues and haven't given up, despite the decline in membership since the pandemic.

When we returned home after lunch, I worked on drafting a fresh sermon for next Sunday, Bible Sunday, celebrating the age-old impulse to translate God's Word anew into the languages of the world. Then a walk around the park, with the sky clouding over and evening rain following. I spent the evening after supper until bed time making an effort to read the last seventy pages of Beevor's 'Battle for Spain'. It's weeks since I last picked it up, and I promised myself that I wouldn't start a new novel in Spanish until I had finished this magnum opus in English, from which I have learned so much about the civil war. I didn't get to the end before stopping to watch the late news on telly.

Listening to the news about the continuing aid crisis in Gaza, I learned that about seventy aid trucks have now passed through the Rafah crossing so far, this report comes after media silence on numbers for the past couple of days, another thirty odd in the past couple of days. It's still a fraction of what's urgently needed. International pressure on Israel to let more through is countered by insistence that none of the aid supplies fall into the hands of Hamas, but there's no mechanism in place to ensure that doesn't happen. None of this has been thought through properly, and only results in more suffering and death. When will the Israeli government come to its senses and realise this is undermining its own just cause?