Awake at half past seven to an overcast damp day, but no torrential rain thankfully. I posted today's link to Morning Prayer on YouTube, dozed for a while and then got up for breakfast. I went to the Eucharist at St John's. There were ten of us, more than there has been on a Thursday for quite a while.
I chatted with Fr. Dyfrig as we were leaving, There's a meeting tonight to prepare for another meeting of the three Cardiff Ministry Area Councils next week to discuss the twenty percent increase in the diocesan share. He said that the increase had come about due to the collapse of income from Valleys parishes. Clearly a reflection of an even greater impact on them of the cost of living and membership crisis. It's considered urban parishes aren't so hard hit, but I wonder if this is true, or if the same catastrophe is delayed but unavoidable. A similar crisis hit Monmouth diocese several years ago, leading to church closures and reduction of clergy on the ground.
Clare learned yesterday that the first batch of this year's bitter Seville oranges would arrive today at our neighbourhood greengrocer's. After church I bought some sugar for jam making at Tesco's then went to buy a couple of kilos worth and some lemons. After sharing the lunch cooking and eating with Clare, I got this week's distribution of the Sway link ready and emailed it out via Mailchimp. Then I cleaned up the first kilo batch of Oranges ready and stewing in the pressure cooker.
A message came in from Andrew with news of the death at 93 of Alf, one of St John's longstanding members, and later news of the death of Fr John Webber, the same age as me. When I worked with USPG in the eighties, John was working in the Church of Bangladesh teaching theology supported by the Society. When he returned he was a parish priest in East London pastoring the Bengali community there, then came back to Wales to be Team Rector of Llantwit Major. In retirement he lived nearby and helped out in Canton Benefice until he became infirm due to the impact on his health of living in a challenging climate.
By the time I added the sad news of both deaths to Sway, three dozen people had already looked at it. Another seventy will also have opened the Sway link by Sunday, but it is an advantage to be able to edit and update what appears on-line when news comes in.
My phone's weather app said it was raining so I donned the wellies I had for Christmas and a lightweight pair of rain trousers that emerged after months in hiding in the back of the cupboard, and went for a walk in the park. The light drizzle I faced was hardly worth the effort of dressing up for, but it gave me an opportunity to test the wellies. They were comfortable enough, but felt surprisingly heavy to walk in, making my thigh muscles work harder than in any pair of shoes. I managed for about half an hour, then came home and changed for a paid of shoes to complete my daily quota of steps. I can envisage putting them on at the start of my daily exercise to work the thigh muscles and warm them up, and then switch to shoes to walk at a faster pace. Who knows? It may be beneficial.
As I have no service to take this weekend there's no sermon to write, so I idled the evening away watching more episodes of 'Bones'. The series ran from 2005-2017, and it's interesting to see in successive episodes the advancing technology and design of mobile phones and laptops. It all looked a bit magical as fiction permitted the timescale to be compressed. The strange thing is, over the past nineteen years, how reality has caught up with fiction, with Cloud computing, touch screen smartphones, tablets and ultra lightweight laptops, although there are still analytical processes which can take weeks in real time due to their nature, and storytelling still needs these to be accelerated to reach a timely conclusion. Amazing to this that I have lived through this era, and the fifteen years before it. I remember buying my first properly portable laptop at the end of 1992, though my first Amstrad PC was six years before that. What a journey!
No comments:
Post a Comment