Undramatic normality.

So good, to sleep well again for seven and a half hours in my own bed. I woke up at the scheduled time to post today's Morning Prayer YouTube link to WhatsApp, then got up and prepared the breakfast. Clever little Fitbit app told me that my Daily Readiness was low, 20% - meaning that it was going to take me a lot longer than usual to recover from physical activity. How it knows, from the measurements it takes, is a mystery. To me it meant the opposite - it was going to take me longer to get started at all! Correct. After a stressful day at UHW yesterday following a sleepless night, there was bound to be a physical price to pay. 

My head didn't hurt at all, but felt like a deflated balloon and my reactions were slow, dull, fatigued. It's just the way I was the day after gall bladder removal, when the surgeons were fretting about my systolic blood pressure being so high during the operation it took extra time to control it. That op came at the end of a fasting day with no water for ten hours. That time I had to persuade the day surgery ward staff to release me, as this reaction to unusual stress was not unknown to me. Just like last night. People tell me to take it easy now - there's no option. Push too hard and you end up making things worse. 

Clare had a flute lesson booked with an new experienced teacher, so I did a little writing and pottered about until lunchtime. I had phone calls from Kath and Owain, also from Roger, and a visit from Mary over the road, who's having difficulty understanding different instructions given to her about how to open her front door. Her memory is failing to piece together in the right order all the component concepts that make up the process. She's intelligent enough to realise she has a problem and asks for help. She came twice. and on both occasions I was on the phone. She then found out about my hospital visit, so I had to explain yet again. Telling and re-telling the same story when your brain is still recovering isn't really what you need for recovery, but that just how life goes.

Clare and I had different choices to cook for lunch so we had to work together at the same time at the stove and the kitchen sink. It's more effort if awareness is blunted by tiredness or pain, but for the most part we cope quite well and without annoying each other. We both needed siestas after lunch. Clare woke up and went out shopping before me. I got an extra three quarters of an hour's sleep, and then felt ready for a walk in the park, not pushing myself but promising myself to quit if I started feeling jaded. I returned at sunset having done three quarters of my daily quota and feeling none the worse for it. The fresh air and easy pace was what I was relying on to benefit me. 

Clare returned as I was gathering in the washing from outdoors, just too late to avoid autumnal dew-fall after a cold gorgeously sunny autumnal day. Then I realised there were a few items of grocery shopping both of us had forgotten, so a quick errand to Tesco's and back covered the last quarter of my daily quota. And I feel none the worse for it. I'm feeling better than I did this morning, and suspect my blood pressure is back down where it should be with a dose of undramatic normality.

A quiet evening of pondering, waiting for trick n' treaters, none of whom showed up, although Clare had prepared a dish of chocolate buttons to offer if any did arrive. When I was returning from Tesco's I saw a small dog with a hallowe'en skeletal designed coat. Also two men as tall as me wearing ghoulish masks, but no kids out playing pranks. But we have ve had several moments when loud fireworks have been set off this evening. Is this a silly season conflation of social moments? Everything is going crazy. 

Tomorrow is All Saints' Day and there's no Eucharist in the Parish, nor in the Cathedral to celebrate one of the ancient Christian festivals, since the Pope's liturgical influencers allowed the festival to be celebrated the Sunday nearest for the sake of those who cannot make a weekday Mass. Today is also Reformation Day, remembering Luther's paradigm shifting contribution to understanding the Gospel of God's grace. 

The current reform of parochial structures and declining attendance as much as decline in available priests has led to the erosion of scheduled public worship offerings. Fewer services, information about them sometimes quite difficult to find on websites, amid the promotion of social activities, fund raising fayres, charity appeals and the suchlike, no matter what fancy web design is utilised. Looked at from the edge of affairs, my habitual positioning, I ask of each one, what is the messaging here? What does layout and presentation of content tell you about this community this represents? 

Several different things may be the answer. But what comes first, matters most? And the messaging is mixed, viewed from a historical context. Last year I ranted about neglected outdated church noticeboards stuck in the past. Fr Sion, when he arrived, insisted on a new simple noticeboard design and content which states serenely and with confidence, what this building is here to do, who it belongs to, and when public worship happens. St German's updated theirs with a similar format last year. It's a first call for passers-by, info which works when their phones are off. That simple directness as a starting point is vital and can be reproduced on-line but rarely is with clear simplicity. 

Is all this lack of clarity about the public presentation of church identity and purpose a consequence of reform? Or symptomatic of a general lack of confidence in the value of life rooted in the prayer of the faithful as it has existed on a twenty century timeline? Thankfully there's a lunchtime Mass at St German's tomorrow and Saturday for All Souls. Anglo-Catholic tradition and teaching persists on the other side of town as it did in West Cardiff's Ministry Area under Mother Frances the way it had done for the past century.  It was never a mono-culture but a distinct ethos of devotion which now seems to be ebbing away. It's that strange feeling of no longer recognising the place which is meant to be home because it's changed.