Volcano visit

I woke up to sunshine a cloudless sky, and a temperature just above freezing. A day for brisk walking! On the way to St Catherine's for the Eucharist I called at the Co-op to buy our food bank contribution. There were six of us with Fr Sion for the service, and for coffee afterwards. The Gospel was the parable of the talents. Sion pointed out something that had never occurred to me before. The story is told as Jesus and the disciples are on the way to Jerusalem. Does he tell this story tongue in cheek, about the success of slaves entrusted with making a return on money invested in them? The disciples have no material assets. Nobody is investing materially in their mission, they are simply following Jesus. 

The one unprofitable slave does nothing with his stake, he has no confidence in his ability to live up to his master's expectation. He's so afraid he buries his stake rather than entrusting it to a bank to accrue interest. As a result he is rejected and loses his place in the master's realm. That's how the business world deals with failure. The disciples have only the Gospel, themselves, and their ability to invest in relationships with others and be a blessing to others. Hiding themselves away in fear yields nothing. The story has been used to encourage disciples to be creative and make the most of their abilities and material resources. Fair enough, but it also has something to say to those who think they have little or nothing to offer.

I collected the veggie bag from Chapter on my way home. Clare had gone to town, so I cooked fish in a creamy white sauce to go with kale, swede, potatoes, and purple sweet potato. The purple sweet potato is a veg new to us, which Clare discovered and wanted to try out. After we'd eaten, I started a batch of bread dough and then went out for my afternoon walk. As it was so cold I got out my thick tweed winter jacket to wear. Even so, I needed to walk vigorously to stay warm. I need to wear a thicker topcoat as well now.

As our central heating is in use now, the bread dough rose quicker than usual. After knocking it back, and rising again in the baking tins, it went into the oven and cooked before supper. With an hour to spare before this week's episode of 'Shetland', I scanned another batch of negatives, a second set from the 1987 holiday in Teneriffe, the missing link, as many of these were photos from our visit to the summit of Mount Teide. This involved a long uphill drive to the cable car terminus, then a ride to the top where we could scramble around on harsh barren ground with occasional patches of snow in summer, hardly surprising as it's 3,700m above sea level, the highest peak in Spain. I took the photos, but can only be seen in a couple of pictures taken in at the hotel in Puerto de la Cruz. I remember the sulphurous smell of steam issuing from vents in ground heated by molten rock a few metres below, but have no visual memory of being up there. It was as if I was seeing the place for the first time. Strange. After Shetland, winding down to bed time.