Cloudy today with periods of light rain. Such distressing news from Israel. Having withdrawn all aid fro Gaza last week, Netanyahu has now cut off electricity supplies to increase pressure on Hamas to deliver all hostages, living and dead, before any formal negotiation can resume. It's tantamount to a war crime, according to an expert in international law interviewed on the radio.
Clare spent an hour on the phone trying to reach the UHW eye clinic for an emergency appointment as her current antibiotic medication isn't working. Frustrated by lack of success, she took a taxi to the hospital, only to be told she had to get a referral from an optician or the School of Optometry. Why brand an unresponsive phone number as 'eye emergency clinic' when it doesn't even provide an off line message advising callers to consult an optician for a treatment referral? This has happened to Clare a couple of times before sadly. A local optician has given her an appointment tomorrow.
While she was out and the house was quiet I recorded and edited next week's Wednesday Morning Prayer then did the house cleaning. I also contacted Aviva about one of my investment bonds which is due for renewal or redeployment in April. The robotic answering machine asked for the policy code of six numbers with two letters at the end. The digits were recognised, but the letters 'UU' were interpreted as a single U, so I couldn't confirm it was correct. This meant I had to ring and join a queue to speak to a real human being. I complained about the voice recognition software incorrectly interpreting my information twice, as I had called the helpline twice, being careful to leave a space between the 'Us' second time. "Did you think of trying double U?" I was asked. "That's a different letter altogether." I said. An embarrassed laugh followed. At the conclusion of the call I was promised a funds withdrawal application form by email and by letter.
I cooked filleted sardines with rice and veg for lunch and then went for a walk in the parks. On my way home I had a phone call from Geoff Johnston's daughter Becky to say that he died in his sleep last night. It was such a shock. I knew he'd suffered from diabetes for the past twenty years, but it had never got out of control, he was well and active with no sign anything was wrong. Carol his wife and the rest of the family are overtaken with shock at the unexpected nature of his departure. I called Judith, former churchwarden of Nerja's Anglican Chaplaincy, and found she'd just been told. My email of condolences to Carol bounced back, but fortunately Judith was able to update me for a resend.
Geoff and I got to know each other working in the Halesowen Team Ministry in the late 1980s. We got on well as we'd both been influenced by monastic spirituality, and shared the same kind of radical theology of mission. He was an industrial chaplain at a time when the Black Country was being de-industrialised, so he had to switch his focus to supporting redundant workers, and started a pioneering Credit Union branch as part of it. After a sabbatical with industrial missioners in Berlin, he pioneered a twin parish link with the Stefanausgemeinde in Leipzig. He and I were members of an eight strong parish party that went behind the Berlin Wall and visited Leipzig for the twinning inaugural ceremony, weeks before the Wall came down. We were walking in the vicinity of the Brandenburg Gate the night Eric Honekker resigned, and saw the media circus descend on a government building where his successor as DDR president Egon Krenz was making his first appearance in public.
Those few world changing days in East Germany inspired both of us to open ourselves up to ministry in Europe somehow. Two years later, I became Chaplain in Geneva. Geoff became the Vicar of St Francis Dudley, a tough inner city parish. He contracted diabetes there and took early retirement. This opened the way for him to become Chaplain in Nerja. When I retired, he invited me to do locum cover for him, and this got me started on doing locum duty in other places in Spain. He became Area Dean while he was there and then Archdeacon a job which he continued in his retirement, living in Belper, near to East Midlands Airport, enabling him to travel to any part of the Peninsula and Italy to visit chaplaincies.
By the time covid struck he had handed over the Archdeacon's role, but continued doing occasional locum duties. He was in Mojacar last year when I was in Nerja. We planned to meet midway, but I was reluctant about doing a two hours drive on my own to the rendezvous, and called it off, so in the past year we only exchanged emails. The last time we met in person was in 2016 when I was on locum duty in Mojacar, and Geoff came as Archdeacon to help them with their chaplaincy job description. He was a kindred spirit, one of the few priests I could ever say this about. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.
Writing today's haiku on the judgement Parable of Sheep and Goats was challenging, not least because it arouses a sense of shame that all too often I don't know what to do for the best when confronted by someone with real needs, more complex than I have confidence to deal with.
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