Jet setter's wedding

Church Warden Jane and I were much relieved yesterday afternoon when the wedded couple turned up, presented their credentials, and paid up in advance, as required. It was very difficult, knowing so little about a couple, more from social media that from their application form. They had not even shared with us their disappointment that the wedding arranger they thought they'd engaged would not return their calls any more than return ours. As a result there were no flowers for the ceremony in church. Anyway, the groom is a banker and the bride is a conservationist working with an NGO in the upper reaches of the Niger river by the Camerounian border. As this region is home to several global conservation NGOs, the reason for holding a big wedding celebration here is understandable.

Both families are from the elite of Nigerian society, and guests attending the ceremony came from two different Gulf states, the USA, UK and Switzerland, though I guess two thirds of them flew in from Lagos for the occasion. There were 120 people in church., and we ran on 'African time' as Jane called in. The groom was 15 minutes late and the bride 45 minutes late, and I started the celebration a hour behind schedule. At least it gave me a chance to rehearse the congregation in singing Amen and an Alleluia response to the Psalm. This went down well, people sang with great enthusiasm and apparently, we heard today, continued to sing them at the reception. I wasn't invited, but it gave me great pleasure, knowing that the songs of worship learned spilled over into the wedding feast. For a brief moment, life and worship have continuity between them.

We were twenty people and three dogs in church for today's Sung Eucharist, laf and half choir and congregation. Choirmaster Peter is off sick with pneumonia, but Geoff his predecessor took charge and all went as normal. Clare had a lunch rendezvous with former colleague at Le Contretemps in the port. I ate alone and got ready for the trip to Aiglon Chapel in Villars for an Evening Eucharist. Jane met me from the train at Aigle again. Pain from my troubled rear end was worse than usual so I had to stand for the train journey and wedge myself awkwardly into the car seat for the ascent to avoid pressure. Fortunately by over use of medication it calmed down sufficiently for me to take the service, for just five people plus Jane. A dozen regulars are away on this final weekend before term starts at Aiglon College. 

The elderly couple to whom I took Communion at home, just after New Year were among the few. He broke his leg back then, and still walks with a stick, his recovery being slow, but he's walking, that's what counts. For reasons unknown, the lady accompanying hymns on the piano repeated the first hymn at the end. It wasn't a liturgical catastrophe, however, as it was 'Soldiers of Christ arise' a great Charles Wesley hymn summarising the message of the Ephesians 6:10-20 which I'd preached about.

Today has been quite a struggle to functional normally against the background of discomfort from inflammation. Tomorrow, I'm chasing a medical appointment.

       

Anticipated Transfiguration

We celebrated the feast of the Transfiguration today, in advance of tomorrow. It was good to be back again, with a congregation of two dozen mostly familiar faces. After lunch, I took the train to Aigle where churchwarden Jane met me and drove us up to Villars for the evening Eucharist with fifteen present. This was an occasion for me to remember in prayer Roy Damary, Reader at Holy Trinity Geneva, who died back in June. He was up in Villars bringing Communion from the Reserved Sacrament to a group of Christmas Day worshippers, a couple of weeks before my last visit there in January. 

I talked briefly about him coming at great personal effort driving 120+km from Geneva on Christmas Day, stepping in when they had no priest to serve them. An expression of his concern that the church shouldn't fail to maintain its round of worship, and naturally that's what being a lay minister was all about. After the service, nobody made mention of this to me. Then, it occurred to me that there may not have been anyone present on this occasion who was there on Christmas Day, such is the fluidity of attendance among regulars as well as visitors.

Maintaining pastoral relations with mobile people in dispersed congregations of this kind is never easy.  There's always a risk that ministry becomes nothing more than than cordial but transient engagement between consumers and producers of religious events. It's already characteristic of funeral and wedding ministry, despite efforts made to ensure the occasion is charged with personal meaning. Does publicity and marketing of church ministry make any difference? I doubt it. Good quality information may encourage people to take church ministry and ministers seriously, but time is needed for lasting relationships to grow, and in an increasingly mobile rootless world, this is far harder to achieve. I don't have any answers. There's more to learn about this new world, to know what the right questions may be.
  

Early Candlemass

I was asked if we could celebrate Candlemass early this Sunday, and it seemed a good idea ' Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace ... etc', as it's my last Sunday on this tour of duty. So we started with a simple blessing of candles, used the relevant readings, and concluded with 'Faithful Vigil Ended. It all fitted nicely. I could have done without the round of applause after Neil's words of thanks at the end. I'm just happy to be still working, able to travel and feel a bit useful sometimes.

Talking of travel, I had a Communion service to celebrate in Villars in the evening. I walked into Montreux gare in time to catch a train to Aigle which arrived twenty minutes before my connecting bus at five. I was glad of this as I needed time to find the bus stop. Now Aigle has a couple of narrow gauge lines running up into the mountains, side of the valley behind the town. One goes to Leysin and the other to Les Diablerets. This is run by Transports Publiques du Chablais, so these trains and the buses have their own special grass green livery, and platforms on the town side of the main line. 

There's an hourly TPC bus service which climbs up through Ollon to Villars at 1,300m on a road which I drove a couple of times back in the summer, and was glad not to have to in either direction today, given the amount of ski resort traffic. There were plenty of skiers coming off the bus and a few laden with luggage going up to stay. There was a relaxed and cheery mood among the mostly young people coming and going at the bus stop.

The surrounding snow capped mountain peak looked exquisite while the sun was setting during the ascent, and I got some fairly decent photos from inside the bus, whenever I could avoid reflections from the bus interior. This changed continuously with the light changing each time we went through a hairpin bend. At the hamlet of Gryon, Guy got on the bus carrying the Jack Russel terrier he takes everywhere with him in a rucksack. The dog is at ease with this. It's safer on mountain roads where it's impractical to keep him on a lead. Guy's a congregational worship leader in Villars, and works in Aiglon College. He's a renowned butterfly expert in this part of the world. It was good to meet him again.

There were ten of us for the service, and afterwards, by pre-arrangement Guy took me through the darkened streets of the village to visit a couple made housebound when one of them broke a limb just after arriving for their winter break from the UK before Christmas. Given the bus timetable it couldn't be a long visit, but the essential purpose was to take them Holy Communion. I was glad to do this, even though time was short and we had to walk very briskly to the bus stop afterwards to be sure not to get left behind, otherwise it would be another hour before the last bus of the day, and near zero temperatures to wait around in.

Arriving half an hour later in Aigle, I was on a train for Montreux within a few minutes. Inevitably there were skiers going home,  but also a number of young soldiers, smartly dressed in uniform. I'm not sure if they were heading back to barracks after a weekend at home, or heading home after a weekend of training. Conscription is still the norm in Switzerland, and once basic training is finished there may be options for completing the two years required. Also conscripts get called back for a refresher course every so often, and I believe that can happen into middle age, unless you have some kind of exemption. 

The non stop train takes just eleven minutes to get to Montreux, and I was able to take a bus back to Territet, as the aller-retour ticket issued to me was actually a multi-zone carte journalière that works out at the same price if not slightly cheaper, especially with my demi-tarif fare card for the month. It's certainly saved money for the church and for me. I could have used it more, but in a place as pleasant to stay as this, you don't always fancy going far. Still, a last outing tomorrow, for pleasure not duty, before getting down to bag packing and cleaning up.

After supper, I watched another episode of McMafia, which I still find slow moving, and not entirely convincing. There's a lot of conversation in Russian with subtitles. To me the actors seem impassive if not wooden, with their different Slavonic manner of self-presentation. I always feel as if I am about to lose interest in the storyline. Interestingly enough critical opinion is divided. The Telegraph's Michael Hogan is fulsome with praise. The New Statesman's Rachel Cooke has some sharp comments to make: "McMafia’s slick tedium is born of the fact the series has no heart" and  ".. as a drama the feeling persists that the actors and director are trying to pass an electric current through a jelly." Slick tedium. I like that.