Dewi Sant portrayed afresh

News of 147 South African covid variant infections identified so far, with suspicion there are many more due to rapid symptomless transmission. It seems that the Oxford AZ vaccine isn't quite as effective in stopping mild infection in the younger age bracket (and therefore contagion) as hoped for, although still highly protective against serious and fatal illness, which should help reduce hospitalizations. It's the result of a small scale study (2000 people) yet to be peer reviewed. It gives an early heads up from the experts to not to stop social distancing and mask wearing, whether you've been vaccinated or not. I do wish this was repeated more frequently every time this comes up as a news item, so that people are reminded it's not just a mere inconsequential statistic. The mews media are great at raising anxiety and not so good at reminding their audience of what is vital and live-saving.

The chill easterly wind continues to blow relentlessly, bringing a scattering of stinging icy particles but no snow. Despite a hat, ski jacket, gloves, normal jacket, two pullovers, shirt and woolen vest, I was still cold during my first invigorating walk of the day. Perhaps because I no longer have as much surplus body fat as I used to. I caught sight of a blue jay feeding on the ground at the edge of Pontcanna Fields and for just the second time in ten years of trying was able to photograph it. I got half a dozen useful pictures, though not quite as good as I'd liked. All in focus but not quite sharp enough, due to poor lighting not giving as fast a shutter speed as necessary to minimise motion blur totally. Pleased nevertheless.

This afternoon our icon painting friend Fran was in touch with Clare, sending photos of her finished icon of St David, which Clare commissioned for Cardiff Steiner School. It's a beautiful, original and unique in its use of iconographic form, symbolism and colour to portray Dewi Sant. She has created a work of art, that owes much to the ethos of both Byzantine and Western medieval sacred painting. It's a tradition which seems come from past religious history, and yet is very much alive today. Eventually, I'll post a photo here, so you can understand what I'm saying. 

The next step is to devise a suitable way of blessing and dedicating this icon, whose home will be in a secular pluralist school environment, reminding pupils, teachers and visitors alike that they live in Wales whose culture is inspired of a humble hospitable holy man, at home in nature, whose life was attentive to the presence of God in Christ, revealed in all things great and small alike  

Eurythmy in the frame again

I had a wound clinic visit this afternoon, primarily to collect supplies, as we are managing well at home without need to use a full dressing this past week or so. Unfortunately, supplies deliveries to the clinic haven't recovered from the last bank holiday. Again. This is worrying for the nursing team. In addition, nearly half of the district nursing team is off sick at the moment, and some of the regular local clinics have not been able to open, so all those patients who must have treatment are redirected to Riverside clinic, so their appointment diary is over full. I'm crossing my fingers that we don't run out before my visit, a week today.

This evening there was a Eurythmy performance by the West Midlands Stage group in the Steiner School, which Clare had been instrumental in arranging. It's a couple of years since they last visited. She was picked up early and driven there, as our car is still in the garage for repairs. I followed on the bus a little later, with my trust Sony HX300 in hand, to video the performance. As there was no suitable place to rig it on a tripod, I had to film hand-held, for an hours worth of performance time. This was taxing, but the results were fairly good considering. The performances by members of the six strong student touring group were excellent and powerful. Tomorrow, I have the task of extracting, editing and consigning to a web platform for our friends Marin and Alan Stott who run the West Midlands Eurythmy School to review and approve before publishing them to YouTube. I was pleased to have the opportunity to do this, even if it meant watching only through the camera.

We were home in good time to watch 'Berlin Station' on More Four. Broadcast time has moved from ten until eleven, which meant a late night that I didn't need, but it's too good to defer watching.

An awkward evening

I didn't feel sociable enough to attend the Steiner School Christmas Fayre today, even though Clare was singing there with the Fountain choir. I went into town instead, and bought all the annual supply of Christmas cards I need to accompany our end of year newsletter. I believe this will be the fiftieth year in which I have written our annual round-robin. Such a pity I never kept hard copies, and can only account for those stored digitally, since 2002. I'll make a start on writing this tomorrow.

In the evening, we treated ourselves to supper at Stefano's, which promised musical entertainment after the meal. The food was excellent, but the singer, ostensibly with several albums to his credit was more of a working men's club entertainer, interspersing songs with attempts to tell outrageous jokes like an old school working men's club stand up comic. Everything was delivered at such a pace that much of what he said verged on the unintelligible. It spoiled an otherwise pleasant evening, as far as we were concerned. 

Daring even to hint at racist and sexist jokes or jibes contemptuous of 'political correctness' is unacceptable. To judge from the proprietor's reaction it was an embarrassment to him. I felt sorry for him, but at least it won't tarnish their reputation for good food. Entertainers are here today, gone tomorrow. It wasn't easy to gauge the reaction of other diners, to know whether others may have been as uncomfortable as we were during this performance or trying to be convivially tolerant. We left earlier than we might have done, though not as early as we both felt we should, but as we were seated rather far back from the exit, we were reluctant to expose ourselves to more embarrassment. It wasn't exactly what we were looking for to start our countdown to Christmas.

  

Change in musical taste

According to my pedometer app, I walked 8.6km on Thursday, going to the office, around the city and back up the Taff Trail as far as the big Tesco in search of clip on sunglasses. As my diary was empty Friday I thought I'd do another walk. I followed the Taff Trail in the opposite direction down to the Bay Wetland nature reserve and took photos of the resident grebes and coots with their fast growing chicks. I clocked over 10km by the time I reached home, and wasn't too stiff, although I slept even better as a result of the additional exercise. my photos are here

This morning I went into town to  met Rufus for a coffee and a catch up chat in Cafe Zest upstairs in the House of Frazer store. Strange to think that it's been earmarked for closure as a department store because of the group's profit warnings. The increase in commercial market rents is being blamed for this. Will it be redeveloped, as was the David Morgan store, as a mix of retail and private apartments? Or will it perhaps be taken over by another big market name. As a property it's something of a nightmare to envision of future for. It was built in several phases, and enclosed Bethany Baptist chapel, which was converted into a retail space still known as 'The Chapel'. It would be possible to demolish the interior and keep the facade, but as the complex of buildings on the site tells such a fascinating tale of the work of Victorian retail entrepreneur James Howell, there might be conservation orders in place that would hinder this.

The streets were busy with extra people arriving for the third of Ed Sheeran's four in a row stadium concerts tonight. Such is his popularity it was clear from the accents audible on the streets that many visitors had come from all over England, as well as Wales and further afield. I lost interest in popular music decades ago, so I'm unsure if I've heard or could recognise any of his work. Music is deeply important to me, almost all kinds, but truth to tell, I've not been good at decoding pop lyrics post Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, and the classic American popular Jazz and romantic song genre. As I get older, I find I can listen to 20th century and modern 'classical' music with pleasure, whereas I could make no sense of it when I was young and dismissed what I couldn't make sense of. That's an unexpected aspect of ageing I can't say I expected.

I returned home to rendezvous with Clare and take the bus to the Steiner school for the summer fair, at which the Fountain Community Choir was due to sing, but we missed each other. I caught up with her at the school after taking the next bus to Llandaff North, and we joined in the rehearsal and then an outdoor performance of half a dozen songs, most of which I am still unfamiliar with and don't know all the words. It all felt a little precarious to me, but it was fun. I walked home afterwards to relax, and the pedometer told me that I'd done another 8km, which was pleasing, as my legs weren't complaining too much. No telly tonight. There's so much football on right now, which holds little interest for me, and we watched the dark Welsh crimmie 'Hidden' on Wednesday, since BBC Wales TV previews it, ahead of the Saturday prime time slot.

Thoughts on MInistry Sunday

Another early start this morning, as I was asked to cover the 8.00am Eucharist at St Catherine's, another traditional Book of Common Prayer start to the day, only this time the 1984 Church in Wales revision, another liturgy I know off by heart. Clare came too, so we there walked together in the pre-dawn twilight. By the time I reached the altar for the Offertory, the sun had risen enough to shine in through the churchyard trees, and light up the brickwork in the north west corner of the church. Lovely. There were seven of us for the service. I read Archbishop Barry's Ministry Sunday letter, his last before he retires in February, commending the new Ministry Area strategy for the Church in Wales and all this will mean for the vocations of both lay and ordained people as it develops. 

With fewer than ever clergy doing more of the same, in a world where more and more technical management skills and experience are required on top of pastoral and spiritual gifts, it's difficult to see at this stage exactly how responsibility for the whole life and mission of the church is going to be shared between laity and clergy in ways that are not already happening. Maybe at this stage it's a matter of muddling through, adjusting, making better efforts to communicate better and build effective personal relationships, not just trusting that every stakeholder lay person or cleric is happy to be organised and work in a way that's different from that is habitual to them. 

In my experience a community will rally around and grow through tackling a cause or project which everyone recognises as a key issue around which to rally and muster resources. Adapting buildings to cater for changing need is one thing, restoring beloved places of worship in crisis is another, reaching out to identifiable needy groups of people is another, social and natural environmental concern is yet another. What's more difficult, when it comes to working together in genuine missionary enterprise, isn't practical responses to material need, but the spiritual dimensions of life.

Without a vision the people perish (Prov 29:18), immediately comes to mind. Every changing scene of life, every new experience, Christians are challenged yet again to return to Scripture and Tradition, and seek new understanding about how the life of faith engages afresh with reality, not just as individuals but as a community sharing thoughts and insights about the meaning of life and our relationship with God as a fresh stimulus to creative imagination.

The appeal of Christian faith to heart, mind and will has been profoundly weakened by ideologies emerging from secular materialistic thought, so that now Christian faith is dismissed as unworthy of consideration by perhaps a majority of people, who, if they have any religious or spiritual inclinations at all, prefer the DIY approach and make it up as they go along, their individualism unchallenged. Populism, be it religious, social or political may be a kind of reaction against that, but a disciplined challenge to the truth and validity of either from Christian thinking has very limited impact. Believers have a great deal to learn from the failure of the church to commend its faith to a greater audience, and a need to re-engage differently in persuasive argument for the adoption of Christian life and faith.  

Those who take the lead in matters of ministry teach and remind the church of its calling and purpose, but they are also learners, who need enable others to think for themselves, imagine and share their ideas and insights. That means taking time to listen, for them, for the whole community. Whatever practical preparation we make for anything we do is only as good as the quality of preparation we put into it, together. And that's so hard when we're so busy with so much to be done. In retirement I now look back and think about things I could have spent more time on and done better. Now I have spare time, wondering what to do with it is what exercises me most, for now.

Thankfully, after several hours of battery charging, the car started without difficulty. Why it discharged when it's not that old, is another issue to keep an eye on. Anyway, I got to St German's nice and early and enjoyed chatting with people arriving for the service. Churchwarden Peter read out Archbishop Barry's Ministry letter, and I preached about it. To my mind, St German's is a church community that is ready to face a changing future in a ministry area, as they have learned to work hard together to sustain its community facing activities, as well as buildings and worship for several years, this has continued throughout its extended period of life without a regular parish priest. I hope a new priest will be able to recognise this and build upon it, whenever one is appointed, and hopefully sooner, if a new ministry area in the 'southern arc' of Cardiff's parishes is to be realised.

After lunch, Clare went off to her final concert rehearsal, and I followed her to the Fountain Steiner School in Llandaff North a couple of hours later for the later afternoon performance. The school hall was full of families, and the choir was drawn from teachers, parents nd friends of the school. They'd spent the term rehearsing a selection of pieces from Benjamin Britten's 'Ceremony of Carols', quite a tough challenging work to develop from scratch in over three months, but I know how much Clare has enjoyed it, and is now enjoying singing lessons, taken to improve her vocal technique. I wouldn't mind joining the choir, except that it means on Tuesdays, clashing with Chi Gung, and I'm looking forward to re-starting that in the New Year.

I took my Sony HX50 with me, perched on a high window sill, pressed the video record button and left it to its own devices during the Britten, reckoning this might produce a helpful piece of feedback for the conductor to consider later. I was delighted with the result, as the sound is really quite good as well as the video footage. There was a man sitting in front of me who also had a camera and took a few stills. It turned out that inside his smart leather camera case was an identical HX50!

After supper we relaxed together, watching the movie 'Paddington', for the first time, laughing aloud at its mild satirization of British bourgeois life, while at the same time it packs a hard hitting message about the inclusiveness, diversity and welcoming foreign migrants deemed by the author and producer of the film to be characteristic of the British way of life. Nothing could be more timely. It could do with being shown on one channel or another every night at the moment, just to spite the tabloid media. 

This was followed by the penultimate episode of 'Gwyll', which rather shifted gear half way through, going from being slowly paced with a hint of menace, to chain of incidents in which our heroes start to join the dots and make an intelligible picture of the toxic affair of the children's home which has been the cause of so many tragic lives lost, throughout all three sets of episodes of this memorable Celtic noir movie series. I'm left wondering if the producers planned them all in advance, given the difficulties in funding attached to projects of this nature, or whether it evolved following the big international success of the first series. It's been a great credit to the Welsh language creative industry, and S4C. One can only hope we'll see new ventures in future.

    

House painting time

Sunshine and blue skies are making life very pleasant this week for doing business as usual, strolling into town for a couple of afternoon hours in the office, and eating meals out in the garden. I woke up before six on Tuesday with some ideas to embody the plans I'm working on for a ministry development project with people in Cowbridge Benefice into an interactive blog site. I learned some new things about using the Google Blogger platform, which I've been using for nearly ten years, pushing me out of my routine comfort zone. The challenge will be recruiting people to make use of the finished product once we get it approved and launched properly.

Owain came over yesterday afternoon while I was out at the office and started cleaning the front facade of the house in preparation for painting. At last the weather is perfect and walls have had plenty of time to dry out properly for working on. Today while the front facade was in shadow we worked together on applying the first coat of magnolia paint up to the three metre mark. We'll have to get someone in with ladders or scaffolding to do up to the roof level, but already the rest looks so much cleaner and brighter that neighbours have started commenting about the state of their own. 

It's strange, I had plenty of energy for the job and worked right through to completion,  but when I stopped and started to stiffen up in the neck and shoulders, I was overwhelmed with tiredness and fell asleep on the sofa. One good thing about retirement is having the freedom to do just that. Stuff still gets done, but more recovery time is needed.

Clare's been busy in school with staff meeting and interviews to prepare for recruiting her successor, as she's announced her intention to retire, even though she may continue established kindergarten work. It's a good move, now that the school is expanding, to appoint someone new who can develop eurythmy teaching right through the school's increasing age range. She's been doing this over the past year and found development demanding on top of teaching and organisation. It would be nice to have more time together - something I was reminded of when we sat and watched the Llangollen International Eisteddfod together on TV tonight. How lovely it would be to have the freedom to take the week off and go up there next year. Impossible while it happens in term time.

 

Eurythmy first at Hawthorn

Having bid farewell to Peter and Sebastien about to set off to the Devon coast for a weekend of camping, Clare and I drove to Hawthorn Steiner school to prepare the meals for the ten strong team of musicians and eurythmists who'd come to perform twice today - once before lunch for children, and the second full length evening performance which Clare has spent a lot of her time organising and publicising recently. The eurythmists are students at the West Midlands Eurythmy Association school in Stourbridge, doing their end of year performance tour with their teacher. They'd left home at seven this morning to arrive in time to set up the performance area in the school's main hall, and rehearse themselves into the space.

For the children, they did a folk tale called 'Jack and the North Wind'. It was visually stunning, and such a new experience for them, that most were held spellbound for the half an hour it lasted. I took over a hundred photos with my Lumix LX5, and was thrilled at its responsiveness, given I had it on automatic settings and simply pressed the button at every eye-catching moment possible. It was exciting to get such good results indoors, with so much movement going on.

Thirty people attended the evening performance, which was a many as the hall could contain without encroaching on the stage area. There was a repeat of 'Jack' in the second half, and in the first half some performance pieces with poetry and with music, plus an extraordinary dramatic rendering of an edited passage from Tolkein's 'The Hobbit' in which Bilbo and Gollum set each other riddles.

For the evening performance the lighting wasn't as kind to the camera, and the bulb popped in one of just two stage floodlights I'd collected from Crane's music shop in town early in the day. However, I set up the little Sony W690 on a tripod on a step ladder in a corner, and let it run throughout the evening, and to my surprise the results were very good indeed, except that it switched itself off after recording video continuously for half and hour - a massive 2 gigabyte file! The hour and ten minute performance drained the battery completely, but nevertheless, delivered the goods. Editing may take some time.

What a day. I can't remember when last I saw a full Eurythmy performance - was it Clare's graduation? It's such a powerful disciplined medium of expression. I must make an effort to find time to attend more eurythmy performances, as it's so uplifting and inspiring an art form, visually, dramatically, spiritually.