Return of an old favourite

Another  bright sunny day, although a little colder. After breakfast, I took some photos of flowers in the garden before hanging out a load of washing to dry. Then I did the week's grocery shop at the Coop while Clare prepared the lunch for cooking in the steamer. All I had to do was switch the stove on, let it cook, then lay the table and serve it up when she returned from her morning walk. It's good to see her slow but sustained improvement. 

I had another exchange of emails with Jean, the chaplaincy worship arranger with a draft of my first Sunday there. A good way to learn about their customised liturgical format. It seems that a variety of Eucharistic prayers are used there from time to time. That'll make a change from using just one of the half a dozen available to use here in Wales.

After lunch, I drafted a eulogy for Friday's funeral and prepared an order of service to go with it. Then I went for a walk around Llandaff Fields. At the edge of a woodland patch a magpie was perched on a fallen branch and didn't move when I drew close to take a photo. There was a flurry of wings and screeches of alarm from another bird, a thrush I think. It dived at the magpie in an aggressive way, then flew past, narrowly missing me. I could hear the same bird in a tree thirty yards away issuing the same angry noise. I wondered if the magpie was too close to the other bird's nest, preventing it from feeding its young, or its hatching eggs.

This evening I watched the first episode of the new 'Silent Witness' series 25 on iPlayer, as I missed it last night, then after a break watched the second episode live. A complex case with evidence capable of being mis-interpreted, with mixed motives and conflicts of interest getting in the way of straightforward scientific enquiry. Amanda Burton returns to the series after seventeen years, playing her older self in the role of the original lead pathologist Sam Ryan, now a senior international figure, and this generates some interesting dramatic tension. It's going to be an interesting series to watch.

A welcome Easter celebration

Another cold bright sunny day for our walk to St Catherine's for the Easter Day Eucharist. I remembered last year, alone in the Chaplaincy House in Ibiza, no congregation to respond to the Easter acclamations, no sharing of Communion, just the trusted words of the liturgy to run through in prayer, having uploaded an audio file of the same, and an Easter video greeting the night before. Such a unique experience, being compelled by circumstances to do without what matters most to me in my life of faith. Nevertheless, it was an experience I'm grateful to have had. For all I know it's one I may have to repeat some time, but if so, the essential truth of the Lord's words to St Paul are there for perpetual reassurance: "My grace is sufficient for thee."

There were fifty of us in church, including ten children. What a blessing! That's as good a congregation as any that we had last year before lock-down resumed, and a testimony to the determination of of our faithful members to make church part of their New Normal. Semana Santa in Malaga in 2018, we were a handful on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, while there were half a million on the streets. In 2014 at Christmas in Taormina, we were eight I think. 

They were strange experiences of ministry, while being aware of UK parishes with no priest to accompany worshippers in Holy Week, but could summon up many more for services if there were any. But priests have no choice about numbers attending, and must not worry about this or the circumstances. You serve wherever you're planted, for the sake of those who'll gather there. That's all there is to it.

With some nervousness and difficulty, I managed to record tomorrow's Morning Prayer but wasn't satisfied with the result. I know I can do better but achieving that takes more time than I have today. It takes time to get used to the very precise routine of producing what's needed, and invariably I forget in between assignments. The last few days have just been too busy to get ready properly.

After lunch, with a glass of an excellent Ribera del Duero to wash it down with, we drove to Lavernock and walked down to the beach. It was low tide and it was just turning, so that off-shore there small waves were breaking without moving forward. An intriguing sight. We took Owain back to the station to catch a train back to Bristol, and then the whole family was re-united in a Zoom call, organised by Kath. The next Zoom call will be on my birthday, a week from now.

Digital discovery

Yesterday I had a call from Doreen about a bereavement in Nerja and a funeral in Velez Malaga on Saturday, which Fr Nigel couldn't do, due to his existing commitments. I agreed to do this, which meant a journey there by car this morning to meet the family.

I was given an address, for which Google Maps provided me with a one location when in fact there were two, answering to the same search key word, within half a kilometre of each other in different urbanizaciones in different hilly locations. Consequently, I went to the wrong one first. As I sought to extricate myself from a complex internal one way system, the car signalled that it was running out of petrol, and although it may have had enough fuel, I couldn't take the risk of the engine conking out somewhere on a steep gradient, so I had to divert and get petrol first, making me even later than planned. Not that this was of concern to those waiting for me, as time seems to stand still when you have just lost someone unexpectedly.

Anyway, eventually I arrived. It was already four days since the sudden death. The funeral director had been engaged, but finding an English speaking priest had taken longer than usual. This is one of the unforeseen hazards of expat life, until it happens close to you. It turned out that one of the three daughter-in-laws works as a church administrator back in Britain, used to preparing funeral orders of service. This proved to be very helpful in these circumstances, and she was keen to offer her services in honour of her father-in-law.

As I was in Nerja, I went to Maro and had a pub lunch with Judith, formerly churchwarden of Nerja, who'd seen the chaplaincy there through a demanding two year interregnum, and then after stepping down at the end of an eight year term of office, needed a hip replacement operation, from which she is now recovering well, and in good spirits. Over the course of the Nerja interregnum, I was locum chaplain there for several months in a couple of stints. Judith is one of those people who have a gift for making friends, a memorable church welcomer with a reputation far and wide. It was good to see her face free from lines of pain caused by coping with a deteriorating hip joint. It won't be that long before she's walking again without a stick.

After my return to Malaga, I was sent the agreed draft funeral service order for final scrutiny. Then, half an hour after approving this, a panic call to say that due to a lack of ink, printing was proving impossible. The chaplaincy office printer wasn't up to the job, but it occurred to me that further down the same block in the street is a digital print shop. I went out to check opening hours, and it was still open.

Under instruction from the shop assistant who dealt with me, I emailed the print ready file from my phone to the print shop address, and returned to the apartment ten minutes later with the forty copies requested. The ease and simplicity of this astounded me, as I am prone to getting into a mess when working on rendering a document file into a booklet. It's been possible to achieve this degree of accuracy and simplicity where documents are concerned for the past decade at least, where there are compatible systems. But, with the advent of new mobile technologies, what matters most is that files can be reproduced accurately on any system. Add to this the potential of mobile phones and tablets to work in exactly as desktop computers have done for much longer and you have the latest kind of revolution. I don't need a printer in my workspace for sophisticated tasks any more. I just need a suitably equipped print shop near to where I live or work.
 

The spice of life

A quiet, uneventful start to the week apart from visits to the bridge over the charco, spotting a couple of herons, well they may be a pair, but they tend to stay well apart from each other once breeding is over. There's just one egret out there again, the other two I saw seem to have quit. What's happened to the hundreds I saw last year? I wonder.

Today I phoned Fr Miguel the local parish priest, to confirm with him a date for the ecumenical carol service which happens a week after I leave here. I'll go to the Wednesday evening Mass in the parish church at Mojácar pueblo this week, and meet him properly. It'll give me an opportunity to exercise my Duo Lingo Spanish.

I had an email confirming an earlier request to do locum duty in Málaga during Lent and Holy Week. So that's January in Montreux, home for February, then Málaga for March and April. It will mean living there for the period of remarkable religious processional events, not just commuting in for a few hours at a time, as I did in 2014 from Fuengirola. It interests me greatly to see how the city continues to go about daily life, welcoming hosts of tourists as well as those who make what is in effect a pilgrimage there to participate in the cermonies. For balancing normality, I'll have the variety of three Anglican Chaplaincy congregations to minister to, at what is my favourite season of the Christian year.

When I think of the places I've done locum duties in Spain, what makes this enjoyable is that within a chaplaincy, congregations aren't clones of each other. Each has a different history as well as different context. Liturgy used will be much the same, but each gathering for worship expresses itself uniquely, and as a priest one has to develop a particular relationship with each. Variety is the spice of life!

Another walk to Garrucha this evening. A new large bulk carrier is loading in port, called Yeoman Bank, registered in Liberia. It's unusual among big ships I've noticed here, described by the Marine Traffic ship database as a 'Self Discharging Bulk Carrier' which explains the distinctive superstructure attached to its bow section. As it's currently loading, this is not in use, and is displaced high above the water, away from the loading quay.

For reasons unknown, the ship database shows correctly that it is currently berthed in Garrucha, but the Garrucha Port section of the Marine Traffic website shows no trace of its visit. This website is vast and complex. Keeping it up to date must be a nightmare, and not everything can be automatically sync'd. It's amazing we have such information resources anyway.