Last visit to Llanos del Peral

There were thirty people for the Eucharist at Llanos this morning, with Margie preaching an excellent sermon to an attentive audience. She ended with a simple prayer, and the congregation replied Amen with a single voice. That's how I was certain they were listening carefully. She doesn't have big voice but she does have a clear voice, and is able to measure her pace of delivery in tune with a resonance of the building's acoustic, so nobody would have to strain to hear her. Her unpacking of the parable of the talents was thorough and thoughtful. She admits to being enthusiastic over studying scripture and having an opportunity to convey this in preaching. The interregnum gave her an opportunity to do this more often and gain experience. It's been good for her and for other members of the ministry team in this far flung Chaplaincy.

Given the widespread shortage of Anglican clergy to fill vacancies and the length of time taken to fill them, the problem is also capable of being at the same time an opportunity to develop lay ministries. The challenge then for any incoming cleric is to enable this to flourish, and not to be an inhibitor of emerging vocations to new areas of ministry. The trouble is that whether clergy like preaching or not, they feel they ought to preach more often than not, as this is one of the key apostolic duties of every cleric, whether they are good at it or not. 

Perhaps it would be good for every church encouraging lay ministry to consider with its pastor how often each ministry team member should be assigned to preach, so that a spectrum of different interpretative voices and witnesses to discipleship can be heard by the whole community over time. The priest isn't just there to teach, but to make sure the whole church learns and teaches through all its ministers. Discerning together and organising a whole church education programme, taking into account the particular gifts of each contributor is quite a task. It cannot and should not be done solely by the cleric in charge, even if this is the dominant expectation on the part of church leaders. Doing this well so that church members are enthusiastic and motivated to learn can involve self-effacement for a cleric. Not preaching so often could be a more effective way of ensuring delivery of the 'Ministry of the Word' by affording fresh opportunities to others. And I say this as one who loves preaching and works hard at it.

As a locum priest, wherever, I go people make an effort to thank me for preaching, more so that for celebrating. Some say how much they appreciate having a succession of locum clergy to listen to during an interregnum. Evidently, variety is perceived as beneficial, and as such can be incorporated into the ministry of the long term resident priest also, if all involved give the matter adequate thought, and show willing to change traditional expectations. Now that I'm retired all I can do is plug the gaps, as requested. I'm no longer in a position to implement ideas I muse about here. Could I have done more of this forty years ago, I wonder?

On my return journey, I stopped outside Garrucha at one of the few convenience stores I know to be open on a Sunday, to buy the bottle of red wine I'd forgotten to get yesterday. A bottle of Romanian Pinot Noir caught my eye, one of several wines of Romanian origin in the shop. It's unusual to see foreign wine imports, with some French and Italian exceptions in bigger supermarkets. I wondered if the store has Romanian owners with links to a home wine exporter.

Spain has employed Romanian agricultural workers since well before the country joined the EU ten years ago. Some work in trucking and hospitality businesses, so why not food retail too? There are said to be a million Romanians in Spain, a third more than the number of British expats. Its Orthodox church has twenty parishes and a Cathedral in Madrid, almost the same number as the Archdeaconry of Gibraltar, though there are over seventy Anglican places of worship embraced by its Chaplaincies. Funny how noticing a wine label in a shop set me off on this little excursion of curiosity.
 

In the midst of life

After a better night's sleep with a pillow under my pelvis, I woke up to somewhat less discomfort than over the past few days. By a process of cautious experiment, I found a comfortable position in which I could relax and sleep, and this helped the displaced vertebrae to resume their natural place. As long as I'm careful, the soreness should go in a few days. I was glad about this, as I had an invite from Jasmine, a member of the Llanos congregation to a coffee morning at her home in the campo three quarters of an hour's drive from Mojácar to the west of Huercal Overa.

The house is set in open rolling countryside between the village of Sta Maria de Nieva and the hamlet of El Gor. The village built an ermita on top of a low hill in the early eighteenth century, then a church, which was destroyed in an earthquake in 1863 and took twenty years to rebuild. It has twin towers and a dome. It stands out because its exterior is clad in red sandstone, and it's the only large building in a village whose houses stretch along the main road from Huercal Overa, evidence perhaps of a certain prosperity in the area a hundred and fifty years ago. It wasn't open however, so I didn't stop to take a closer look.

About two dozen people came from far and wide to the coffee morning. There were a bric-a-brac and book stalls, and one devoted varieties of home made preserves and marmalade. One member had cooked a fresh batch of big traditional pasties before coming. I was lucky to get the penultimate one to take home for lunch. All this, plus the raffle, always a raffle, was in aid of church funds. It's an impressive amount of effort which this, like many other churches, invest in what I like to call the 'voluntary economy'. It's great how traditional recipes and home cooking, whether inherited British or acquired Spanish are at the heart of community food culture. It helps that many ex-pats have fruit trees on their fincas and enjoy their produce. I returned with a bag of freshly picked mandarins, to top up the fast reducing bowl of freshly picked ones I was given last Sunday.

Just as I arrived, the chaplaincy phone received a call from a Spanish undertaker asking if I was Hywel Davies. Hywel is a colleague and friend in Llandaff diocese. He was here on locum duty in March and April this year, so this didn't surprise me, and I was able to explain who I was, and then conducted the full conversation with him in Spanish. He texted me the phone number of the widow, and so I drove straight from the coffee morning to the apartment in Vera Playa, where Christine's husband had died suddenly the day before, six years younger than me.

I found my way to the area where I knew the urbanización was, but then Google Maps started to be most unhelpful, failing to acknowledge the name of the place I was looking for, and redirecting me to an urbanización with a similar name several kilometres away. Large areas of the coastal plain through which the Almanzora river runs are drained wetlands, intersected by modern infrastructure but still waiting for housing in-fill, covered with bushes and cane forests. No houses, no signage, much confusion.

After another phone call to the family, I was met by the son's father-in-law at the roadside overlooking the salinas lake nature reserve which I visited for the first time last Sunday afternoon. I learned that the couple had only made the permanent move from Lancashire to Spain in April of this year, after years of visits, staying in their son's apartment. Without warning, the future no longer has shape or prospects that make sense for them. I have the weekend to prepare a funeral service, to at least help the family face up to this untimely, unwanted farewell.