I was pleased to hear Rhiannon leaving the house after six this morning. Filming ends this afternoon, so hopefully she can rest and enjoy the weekend. Kath is coming down to stay as well. I spent the morning editing and writing. A colder cloudy day with sunny breaks, and a surprise hail storm mid morning. There may be snow in some places, but unlikely here in Cardiff. It's been much milder this winter with fewer frosty nights and much more rain. I spent the morning recording and editing material for a week next Thursday's Morning Prayer.
After a salmon soul lunch, I took the 61 bus to Fairwater to attend the World Day of Prayer service at St Peter's. This year's service was devised by a group of Palestinian Christian women, reason enough to go. It contained moving stories summarising the plight of Palestinians through the eyes of three generations of women. We also sang a couple of Palestinian choruses, with English texts and the Arabic equivalent rendered phonetically. I don't think I was very successful with the Arabic, but it was worth trying. It was a gathering of two dozen women of a certain age, and just two men. If I had realised the service was at St Peter's before I sent out Sway, last week or this, I could have included a poster for it, but I only found out late last night after the distribution was done. It's an ecumenical event held annually, but sadly such ecumenical activities are few and far between.
I just missed a bus to return home. There's half an hour between 61 buses now mid afternoon, extra buses are laid on exclusively for school children instead. I walked for half an hour until it began to drizzle, then I sheltered beneath a hedge next to a bus stop, and only had to wait a couple of minutes for the next bus to appear. Kath arrived at half past five to stay a couple of nights and return to Kenilworth on country roads to let Rhiannon have the experience of distance driving. She was her driving test in a few weeks time, and values all the practice she can get. After a snack supper, I walked to Cowbridge Road East and caught an 18 bus to take me up to St David's Parish Church for the Licensing of Fr Andrew Sully as West Cardiff Ministry Area Leader in the setting of a Eucharist.
About eighty people attended, and a quarter of them were clergy - half of them robed in the choir and half scattered throughout the congregation. The formalities of a licensing ceremony in a Eucharist have been simplified even more than they were the last time I attended one. I'm not sure if I approve of this or not, as stripping out the somewhat antiquated traditional features may have made it more informal and relaxed but made the occasion feel less momentous and memorable.
It was however, a truly bilingual event honouring St David. We sang 'Mae hen Wlad fy Nhadau' at the end. No choir needed, the singing in spontaneous harmony, was loud confident and enthusiastic throughout. I wish it was that good in the churches I serve every Sunday. There was a sumptuous spread after the service, and many cheerful conversations and greetings exchanged. It's a pity more couldn't have attended. Carol A long standing member of 'The Res' and old friend gave me a lift as far as Victoria Park, so I could walk the rest of the way home and complete my daily step quota. It was good to see Rhiannon had arrived from her film extra job a little earlier than me. We sat in the kitchen and chatted, until tiredness caught up with us one by one, and drew us up to bed.
In the news today, thirty thousand are now reported to have been killed in Gaza since October. It's claimed ten thousand of them are Hamas fighters. It's also claimed the majority of casualties are women and children. At this stage it's not possible to distinguish fact from propaganda. Will we ever know the truth? This grim statistic reminded me of what I was told by a former Red Cross prison visitor before going to Syria. Under the dictatorship of Hafez al Assad, in 1982, an insurrection of Muslim brotherhood members in Hama took thirty thousand lives in a month. If it was reported in Western media at the time it didn't arouse the same kind of political outrage which the war on Gazans has aroused. But then it was a matter of one powerful group of Muslims fighting against another.
