Every now and then...

I am filled with an unwarranted sense of my own importance as a communicator (this may be an occupational hazard for preachers) and specifically as a writer, and delude myself into believing that this blog has merit beyond the very limited reality. Then I am rash enough to engage in an exercise like the "Review of the Year" which seems to be doing the rounds, and am brought back to earth with a bump. Below are the first sentences of my posts in 2006. Confronted with them, I'm more grateful than ever that anyone ever bothers to visit here. Thank you...I will try harder in future!

I received this as the first email of 2006 from the Henri Nouwen Society and thought it deserved sharing. All Ordinary Time reflections done and posted, Tax Return completed and submitted on the due day, second (and far more entertaining) stage of Emergency Management training completed...And so the Lenten journey begins. Sorry about the break in transmission...I'm fine, but life has been alarmingly full of all sorts of totally unbloggable things,- and as we gear up for Holy Week, I'm not sure the next few days will be much better. Just to say thank you, really, for the many different ways in which all of you, my real and virtual friends, show me love and care, - and thus show me God. So this is the week to date.I'm just home from the ordination of priests in Gloucester Cathedral, - one of those splendid occasions that the C of E does really well. Home again to a new address from a wonderful 3 days...so much happened that it felt far longer and was wonderfully relaxing and purr-inducing. I wrote this for the Ordinary Time book - the text of which is being blogged daily here. To be honest, I’m still in two minds about “All Creatures Great and Small: a Pet Blessing service for St Francis-tide” which was our OpenHouse offering yesterday. From India via Cardiff comes the news - the mother has ARRIVED! Having spent most of yesterday light-headed from exhaustion, and talking gibberish to all who came my way, I fell asleep delightedly at around 9.00 pm...(which meant I wasted a whole evening of Hattie Gandhi's company, as she is on a flying visit home,- but I wouldn't have been much use to her even if I'd been awake).