An interesting day!

To start with, I learned something about myself…Yesterday evening, feeling totally overwhelmed by the number of things I have to do, and with no visible means of accomplishing them I wobbled to wonderful vicar, who promptly relieved me of one of them. Thus liberated, I went home, slept and accomplished more in an hour this morning than in the previous day finally finishing all the short term projects (including the one I'd been told to forget about) before I went out. Bizarre. Clearly the secret is to somehow move things into a different compartment, - whereupon they all seem mysteriously manageable, and all is well again.

To London through mist and rain, to take the funeral of Kay, my mother’s favourite cousin, at All Saints Fulham.Lovely church, lovely people, and the funeral itself went well…It was very strange to find myself amid a group of people, for the most part total strangers, some of whom had known my mother well in her youth, some of whom knew quite alot about me…But it was good to reconnect with distant cousins, whom I enjoyed far more now than I had when growing up…and it was very good to feel secure in the person I am now. It may be that because my parents died when I was on the verge of adulthood, I’d never quite confirmed to myself that I had actually arrived there (there are certainly days when it is at best debatable,- ask my nearests and dearests!).Finding myself in this particular context today, doing for that family the things that are so much part of my identity in ministry, I felt that I had somehow passed another milestone.
Not explaining it well, but it was a good experience.
I came home with an amazing painting of Kay’s (which can only be entitled funky nuns), some wonderful family photos (including one with my parents together…Daddy was always behind the camera, so this has huge scarcity value) and another cross for the collection (this one New Zealand silver inlaid with paua shell (conincidentally, matching another pair of Greenbelt earrings). That feels rather special too…I imagine I will wear it quite often.

The first Taste of Prayer was pure joy….lots of story, lots of space, lots of silence…thank you God for my dear friend Judy, who facilitated that encounter and brought us to a depth of prayer together that I think touched everyone.