Life in all its fulness

goes on, and hasn't been allowing much time for blogging.
Some of the events of the past week have included

• the sort of funeral for which you feel you have been pretty much auditioned (thanks to J the funeral director, who acted as a very affirming "agent"), which takes up hour upon hour but leaves you wondering what you were doing at the end of it
• manic planning of St Matthew's day service (for both church and school) , Harvest Festival (ditto), Messy Harvest
• wedding preps for this Saturday
• Medieval Fayre (excellent event promoted by the local parish council in the park that borders the church yard...) Once again I sat in the pillory, and sang ancient rounds with the community choir while my colleague negotiated 2 stone weight of chain mail and a wonderful Warden took some 40 people up the church tower...Lots of good links made with the world beyond the church railings, great fun, but seriously exhausting on a Sunday afternoon
• unbloggables of many and varied hues
• a sad winding up meeting for the parish branch of the Mothers' Union, which is clearly no longer viable as things are
  
• funeral visits for more services next week and the week after
• the sudden unexpected promise of FabBishop to attend a notional Confirmation service on a Sunday next month when we were expecting nothing beyond.... - well, several dozen animals at a pet blessing. No, I didn't invite him and then forget. Nobody knows quite HOW it happened...And of course, I'd love to welcome him almost any other Sunday of the year, but somehow the mix of Church in the Valley's first ever pet service and a Bishop whose liturgical expertise is second to none just doesn't auger well. So, there's alot of frantic phoning going on as we try to work out what's best to be done
• meetings, more meetings and still more meetings
• a trip to the theatre - undistinguished piece, but I did love the malapropesque cleaner who referred to "nubile phones from the Carphone whorehouse". Unfortunately the glimpses of semi comic human misery that we were offered in the other monologues were all too reminiscent of so many parish visits - so laughter really wasn't an option.
  
• distinctly scary prep for a course on leadership which is taking me out of the parish for 2 days next week (which means that things will only feel busier for a while)...The detailed questionaire we had to complete asked us for our hopes from the course...I wrote something about learning to set realistic targets, and to so focus on the achievable that I won't always have to spend the first two days of any holiday deep in exhausted sleep. Well, it's worth a try, isn't it?