Normally at this time on a Monday morning I would be in church for Morning Prayer (usually including a mini “staff meeting” with my retired Church Army sister). Today I’m not because LMP has a nasty cold and conjunctivitus.

I haven’t “done” much. Read a little about the role of bishops in contemporary society. Encouraged a few friends on Facebook. Not paid “work”, but still, perhaps “ministry” in the widest sense.

And have realised how tired I am. After what was for me a rather early night. I’ve also realised a little more about time and motivation.  I know other clergy who seem to work harder than I do.  Yet I still find myself more than a little taken aback that my initial though this morning, at 8.15am was, “better get to work then.”

Not that an unusual thought. Not uncommonly 6 days a week. No commuting so more work time, albeit sometimes leisurely and sometimes very mixed, and therefore a little more refreshing.

But even so. Would I want it different? I don’t know, since I have little to compare it with. But possibly, just possibly, it explains the tiredness. Twelve years this year. Maybe it really is time to sort out that Sabbatical…

Or is it more worrying that I should not only be thinking about starting “work” at the time I did, but that I also felt somewhat obliged?

It is going to be a pretty chaotic day, as I already have a full day’s work to do, without being acting as removals man, but that’s another story. (Just look out for odd things on the roof bars!)

It’s definitely time he went, and I hope the time has been useful for him, even if not financially rewarding for us. (The incompetence of the DSS seems to grow with every passing year…)

Nevertheless, I’m going to miss the male company (even if morose), the endless offers of cups of coffee, and even the ever-present rumble of the PC through the lounge ceiling. It also presages a round of room moves, which I’m also less than delighted about.

Still a change, as they say, is as good as a rest! Now, once again, with feeling…

Petrol won’t make a Diesel car go!

Anyone willing to give me a tow across town?

But having said all that, yesterday would have been Dad’s 73rd Birthday.

So, in faith, I await a re-union. A different sort of waiting.

This world’s a lottery well intended by God,
it doesn’t function like some invariable machine.
There are those I think who will find this odd
for a priest to say. Where’s our Father’s care?

But life is, is contingent, and we believe although
the earth shake and the mountains fall
into the sea. It cannot but be so,
and God’s making me giddy with the fact of it all.

On a planet shaped by star-dust, planets and tides
in the set purpose of the Creator,
we share in his plain, open, eternally wide
generosity, heads straining towards Kingdom come.

© David Grieve 2011

(Tales of Transylvanian travels is for sale at £8.50 + p&p)

It could be an irregular and peculiar interpretation of the word on my part, but it doesn’t sit well, I know that. Then there are the exhortations of this time of November to wear my poppy with pride. How? I cannot be proud of the sacrifices and endeavours of others, in the sense that they are not of my doing. I can be grateful, absolutely. I can be awed. But pride is not a fitting word, as far as my vocabulary goes.

Pride, in Christian terms, is not a virtue. Far from it, it is a vice. But to equate pride with self-respect, or respect for nation, doesn’t sit too easy.

Pride is for lions. I am a Christian… and we all know what the Romans thought about that combination!

There are times when Facebook friends espouse positions I find offensive, or at best questionable, to the extent that I wonder whether I would like them in “real life”, even those I knew in “real life”. There are two things to be remembered when this comes along. Firstly, that there is a place for healthy disagreement, even if typed words are slow and clumsy and lacking in visual cues. For our mental health we need to encounter and wrestle with opposing views. And maybe more importantly to remember that I, and my opinions, may appear equally unpalatable, illogical, ridiculous and even offensive to the other, as theirs might to me!

So bear with me friends, through this strange journey we call life, and let God be the judge, as I pray I will let him be for you, and not my own mind.

I was actually thinking about how we think about time. It is has always been there, and a mark of sentience (or is it sapience) seems to be an awareness of it (possibly along with the awareness of beginnings and ends, and therefore the “death to which we move” to quote the Common Worship Funeral Service).

So this, morning as our internal clocks (like the one that woke me at 6am GMT) struggle to align with our mental constructs of time. It left me wondering whether the whole of our drive to measure and record time, to mark it out and decree that “as of now” it’s such and such a time whereas yesterday it was such and such plus one is symptomatic of our need to appear in control, even of the things we cannot.

Yes, it is beholden (old word) upon s to use our time wisely, but that’s not the same as being slaves to it, even as we try to enslave it to our own ends. I seem to remember Death  in Terry Pratchett’s wonderful novel “Reaperman” having been “retired” questioning why humans thought of time and clocks as their friends when they inevitably ended up hinting at how little time they had in the light of eternity.

But enough of my half-awake wittering. I have a church service to do, and ironically, it being a 5th Sunday of the year, just as I’m trying to get across to folks that All Saints’ Tide is a time for us now as much as those paragons who have gone before, aided in my illustrations by Giles Fraser and the Occupy Movement, we are also in our own timewarp. We have put the clocks back to BCP and AV!

O well, one must needs hasten.

It was a long time that I was my nephews age: J was 12 yesterday, and to mark it there was a short trip to the model shop to find a present. It was a strange and bittersweet experience. Memories of happy days with Dad and his extensive model railway, wistful regret at all the locomotives that remain stashed away upstairs, out of sunlight and harms way, and gentle disquiet at find not only did I want to buy something for me, but also to be able to spend a little more on J. Whether it’s because there’s too much month left at the end of the money, or whether because I have no son, I don’t know, but I really wish I could by J something a little better, possibly along the lines that if I can’t play with it, then someone like him should. And yet, at the some time there’s that cache of nostalgia simply hiding away. It’s not right, is it? Of course, then there’s A, my other nephew of a similar age, who, I’ve been told, likes cars, trains and maps and who I haven’t seen in years. Not so sure I make a good uncle or family man, to busy with work and my own priorities.

Life somehow seems terribly short, and terribly crowded. I keep discovering writing projects I haven’t touched for a year. CDs that are 20 years old. Memories carefully polished to shine and smell fresh. I’m even driving a 25 year old car these days. Perhaps it’s the mythical mid-life crisis, although I think it’s fair to simply call it “life”.

So, I’d better go to the supermarket for the wrapping paper and a card, as well as a card and something for Mum, as it is her day today. How can I have a 12 year old nephew, a Mum past retirement age, the memories of Dad?

But, of course, I do have other things. When I was J’s age I discovered Role-Playing Games, and they are still with me. Not long after I discovered my faith, and likewise that remains. And for the moment, that will suffice: the world turns, the divine endures.

Onward into the day.