Happy Birthday to

ME!
How can I be (sound of muffled age)?

Happy Birthday

We all wish Mary a Happy Birthday today. The sun is shining and it will be a great day for the show. Although you've had a hard life you've done well. (here)

Mind your feet

As I reflect on the idea of faith footprint (it proves a little harder than I thought), I am thinking a bit about the footprints I, and we, made last week. Some of it seems Ok, some of it seems indifferent, and some of it seems well just wrong.
I felt OK, but sad by my visit with my declining friend. I tried to cheer him up by helping him to connect with the outside world...sometimes he would try, but other times he wouldn't
I enjoyed talking with someone who is thinking about what it means to be a priest, and another who is having some real difficulty on the ministry front. I had a fruitful time talking to someone who will be ordained quite soon about some of the contemporary issues of ministry.
I tried to pray and meditate with some quality each day.
I prepared a couple of sermons, and various entries for my weblog, and my preaching site.
I said the Eucharist three times
I had a couple of snappy exchanges
S & I went to the pictures to see Knocked Up
I drove up and down to school umpteen times
I read a whole lot of material on Jung
I visited my sister
I went to a 2 year olds birthday party
I baptised two children
I had more than a few moments when I felt depressed

What all this means and what sort of picture it begins to paint. I continue to reflect on

Closer to reality

I do apologise, dear reader, if in my enthusiasm to re-establish my blog on a regular basis that this week's entries have been unduly long and serious. Part of the art must be in trying to work out what is appreciated by you and having been away for six weeks I have to get back into the rhythm. So, hopefully, I am getting there.

This week I am slipping back into it slowly...at times this process is easy and at times it is not so easy.

• I have begun intensive reading for the course on Jungian analysis I am doing this semester, and in reality during normal times most of the reading tends to get done in one intensive  rather than evenly spread out over the 50 or so days. The great disadvantage of doing it very rapidly (and PTL I can read fairly rapidly) is what to do when your head starts to spin because the neurones are firing with joy at all the new information you are absorbing. And of course it takes a while to assimilate it. So this has disturbed my sleeping a bit.
• I have tried not to begin work before I actually go back next week. This temptation is difficult, but I have succeeded. Yesterday  I met with my friend and colleague, who has also been on extended leave, to chat but also to discuss how we were feeling about getting back into it. Both of us had been very tired before we left and we knew that things would need to be different when we returned. Will they be?

  When J asked me about this I said we would need to see what happened next week! I think this is a good thing, as I was actually quite anxious about coming back before I went away...if that makes sense. It would seem to suggest that I am a little less anxious about it. 

• This time last week we were in Kuala Lumpur  and a week before that in England. It came as something of a shock yesterday to realise how quickly it all slips away.
• I was brave enough yesterday to look at the credit card bill.  Verdict: a little bit worse than I had hoped but not as bad as it could have been! So that would seem to be as it should be!
• And this weekend  another birthday. I delight, in a way, about getting older; but also wonder where the fifty four years have gone. If you know perhaps you could tell me!