A week of grace

It has been good this week to do a little catching up with people as well as just attend to things that need a bit of attention. To watch the tomatoes grow....Harvested the first couple two days ago...and am awaiting the torrent that will arrive with the burst of hot weather that we are about to have.
So, some highlights of the week have been

• the mildest of weather
• oysters and other sea food
• visit and lunch with friends form Tasmania
• the fact that one's sister now seems a bit clearer about what has been making her feel unwell
• a lovely New Years' Eve in which I talked too much, and it didn't seem to matter
• a longish phone call from M in which we both just agreed that the best way for the modern priest is to try and be faithful to our vocation and not pretend we are managers (of decline or anything else)
• wines, red and white
• a night at Port Elliott and a bit of reading

on the whole a great deal of grace....but I must needs go and do the Christmas letter which is now an Epiphany letter...or it will really be too late.

Life with father

I had a curious conversation with L yesterday about our father. She said "You know I had a conversation with our father..." I could not help but quip "You mean, our father who is not in heaven."
She looked at me quizzically as though I was implying that our earthly father had, for some reason known to me alone, been damned for all eternity! I should learn to keep my mouth shut. Had I known what she was then going to say perhaps I would have.
Any way she went on. "He said to me one day...I don't know if I believe in God."
Self-obsessed that I am I merely observed. "Well you are lucky you actually had an adult conversation with him, because I never did."
"After he died, " she went on, " I was really disturbed by this, and I had to talk to someone about it."
Thick as I am, this didn't seem outrageous to me since I think that doubting faith in God is a really healthy, and indeed inevitable. But this is not necessarily the case (I failed to realise) with someone whose faith is not so precocious as mine.
As I was driving home I realised she was actually telling me something that for her was pretty important for me to know.
Good to have such a conversation with your sister!!

And NO! I was not suggesting that I knew somethign about my father's eternal destiny that God had personally revealed to me.