Remembering: passion, betrayal, resurrection and ... painting

Today I taught KT on my own and turned up to spend time with the young people with some paint brushes and a clear idea that we would read the passion narrative together.

We began by doing about half an hour of remembering the passion story. To help with this I put on the table some branches of hazel - a bowl, a towel, a jug of water, one of the communion chalices and the communion patten. The more I use the remembered Bible method the more I realise how affiriming of people's inner Bibles it is. It was great with the young people today because the two less academic ones actually know the Bible stories much better. One thing that struck me as we were remembering together was how time is concertina-d - you go forwards backwards and sideways - and of course you're dealing with four gospels at the same time too so there's lots going on and amazing how details get remembered - one girl today remembered the ear being chopped off.

After our remembering we started reading Luke's gospel, aloud, sitting peaceably around the table. We began with the entry into Jerusalem - the branches on the table were to prompt thoughts of this. Palm Sunday is called "branches Sunday" in French. It is branches rather than palm crosses which are blessed and taken home from Roman Catholic churches. We ended with Jesus being laid in the tomb. It was qutie extraordinary sitting there on a wonderful sunny spring day with a group of adolescents remembering and reading the Bible. After reading we wrote prayers of thanksgiving for Christ's witness for the way he had chosen. Each of us tried to focus on three things. All of us wrote powerful words. I could tell that the group were completely engaged with the story. We also read the footwashing from John's gospel ... and we talked about prisoners of conscience and the work of Amnesty International and Christian Action Against Torture, and we prayed. We talked about violence, their experiences of it at school and in daily life.

After lunch we read the story of the resurrection in Luke's gospel, the Emmaus story right on through to the ascension. And we talked about hope and life, the meaning and gift of resurrection. And then we painted and they just took over and the act of painting became part of our remembering and understanding. They created a sort of Jackson Pollock like fabulous mess in the centre of the paper, then surrounded it with images of flowers and smiley faces hearts and points of colour and their names and words of hope. What was brilliant was listening to how they came to an agreement about what to do and then seeing their pure glee in all starting to paint together and throw the paint around. Wonderful energy. I think I was moved that they wanted to put their own names as part of the resurrection framework for the painting.
Now I just have to hope that they become friends with me on Facebook so that I get to see the photos of our work of art - yes I took my paintbrushes but forgot to take my camera so we'll have to wait a while for some pictures.

The threat and promise of resurrection in good and evil

At catechism yesterday we tried to tackle the small issues of good and evil, the meaning of faith and the cross ...
The mobile phone photos here show part of how we worked with this. We went through some old newspapers and magazines choosing pictures of good and evil and then made a good and evil collage. Interestingly we had more material for the good collage than for the evil one which was perhaps heartening!
We had first tried to begin to understand the big questions around good and evil by reading the story of Cain and Abel. After we had made the collages we first did a bit of remembered Bible and then read the whole of the passion narrative in Luke's gospel before and after lunch together. Noone seemed bored.
Just before the end of our time together I said right now we're going to destroy our works of art and make something new out of them. So we chopped up the good and evil collages and then used the different pieces created to make a cross (well actually three crosses as we had rather more material than we expected). The cross is a complex symbol, both a sign of torture and death and of resurrection and hope.
So yesterday's catechism was in may ways an attempt at a theology of the cross using glue scissors and wasate paper. I think it worked quite well, helping us in Lenten time to prepare for and understand some of Easter's threat and promise.

Jealousy and good and evil while finding meaning for life in Genesis 4:6-7

Today I have been teaching catechism (KT) and we tried to address issues of good and evil, as well as issues of commitment and engagement. I'll blog later about our reading of the whole of the passion narrative from Luke's gospel but we began by reading the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. Where does evil come from, is it within us, beyond us? Verses 6 and 7 particularly struck me, full of profound theological insight. Here are two English translations for you to get a feel for:

The Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.’

The LORD said to Cain:What's wrong with you? Why do you have such an angry look on your face?

If you had done the right thing, you would be smiling. But you did the wrong thing, and now sin is waiting to attack you like a lion. Sin wants to destroy you, but don't let it!

This part of the story spoke powerfully to me today about the anger vortex, how we can let ourselves be eaten up by it, how it can eat away at us and at our relationships. The French version we were working with today has sin spread like a carpet at the door ... interesting the different images used to get the message across.
Really though the question is how do we deal with our feelings of anger, of being mistreated. Will we let the feelings destroy us and others or will we try to take responsibility and address ourselves to a different kind of goal?

Success, failure and raclette at KT

This afternoon we took the young people from KT to the Red cross and red crescent museum in Geneva. I'm always amazed at how few of the local French school children visit this museum which is close by but in another country. Each time I go there the exhibits speak powerfully as do the volunteer guides, who talk with passion and conviction about the Red Cross movement and its history.
2010 marks 100 years since Henri Dunant, the founder, died and there will be several events marking that later in the year. Our guide today underlined how Dunant could in many ways be judged not to have been a success in his own time. His business ventures and attempts at banking failed, he had to go into exile, yet he was awarded the very first Nobel Peace prize.
Later after we returned to Ferney and drank tea we reflected with the young people on their dreams, what happiness meant for them, what success might mean. This led us to talk about God's unconditional love for us, to think about our future in different ways. Much of what was shared was moving and simply truthful. I like working with adolescents. Then I dared to get them to express some of what they had experienced in prayers for those suffering from war, disaster and poverty and then also for themselves, this was an important exercise in taking our own needs and desires seriously and offering them to God. Sounds a bit pious and frontal maybe but it somehow just seemed to flow and not be forced at all. I'll post their prayers to the KT blog tomorrow.
Then their parents and brothers and sisters arrived and the apéro hour began as we prepared raclette and people got to know one another. It was great to see these young teenagers interacting with their families, teasing and being teased, caring for their younger brothers and sisters. It was also an important exercise in community building and fun on a Saturday evening. The French are brilliant at turning a simple meal into a feast with minimum fuss and people seemed genuinely interested in getting to know one another. Even in the digital age you can't beat ordinary human interaction. Needless to say the raclette was fabulous, but then it's one of those meals that can't really go wrong.

Christian history at KT - confessions, divisions ... and chance of unity?

I've spent part of today teaching KT. It's always good for me, helps me centre on people outside myself. Compared with the UK there is very little teaching about religion or the differences between religions at state schools in France. So we decided that with the vote about the minarets in Switzerland last weekend, and the interest that the young people had shown at the beginning of the year in learning about other religions we would try to do some of that today.
We began with Christianity before going on to look at Judaism and Islam.
In everyday French it's fairly difficult to trace the fairly key nuance between a different confession and a different religion. I was shocked at my first Week of Prayer for Christian Unity meetings in France to have people from the Catholic Church come up to me and say "we must do more inter-religious dialogue like this".
Today we started by looking at the different Christian confessions and by tracing where each of the many branches of Protestantism came from and then going back to what had preceded the Reformation and the great schism of 1054.
So we moved from the complex diversity of Christianity to looking briefly at Judaism and Islam. I was impressed by how genuinely the coung people voiced their concern that all people should be allowed to worship as they see fit. There is also an enormous ignorance of what the beliefs and practices of other religions are and part of me felt that we should try in local churches to offer an opportunity to discover other religions - not just for young people but for their parents and grandparents.
After lunch we did some remembered Bible of Christ's nativity with them. Fascinating to remember the story and then to read first Matthew and then Luke. I was struck by the different kind of Messiah each evangelist seemed to be expecting - in Matthew the baby is portrayed as the equal of kings and great Eastern intelectuals; in Luke this birth brings hope to excluded shepherds on the hillside. The beginnings of Christian diversity are right there in the way the gospels each tell their story of Christ. Christian unity and reconciled diversity are perhaps only possible if we dare - across our confessional differences - to go on telling our own and Christ's story to one another.

Jean-Jacques Bauswein's 65th birthday

The Stranzblog is currently on holiday somewhere in the Jura near Champagnole to mark our friend Jean Jacques Bauswein's 65th birthday. It's a wonderful fun weekend with extraordinary cultural and not so cultural discoveries. We bought delicious home-made jam from two women who have set up a small cooperative selling fruit and aromatic plant products, grown either in their gardens or collected from the surrounding countryside. We visited Emmanuel Jobez' Villa Palladian in Syam, and St Claude's Pipe museum. We took the "train des hirondelles", relaxed, got to know others in the group, ate great food and then heard the answers to the quiz we were all supposed to have taken part in beforehand. Stranz/Brown incorportated got "nul points", but still got a prize. I have enough problems understanding cryptic clues in English let alone French.
There is no internet connection where we are staying so you are spared daily updates on our activities. This morning we got up early as I had to interrupt celebrations to lead worship for Pentecost in Ferney as several of our young people got confirmed this morning. It was powerful and moving to hear them confessing their faith, my colleague Bernard preached very well on the Emmaus Road text and afterwards we gathered for drinks and photos garden. I caught up with lots and lots of news from people I hadn't seen for many years, happy and sad stories vivified by the Spirit.
Meanwhile Dr B has been covering the big service to mark Calvin's 500th birthday from the Cathedral in Geneva. It was broadcast on Eurovision this morning. Must see if I can download it or watch it.
In a moment we will head back to the mountains for some wine-tasting before a festival meal at which Dr B will for the first time in his life wear a DJ and bow tie - yes this party even has a dress code. More when we're back and recovered from wine-tasting and assorted festivities. Photos will follow.

Piecing together the rainbow for World Water Day

Here is the rainbow we pieced together as part of our work on water at KT today. It was fun - for me at least and I think we were all quite surprised at how good the result was - all that chopping up old magazines to get the colours of the rainbow seemed to work well. More about it here - in French of course.
One of the young people brought a print out of the European Parliament resolution in view of the World Water Forum which draws to a close in Istanbul tomorrow and I was surprised at how relatively well-informed many of them were about water issues.
We used water to help us pray and concentrate and also to help us remember a surprising number of Bible texts. We remembered and read parts of the story of the rainbow covenant - getting a little bit fixated on why Noah was 600 years old. We also began by praying Psalm 23
together:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;

One thing I discovered is there doesn't seem to be a mnemonic to remember the order of the colours in French and of course Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain doesn't quite work, I'll have to think of something.

Words to speak of faith - can they be translated?

At KT today we tried to encourage the young people to express their faith - we ended with a bit of time writing confessions of faith you you can find here, en français bien sûr. We read part of the first chapter of John's gospel in depth and then later the parable of the last judgement in Matthew 25. We were trying to get at the deeper meaning behind the words and more importantly what these stories might mean for us.
At one point we were encouraged to beging to express and confess our faith by chosing 5 words from the list below in French. One word and only one was chosen by all eleven of us and only the minister, Bernard, and I chose "doubt" as part of of what we think about when we hear the word "faith". Ah, trust we clergy to undermine everything ;-).
The word everyone chose was the word confiance which could be translated as trust or perhaps as confidence into English, but then I wondered whether I would have chosen trust or confidence so readily in English as I did in French. Avoir la confiance just somehow means so much more than trusting.
Anyway what five words would you choose when you hear the word faith?

Croyance, Certitude, Absence de preuves, Savoir, Espérance, Preuve, Erreur, Science, Confiance, Attente, Crédulité, Conviction, Aveuglement, Tolérance, Adhésion, Intolérance, Vérité, Croyable, doute, Incroyable, Incertitude, Fidélité, Crédible

Cosmos verses chaos and finding meaning in beauty

We read and compared the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 with the young people at KT yesterday, meditating the ordering of cosmos out of chaos, the beauty of creation.
To try to understand the different ways we appreciate beauty, we climbed up to the organ loft and met with one of the organists, Joëlle Gouel, who gave us a taste of the various sounds the instrument can make, and tried to get them to guess the century of the music she was playing or the story behind the music.
None of the young people admitted to particularly liking the organ before we met with Joelle but seeing the instrument in action and learning about how it is made, had quite an impact on them. Later they spoke more freely about their own music - and we discovered we have the makings of a small jazz band.
Towards the end of our time together we made small creations out of clay, spoke about them and read and then sang Psalm 8 together around the first candle on the Advent wreath.
Meanwhile I highly recommend Joëlle Gouel's excellent book "Les Chants du Pèlerin" which offers an overview of hymnody in French, including hymns she's translated herself from beyond the francophone tradtion.

A plural God allows for plural and profound expressions of faith

I came away from teaching catechism today profoundly at peace. The four hours we spent with the young people went well and some of the paintings of intangible ideas like friendship, solidarity, love, equality ... were very moving. The prayers the young people wrote as we meditated Roublev's icon of the trinity were unexpectedly profound.
I realised how at home I am in that sort of work and how good it is for me to be able to have some roots in the local context. I think I came home feeling at peace because I felt at home in my church and in the way it encourages young people to discover God for themselves without forcing or insisting. I felt we were helping them discover their own tentative language of faith and prayer.
Perhaps it also helped that we tried to learn how to juggle with tangerines in our lunch break!
I came home feeling gentle contentment and a sense of connection with God, people and the place I live.

Trouver sa voix - Trouver sa voie

I preached on Ezekiel 37 and John 20.19-23 for Pentecost this morning.
The title of the sermon was "Trouver sa voix ~ trouver sa voie" which is a play on words in French - it means finding your voice, finding your way. I enjoy the act of preaching - it is often very different from the preparation and how you imagine the sermon will be. I particularly wanted this morning to speak to the young people but it also needed to come from the heart of my own experience - sometimes preaching is the perfect therapy and that was certainly true for me today. Of course all preachers need to be careful about preaching becoming the externalising of their own psycholigical and faith hang ups, but sometimes the text, the event and the preacher just click and it's special to be part of that.
I was trying to encourage the young people and all of us to find our voice in order to find our way. As I was preaching I realised how very different the sermon would have been if I'd been preaching in England or even just in English - I'm not sure that English non-conformists have a shared identity any longer in the same way that French Protestants do.
Dr B is rather sad that I haven't been doing a series of sermons on Dr Who but that is not part of cultural heritage here. As it was, I began by talking about the experience of slavery in the US and sang a bit from Dem Bones, dem bones dem dry bones and ended by getting everyone to sing in Yoruba a simple song called "Wa, wa, wa emimimo ..." come, come come Holy Spirit.
Anyway having found my voice I now just need to find my way!

An inflateable skeleton to preach the gospel?

Tomorrow I shall preach in my former parish in Ferney for the first time since I left 6 years ago. It's Pentecost and five young people will be asking for confirmation, two of them for baptism on profession of faith. This morning Bernard and I have been hanging up the various "spirit-filled" works of art the young people painted at our KT session last week.
And now I'm wondering about my sermon and instead of writing it I'm doing this. Surprised? I'm not. When I'm in sermon-writing mode even the washing up or the weeding in the garden begin to seem attractive. Of course the sermon is there, sort of in my head, now I just need to get it out. I have strange fantasies of being able to press a special part of my earlobe and get a print out from my mouth. Hmmm...
I am preaching on Ezekiel 37 which is a wonderful passage - it's what inspired the song "Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones - now hear the word of the Lord". When I was in the north of France I took a regional youth service and did a dramatic rendering of the text with young people running around the church being the spirit of the Lord coming from east and north and west and south and pulling back the large cloth which was covering the dry bones, only to reveal an inflateable skeleton. Bones filled with breath. In Genevan Protestant circles the preferred translation for Holy Spirit is "souffle saint" (rather than Esprit Saint) which means holy breath.
After that service in Dunkirk we put the inflated skeleton into the front passenger seat of our British mini - that's right in Britain they drive on the left and in France on the right. If you didn't know better you might have thought the skeleton was driving.
Now if I was really into procrastination I could go down to the garage and try to find which box dear old skelly is in. However, I hear the spirit calling - "Get on with it Jane, otherwise you won't be allowed to watch Dr Who tonight." Oh well better leave tidying the garage for another day, shame really. At least I have a title for the sermon but more of that tomorrow, after the preaching of it is over.

The prodigal son and drawing God at KT

The wooden sculpture represents the father welcoming home the lost son in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15.11. I took the sculpture, which was made by the Diaconnesses de Reuilly, with me to KT today. Bernard, the minister, brought a copy of a drawing of the same scene by Rembrandt.
Before lunch we studied and tried to understand the parable of the lost son - including the tension between different meanings of the word "prodigality" - does it mean to be a spendthrift (like the son?) or does it mean to give and not to count the cost (like the father in responding to his son's request?).
Because my feminist theology group had studied this parable a few months ago with Lytta Basset, I dared to ask the young people if they didn't think there was perhaps someone missing from the family - namely a wife or mother. Perhaps she had died or gone away; certainly she didn't seem to be part of the life of the family, or able to influence anyone in it; maybe the menfolk were all shut down in their grief and so unable to communicate with one another?
Later it was very interesting that we all came up with really quite different ways of continuing the story of the parable when each of us wrote possible endings to the story - ranging from deep and real reconciliation between the brothers after a big row, to silence, slamming of doors and the older brother storming off to his bedroom, to a pretend reconciliation followed by a vicious stabbing - echoes of Cain and Abel.
After lunch we asked them to do a communal symbolic picture representing God - based in part on images of God we had developed from the parable. The rules were only one person could draw or paint at time, no comment to be made about what others draw and you can add to what others have already drawn but not obliterate it. My role was to see that the rules were obeyed and then to encourage them to talk about the picture and the process afterwards. We managed it in not quite complete silence as you can imagine.
It was moving to see how from tentative beginnings of a single curvy line on the paper, they gained in confidence and really added to what each one had drawn - sometimes following their own vision and ideas and finding space for that in the bigger picture, but often following on from the flow of what had just been drawn. I realise now that because we made it clear that they would each simply take their turn as it came around the table, this actually gave them more freedom and confidence and meant that those who felt more at home with drawing didn't dominate.
It was powerful but it was also fun. For a long time a whole corner of the paper remained blank then my colleague drew a large question mark in it and immediately the next person added three more dots to represent an unfinished sentence and the next person turned these into exclamation marks. Later the boy in the group who is Franco-Spanish put an upside down question mark within the original one - which of course is how question marks are printed in Spanish, but it perfectly represented ongoing questions within questions.
I was also amazed that very early on someone was willing to break with a flowing peace and love theme that was developing and draw a powerful triangle which then had an eye put into it, looking very much like something you might find over a Baroque altar - later it became a sort of desert island with a palm tree growing out of it. But these are secular, Protestant youngsters who didn't really know what I was talking about when I mentioned it at the end!
The rules said that I was not allowed to add anything, if I had been able to I would have added a rainbow, my favourite biblical symbol. But towards the end someone did add one, perfectly linking two key elements of the drawing, right in the centre and at the top of the picture. It just goes to show, leaders need to let go, wait and trust sometimes.

One of the things I really appreciate about all forms of work with children and young people in the French Reformed Church is that it is not about trying to transmit dogmatic truths but to offer biblical stories and belief in God as something that can help them interpret and make sense of life a little more. When I compare that with much of what I received at church when I was young there's a huge difference. It was hugely liberating to integrate theology into congregational teaching when I started working France.
Anyway we think we may start a KT blog for the parish which will be fun.

Water, God and mudpies...

I've just come across this wonderful scientific site by Martin Chaplin which tells you masses of things about water in a really accessible way. When I was at school I remember being fascinated in chemistry by the idea that there was something in the atomic structure of water molecules which means that a bit of air gets trapped when the temperature falls so ice floats rather than sinks.
Of course I've bored generations of young people in catechism and école biblique by using ice cubes to explain the idea behind the theology of the trinity - as you breathe on the ice cube so it melts and you can see both water vapour, water and ice - it's the same substance in three different forms, like God is: Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer - or for patriarchal traditionalists among you Father ,Son and Holy Spirit, "God in three persons blessed trinity". As I am not entirely convinced on every single day of the week by the theology of the trinity myself, I'm not sure that I have done much more than confuse lots of children and young people into thinking that God is a melting ice cube. This just shows my commitment to educating future generations into growing up to be as confused as I am. Living with confusion is what modern life is about isn't it?
Anyway the fact that ice floats might seem like a completely usleless piece of knowledge, but the structure of this tiny little molecule which traps air and makes ice float is the building block for all life. If ice sank rather than floated then all that yukky rich mucus and mud at the bottom of the ponds from which amoebas and life emerged would have been smothered before it could be born.
On good days, when even the trinity seems understandable and believable, I do reckon God must have had something to do with the structure of H2O. Water is the most amazing stuff and even chemistry lessons can get you thinking about God!

Words against woes - Mots contre Maux!

Today I had catechism again with the young people. It's very much a joint enterprise - we learn at least as much from them as we manage to teach. We looked at the problem of evil and suffering with them today. I became a storyteller and told the tale of the Magi visiting Herod the dictator - rather more briefly than in my sermon earlier in the week. Afterwards we got them to write letters of lamentation and protest either to Herod or to God ( we all found that quite therapeutic!) and then we read some passages from the book of Lamentations, from Job and from Psalm 22 "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?".
Later still we painted posters, pictures and ideas for overcoming evil. One of them painted words in the colours of the French flag calling for help to all people who are disadvantaged, others painted stars and colours of hope shining to overcome evil. I came up with "an alphabet of responsability - words against woes". It works rather better in French "Un ABCédaire de responsabilité: mots contre maux", which literally means words against evils, but the two words mots and maux are pronounced exactly the same.
What in part inspired this was being in the same room where a few days previously I had joined the newly founded local section of ACAT (Action by Christians Against Torture). Working against evil is about a spirituality of resistance, it's about plodding on, writing letters, raising awareness of the problem of prisoners of conscience, struggling against the death penalty, month after month, year after year. Doing the boring, repetitive abc work. It's also about being willing to be in a tiny, sometimes rather disorganised and unfocused minority. A spirituality of resistance is also about making do with small insignificant changes some of the time, picking oneself up and starting over when all seems lost.

Whether a cross, crescent or crystal, it's red

I have just come back from visiting the international museum of the red cross and red crescent with the young people from KT in Ferney. I think they particularly enjoyed being in the earthquake simulator. I found being in the small room covered with photos of very young children who survived the Rwandan genocide very moving, just the idea of looking through pages and pages of photos hoping to see your child is quite heart breaking. We had a really good lively guide who knew how to speak to a younger audience and who explained the story of the red cross, crescent and crystal to us.
Language issues were also part of the exhibition on emergency aid where there was a "hit and miss" board (translated as "top et flop" into French!!) looking at how emergency aid actually got through to people in the Tsunami for instance. One flop was a huge amount of medecine that had been sent from various countries but noone had checked that the languages on the packets could be read locally. In the end it cost a large amount of money to incinerate the lot.
Much food for thought and highly recommended if you ge the chance while in Geneva - it's only taken me 14 years of living here to get there!

More meaning in life - just a dream

This evening I've been preparing catechism class for Saturday - (we call it KT as in caté). We've encouraged the young people to bring examples with them of people they feel have found meaning in life. Of course we've also prepared some material ourselves - we found a French translation of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech on the Nobel peace prize website.
On Saturday we're going to encourage them to dream dreams themselves, to envisage their own future and the world's. I think my colleague and I should probably also write our dreams - not at all sure what mine will be. Dreaming is actually a radical activity, an act of resistance in many ways, it's not escapist but about finding truly creative ways through very real problems.
So perhaps in the spirit of Joel 2.28 we should all dream dreams and have visions and transform the world.

Do you want life to make sense or have meaning?

The French word "sens" usually needs to be translated in texts I get to deal with as "meaning", and I translate "faire du sens" often as "to have meaning" although the translation forums don't all agree with me!. Anyway I was pondering this in a translation today, then on the bus home I got to wonder about what it was I wanted - do I want life to make sense or have meaning? Of course in the end, as a not always very convincing or convinced professional Christian I do choose meaning, but I am still left wishing that life could ocasionally make a bit more sense...

Un sens à ta vie - A meaning to your life

Yesterday I took a big step and went back to doing something I used to do when I was the minister of the local church here in Ferney. Together with Bernard Millet, my successor in the parish, I taught "KT". KT is French shorthand for catéchisme or confirmation class or perhaps just youth work.
The material we're using is called "un sens à ta vie" and it's really well done. However we're taking a rather post-modern approach and beginning with chapter eight which is called "appeler à devenir" - called to become. We tried to encourage the young people to dream dreams both for themselves and for humanity. You never really know whether anything you say is actually going in. It was interesting though that in the final session where they each had to choose a verse from a list of some sayings of Jesus in the gospels they all seemed to quietly settle to making their choice and then writing it on a big sheet of paper - Words of life.
Later standing with them in the Temple for a short time of prayer I realised that I felt quite at home back there even though I hadn't been back since I left five years ago. No worse a curse than having the previous minister sitting in the pews every Sunday.
Being more involved locally again will I hope help my reflections on the daily ecumenical work I'm involved in.
Anyway KT was fun, we're fortunate in having a great group of young people and I'm looking forward to next month's class. It helps give meaning to my life too.