Lent competition

Lent has sometimes felt like a competition between our ministers to see who can trouble me the most deeply with the Lent reflections course that we have been doing.  First, she who must be obeyed [who is lovely!] said I could do the third of the sessions, which was a bit of a leap in the dark, and then this morning, he who must also be obeyed [who is also great] phoned me when I was half way to the first group, and let me know that he was stuck in traffic and if I got there first, we could begin......yes, begin what?!  I had nothing prepared so I was very relieved to see him arrive dead on time!

We've been following a course recommended by Churches Together in Britain, about Pilgrimage. It is a bit tricky as these things go as there are no proposed questions or lines of thought to follow, but just four or five reflective pieces of writing, some prose and some poetic, to use as conversation starters.  Today's theme has been "uncertainty".

I attend each week's group in three separate places as we seek to try to bring the opportunity to as wide as possible an audience across the area that we cover.  10am in the north, 2pm in the middle and then the evening session is out to the west.  An hour at each one, and about 75 miles done over the day - and each time, I listen and hear something slightly different.

I struggle immensely with having to discuss something which I cannot see, but have only heard read aloud once, so by the third session, I am beginning to have coherent thoughts; it means that I do understand some of the comments of the others attending that this is a difficult course.  I shall have to give some feedback to the leadership team tomorrow when we have a chat.

I shall talk more about this theme of Uncertainty another day when I have thought about it more, as it is all very fresh in my mind today and I am not sure I would be very coherent if I tried to explain my thoughts tonight!