Tangential Thoughts

I was lying in bed this morning thinking about writing something again, and I wandered from subject to subject. I really should have a dictaphone beside me so I can speak it out loud. Although that would probably wake my wife up, so probably not a good idea!

Anyway, I started off thinking about something that happened yesterday that led me to a conversation I had last Friday. When I opened the Foodbank doors, my first customer was waiting. She has been coming for a few months now with her little boy. She asked me if she could ask me a question. I always trip myself up when people do that. She asked me a question, asking whether she could ask a question. It amuses me to trip them up with this. How can you ask if you can ask without asking in the first place?

Anyway, (as I said before), she asked what the difference is between a priest, a reverend and a vicar (and then pointed out that it sounded like a joke). I told her and then said that I am a minister. She asked what that was, and I said that I minister to people. I preferred it in the Church of the Nazarene when I was a pastor, because that is what God called me to do. And why I thought of that yesterday was because I went to visit someone in Loddon - 91 year old Kathy. It's her 91st birthday today. I didn't know that until I was in her house. Kathy is a radiant Christian, but she is falling apart physically. Loddon is a Methodist/Church of England church and I had just been at a Team Meeting where I asked about Kathy. The Rector (now there's a question: what's the difference between a Rector and a Vicar?) said she didn't know where Kathy lived. I did because I had visited her before. And that reminded me of several conversations with Methodist ministers over the years. Ministers (and vicars and priests) don't visit people. I have heard several justify it because they are "too busy".

I don't know what that means, but I am well practiced in The Art of Nothingness:

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

William Henry Davies

And so I have time to minister, to pastor. But I also spend a lot of time drinking tea for Jesus. Or, going to coffee mornings as people usually call it. And I get messages asking where I was if I don't go. This morning I am going to play dominoes for Jesus in a Men's Group. It wouldn't be so bad if we weren't just talking about mundane things. The last time I was at the Men's Group it was wheelie bins; usually it is health - appointments and prescriptions, and I have become the latest topic: How am I? Still getting daily pain; Have they not diagnosed me yet? Yes, I have a list of what's wrong with me; What tablets am I taking? And so it goes. It's nice that people ask, and I find myself wondering about those who don't ask. Are they the ones who told the chair of district that I wasn't really sick?

And so, tangential thoughts. I did a whole thing on J.D. Vance (in my head) saying the Pope shouldn't talk about Theology and then him asking if God wasn't on America's side when they liberated France and the concentration camps. I'll leave that till tomorrow, but as a trailer: the biblical answer is No!