More reasons to be cheerful

Another day done and I can reflect on more privilege-laden happenings:

The joy of engaging with those who are suffering from the debilitating effects of dementia; an awfulness in which the sea of confusion slowly comes in and leave less of the beach for the person to exist on until they are overwhelmed and lost in the waves. Yet, even when the tide has come in, the enagagement with those who are now all at see in the shape of the Eucharist, the surfacing of the person as the Lord's Prayer is recalled and said from a small reef amidst it all, the lights coming back on - drawing merely upon the past remembered or making connections because of the externally, never to be forgotten?

I know what I think :-)

And then more engagement with someone who mourns the loss of a loved one. The privilege of being asked to make special that last moment when a departed loved one is in the same physical place with them for one last time. Surely one of the most important roles a cleric can have as we seek to make sense of a life now ended and point to a hope made real, and realised, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ.

An then there was the opportunity to discuss love and duty and to explain how 1 Corinthians speaks of a love that makes a habitation, a shelter, for the focus of that love in the storms of life. To join the dots such that we realise that love calls us to do what is right and that duty is merely the obverse side of thc coin we call love - and reflect on the reality that those who march away to protect strangers, in doing so, exhibit a greater love - one which may call on them to lay down their lives.

Add to this the usual round of conversations with funeral directors and people seeking simple answers to astounding questions; the challenges of seeing sin break lives and those broken merely seeing it as 'bad luck' - how do we explain that playing in the train track is likely to get you hit by a train and knowing the words 'sin, self and selfishness' all need to feature in the cast list at the end of the tragedy before you - and still restore them gently?

And yet, as ever, we manage it because to do it any other way would be to potentially cause us to stumble too!

Just a glimpse at a day where blessing and the Christ have been found in amazing quantities - another day when the privilege of a dogcollar and and ever-present, loving, God make bed a happy place to reflect on and look excitedly for the next day to come.

Lord - I love you!