Sunday is all but over now.

Started the day at work, as usual it was exceptionally quiet, actually more so than usual, have just realised that a couple of the Sunday regulars failed to turn up. Wonder what happened to them?

The weather this morning was positively dreadful, the wettest kind of rain imaginable, horrible mizzly stuff. Yuk. But as the day wore on , the weather improved until this afternoon and it was doing a passable impression of a summers day.  Couldn't go to the town church's morning service due to work, but we did go to the evening service at the country church, got there a little earlier than we usually do, but oddly enough, so it seemed had everyone else. Must have been something in the air I think. Anyway the service started at the usual time, we were all stood up at the beginning, singing our hearts out to the first hymn, then  the door started rattling, thought at first it may have been the wind, but it did it again. Where we sit in church is right by the entrance, so that when anyone walks in they are literally greeted by us (MLO and I) smiling at them. A moment later and the door opens a few inches, then stops,   intriguing. A few more moments later and a head appears, shortly followed by the rest of a body. K who hands out the hymn books leapt to his feet to hand one out, along with the service booklet. The lady looked around and sat opposite us. Most people turned to see who had interrupted, then got on with singing and K went back to his seat. A minute or so later, and the door started rattling again. This time it opened up and revealed another person wanting to come in. Up K leapt again, to hand out the required bits. The gentleman looked a bit perplexed then went and sat down next to the woman who had previously come in late.

As the service went on, they appeared to be a little uncomfortable, and spent a lot of time discussing something between themselves. When ever we needed to stand, either for hymns or the reading,  this entailed a huge amount of face pulling and discussion. When we got to the peace, they did what we used to do and stayed put in their seats. Roll on towards the end of the service and just as we got to the last hymn, they abruptly stood up, but their books on the table and walked out. Smiled at them as they left, but just got frowned at. Not sure what we had done wrong, or what they had a problem with. Wonder if they will be back next week? Just cant work out why they felt it necessary to leave when it would have all been over  in ten minutes anyway. Never mind. Nowt so queer as folk. 

An enjoyable sermon this week, considerably more light hearted than last Sundays, which was pretty deep. All about us becoming reconciled in Christ, that by fully giving ourselves to Him.  By recognising all our faults and admitting them , and being fully aware of ourselves helps us on our way to achieving that. Quite interesting as I had previously done the little exercise the vicar had given me to do with that, but had also just started to read "The interior Castle" by St Teresa of Avila, and had read a fair bit at work this morning. The main gist of the book, from what I have so far gathered, is that in order to know God and Jesus fully, we must fully know and understand ourselves, to look right inside ourselves, and when we have done that, and in the process of doing so , we can know Him more fully, as she believed that God resides in our souls, and only through a thorough understanding of our soul can we ever hope to have a true knowledge of God. Obviously she went into a lot more detail than that, wrote a whole book on the subject, but I think that is the main gist of it. I thoroughly recommend reading it, as what I have read of it so far, is an engrossing and very enjoyable read indeed. The version I am reading was translated by Mirabai Starr, but as this is the only version I have read, I have no idea whether it is better or worse than any other.  

Quite a while ago, I joined facebook, just for the heck of it, and joined a Phil Rickman group on there, really just expecting it to be the kind of group where an occasional member pops up and posts a message, asking whether there are any other members out there. I was pleasantly surprised when I started to get occasional messages from the group. The most recent I was quite excited about. He is bringing out a new book, "Merrily's Border"  containing photographs of various locations that he writes about in his books, along with a bit of information about the places, he will be launching the book in August at Kinnersley Castle in Herefordshire, a place I have always wanted to visit as it looks so spooky from the road going by. There will be music, performed by Hazey Jane II perhaps even with Lol Robinson making an appearance, and a great excuse to eat drink and be merry. I will be going with MLO as it is only about 15 miles away from here. What amazed me was the number of fans he has from all around the world, although to be fair, I shouldn't be that surprised, as he does write ruddy good books. I still think of him as very much a local writer, being able to picture each place he mentions and knowing some of them extremely well. 

Heck, it is late again, I really must get to bed, have been listening to Aled Jones again, and his voice always makes me sleepy. So off to bed it is for me. So nighty night.