Saturday, July 05, 2008

Holiday return

Spent a lazy morning, reading papers and relaxing in sunshine, but by the time we'd lunched it started to rain intermittently. As we headed southwards home it gradually deterioriated to steady downpour by the time we hit the A470 fast stretch from Merthyr to Cardiff.
Not too much mail to answer when we arrived home, and the sermon got written in Llangollen during the morning, leaving us with a quiet evening to ease ourselves back into routine, and answer the inevitable stack of emails - easier to manage than all those envelopes.
One frustrating disappointment among the messages. County Hall will be picketed by strikers the day we propose to hold the Spiritual Capital report launch conference. It looks as if we shall need to arrange an alternative venue.
One big surprise among the messages, notification that I've won a digital SLR camera in a prize draw for new subscribers to the Linux Format computer magazine I receive monthly - a gift from John and Rachel for my birthday. And what was it I was wishing for in Caernarfon on Wednesday when I was watching birds along the tide-line? I'd quite forgotten I filled in the prize draw slip. I usually don't bother to fill in such things because, well, I never win anything do I? In fact, when I saw the notification email, I double checked it, suspecting it to be a scam, but the detail checked out and didn't ask for my bank details, only possible delivery times.

It was Archbishop John Sentamu's turn to have a go at the GAFCON pronouncements in his presidential address to General Synod today. A leading third world black missionary evangelical, and publicist who uses his position at the heart of the establishment to challenge anything that smacks of injustice or wickedness, he appreciates the gift of breadth and tolerance as a defining characteristic of Anglicanism. He can be quite conservative in his views but is committed to challenge in dialogue rather than confrontation. I hope that his contribution will give the self proclaimed schismatics (that's what I call them) reason to think deep and hard.


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