Helping Not Hindering

 

Hello. Two weeks today everyone and am I ready? What do you think? I read a blog on pre-cooking roast potatoes if that helps. The same blog also offered a method to make your gravy ahead of time in the slow cooker. Unfortunately, it had approximately 250 separate ingredients (chicken wings, onions, spices, other assorted vegetables, cloves, peanuts, digestive biscuits, the head of Anne Boleyn, a copy of the Magna Carta and chicken wings) so I won't be bothering with that. Anyway, I have been busy. I have been to the pictures - Casablanca - thanks for asking. Eighty years old and still as fresh as a daisy. Even with the stuff that you know inside out "Of all the gin joints in all the world..." etc. Eighty years. Having said that, I was horrified to realise that The Seventies, when I was in my prime - all hail flared velvet pants, love beads and a feather cut like the lead singer of Sweet - is actually 50 years ago! I always think that it is about 20 years ago. A sign of old age probably.

Yesterday, we attended Christmas Carols at my Mum's nursing home. Well, I say Christmas Carols. That has moved on a bit, hasn't it? The local Children's Theatre Group came along and, as well as O Come All Ye Faithful, Hark the Herald and Away in a Manger, we were also treated to Abba's "I have a dream", "Frosty The Snowman" and, unfortunately, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". I say unfortunately because the choir seemed to do all sixty-five verses of Hallelujah which resulted in a general air of depression around the place, a little girl on the front row clasping her tights in despair because she really wanted a wee and Aged Parent signalling that she had had enough by shouting at the room "What does a person have to do around here to get a drink?" I think she enjoyed it - she was certainly dancing enough and, if one of the young lads in the choir was a bit startled by her grabbing his hand as they left and saying "Don't leave it too long next time." he certainly didn't show it. 

I volunteered for my first Messy Christmas today. (I was on the Edible Baby Jesus craft table). I'm not sure if that is actually the correct name but that is what it was. People who are much more talented than me put together a manger from pastry cases, shredded wheat, jelly babies and swaddling clothes made from icing sugar. That's a lot of ingredients (Although still considerably less than the number needed for slow cooker gravy). My job was to help children assemble it to look like the creation you see above. It all went pretty well I think. One or two Baby Jesuses didn't make it to the swaddling clothes - more often than not, it was the red ones that ended up going straight into children's mouths before they could be rescued. I kind of enjoyed it though. It's always a bit weird when you volunteer for something for the first time. You dread being left to stand around feeling useless but it all moved pretty quickly. 

Musical people. I know there are few reading this. In Hark the Herald Angels we sang "Offspring of the favoured one." Er... I have always sung "Offspring of a virgin's womb." Is this because we didn't want to say "virgin" or indeed "womb" in front of little children? Have others always sung that? Are we a bit wishy-washy about the Virgin Birth? I wouldn't have thought so. Our place has people who would rather fight you than allow you to wear a rainbow scarf to church so I can't see them going soft over this. Maybe you know more than me about this.

Afterwards, I was speaking to someone who had recently changed churches. Not to come to ours, long story, you don't need it. He was saying that what happens when you move is that people don't know you, who you are and what you have done. So you need to start again and, if you feel that you have something more in you than you are doing, it can be a bit frustrating because you have to prove yourself all over again. Is it meant to be a humbling experience? Or is it just something that went wrong? For myself - despite having gone from storytelling at the front (I would never describe myself as a preacher) to brewing up and making shredded wheat mangers,  I'm quite enjoying myself but I wonder if this is what I am supposed to be doing. I'm not sure if I needed humbling - I always considered myself to have a lot to be humble about - and I don't see this stuff as being beneath me. On the contrary, I am in awe of the people who are organised and put this kind of work in week after week. It's just sometimes, when I'm in the shower and I get an idea, it can be a bit frustrating. Is this making any sense at all? Probably not. I expect keeping going and praying is the best way forward. I find it usually is. 

Have a good week.