Eclipse

 

Good evening, all. I hope that you are ok. I'll be frank; I'm writing this with one eye on the athletics. I admire these people enormously. I have no athletic bent myself. In fact, my claims to fame with my games teacher were (a) stopping in the 100 metres to pull my sleeves up (they were annoying me) and (b) a bit of a disaster as I pulled myself over the asymmetric bars and she felt she had to grab me and save me on the way down. Unfortunately, she only managed to grab my games knickers as I fell, resulting in a good deal of my kit going forcefully into my bottom. I had to sit down for a few minutes because, apparently, I changed colour. Anyway, obviously I am in awe of these people, although watching the javelin with everyone screaming and shouting and slapping themselves, you sometimes want to shout "JUST THROW THE STICK!"

We had a walk out this week to the end of the road to watch the eclipse (See left). It was a nice place to watch it from - perhaps a bit busier than I would like. There's not that much room for contemplation of your place in the Universe when ten children are yelling "IT'S HAPPENING!" for half an hour. A few people I have spoken to were saying that this eclipse wasn't as good as the last one. So everyone is an expert on celestial miracles now. I'll be honest - I couldn't see very much. I didn't have time to make a cardboard viewer from a Weetabix box, and I wasn't prepared to queue up for three hours for the glasses.  Still, it was an extraordinary atmosphere.

This morning, the preacher said that he believed that we are losing touch with our connection to the earth. Whatever your thoughts about how we got here  - whether you believe in the Creation as described, a slow, God-fueled evolution or even a non-God-fueled evolution. (Just to make clear - I am not in that last group). Whatever you believe, it is obvious that we are stewards of this earth, and we are quite rubbish at it. Maybe we don't care enough about it because we don't engage with it enough. There was a lot of complaining about the phone warning that everyone in the UK received. People were saying that it was ridiculous to use it for something so obvious. All I can say is that when the Fire Service ask for it  - which they did - after 36 hours straight fighting fires - then I think we should all say thank you and do whatever they want. 

He also asked whether it was right that we should pray for rain. Well, Elijah did, so it should be ok. Also, you can pray for whatever you like, I suppose. That doesn't mean you are going to get it. (Witness my futile attempts to influence the winner of the Premier League for the last ten years.) Also, I know it is a Continent-wide emergency, but I am on my holidays next week, and I could do without it monsooning all the time. 

On an encouraging note around prayer - thank you to all those who got in touch about Gillian. Again, without sharing too much, she has been given a new drug which has helped with lots of things, so thank you for that. 

I'm just leaving you with a little film of my daughter's cat who took against some decorations she had put up for her partner's birthday. No reason. Have a good week.