A week of time...

A week camping in Dorset has done me good. Above all the week has given me time....

Time to make up ludicrous stories about Trevor the Troll and Cut Throat Pete 'the ridiculous' Pirate.

Time to read Martin Luther King's Bio and ask "now I wonder if he was too much into social action? If only he was more balanced??" ;o).

Time to watch Man Dancin - what a clever film that is!!

Time to sit on a "Kiss Me Quick"* tacky resort beach and realise that, what makes a beach worth visiting isn't the peripheral entertainment - but the sand, sea and seeing your kids having fun. There is something endearing about these tired seaside towns which when they realise it will be their renaissance.... made me think about how in advertently we if we are not careful will create a "Kiss Me Quick" ecclesiology and lose essentially what makes church - church.

(*essentially an english tacky tired seaside resort idiom - click the picture you'll get the drift!!)

Time to read a newspaper - and to think what have we done, how have we made the bible so offensive and an object of suspicion? (read a similar account here?). Even time to try Soduku with Kate !!!

Time to Run - along the Castleman Trailway, rabbits under foot; squirrels overhead in the dappled green cathedral like canopy stretching across the one time railway. Stain glass windows formed by the rhododendron upon rhododendron. Time to move on from some disappointments and a bit of pain from the previous week.

Time to remember past encouragements. Running along the lazy looping River Stour with the occasional teasing glimpse of a Kingfisher reminded me of a poem that helped me - journalled away in a book now much neglected since the advent of blogging.

Prayer is like watching for the kingfisher
All you can do is be where his likely to appear,
and wait.
Often, nothing much happens.
There is space, silence and expectancy - no visible sign.
Only the knowledge that He's been there
And may come again.
Seeing or not seeing cease to matter - you have been prepared.
But sometimes
When you've almost stopped expecting it.
A flash of brightness gives you encouragement.

Time is good!