knowing my way around

The lady at reception asked a rather probing question. Do you know your way around?

I was up over lunch at the Church of Scotland offices. Sort of moral support for one of our folk who's been called by the Lord to the 'ministry of Word and Sacrament'.

The lady at the desk was pleasant as could be. She certainly didn't mean to be probing at all. She was just doing her job.

And more or less assuming, since I'd told her who I was, that I would know the place.

I had to confess that, no, I didn't really know the place at all. Which I think rather shook her!

And (as an illustration, on a deeper plane, of where I'm at) it sort of shook me, too. Realising that I didn't really know my way around this church so well these days. Not feeling quite as much at home as maybe once I did.

The question that the lady there politely asked contrasted with another probing question that I faced today as well.

This time from the 'janny' at the primary school.

It's been a week 'choc-ful' of schools. I'm along at the Royal High (the secondary school) each morning this week, first thing: speaking at the year-group assemblies which they hold from time to time. It involves a fair amount of concentrated preparation since it's morning after morning: and it's different each time, of course.

But I'm glad of the chance to be there and given the chance to speak.

Today, though, it was one swift chase to get from there along the road to make it to the upper school assembly at the primary school in time. When that was done, I was leaving the school when the janitor passed on the street.

See you next week! he said (he's a friendly guy!).

Next week? I said. I'm back in less than an hour! (being Wednesday, it was the next in the series of lessons I have with the P5 classes).

I think he was taken aback just a bit. Understandably, I suppose.

Are you wanting my job, or something? he asked with a laugh.

And it crossed my mind later on that I knew my way around this place, this context for my doing and being 'church' - I knew my way around this place far better than I knew the actual church's offices up town.

Obviously, in some ways. But it served as a picture of the change in stress and emphasis that the Lord has been slowly effecting.

This is where it happens. Here in the village, here at the school. The constant intersecting of my life with those of people here throughout the whole community.

It's here that I feel most at home. When I'm out on the streets and in people's homes, engaging with folk relationally.

Like the P5 classes I had again today. This was the last time that I'd be in with them meanwhile (next week they're along with us here in our halls). The topic to be covered was 'the sacraments'.

What a great time we all had! I took them through both baptism and communion and we fairly had some fun! I think they got the picture, too, and gained a better understanding of just what it's all about.

Then at the end, I said it was like Jesus with his friends, how he wanted to leave them a way of remembering him.

I explained how it was not the last supper today, but the last class that I would have with them in school meanwhile. How I'd really enjoyed these times and hoped that they had, too.

And how I wanted to give them a way of remembering the things that they'd learned. So I'd got something for them. For each of the classes.

I gave each class a plant and asked them what they'd need to do. Water it! they cried as one.

Exactly. We'd thought about water a lot when working on what baptism meant.

So I simply said that every time they watered the plants I'd like them to remember me and what it was I'd taught them these last weeks.

The life God gives. The love he shows. The person and event.

It's not so much the janny's job I want. It's more the chance to be among the children as he is each day: it's that I so enjoy. It's that I really want.

And it's there, far more than in the corridors of any sort of institutional church, it's there I feel I know my way around.