people on the street

Yesterday's less than glorious isolation was more than made up for today!

I was down good and early to make the soups, of course. It being a Tuesday again.

It comes round quickly enough, I have to say. But I do enjoy the therapy there is in creating the soups

(Some folk like to know what they've missed: so today's menu options were Broccaulileek, which is really just what it says it is: and Spicy Spanish Siesta Soup - which I guess could be just about anything! It's a soup created from roasted pomodorino tomatoes and juicy red peppers and .. well, you'd really need to have tasted it! But there wasn't any left, even after they'd tried to water it down. I think it's all in the title! Mention the word 'siesta' and everyone wants a shot!).

Tuesdays are usually a whole load more full of people than Mondays are.

The place is open for coffees and teas and then for lunches as well, of course. So there are always a stream of people about. But even before it's open for that there are people around and things to be done and there's a buzz about the place.

I sometimes think it's a little like the ancient Celtic monasteries. Where everyone pitches in and shares the tasks. The abbott even took his share of cooking and the like!

A place where people from all walks of life are comfortable to be. A place to meet, a place to talk. A place to eat and laugh and pray and cry. A place to pause amidst the busy-ness of life, a place to stop, reflect and go back out again refreshed.

A place of healing and renewal. A place of friendship and companionship. A place of faith and hope and love.

A kind of staging post in life which isn't meant to suck folk in and tire them out: but rather to refresh and then invigorate and send folk out again to live our lives right out there in the world which is the Lord's.

That sort of place. Which is pretty much the way the Celtic monasteries used to be. I sometimes think it's really quite like that.

People. I was in among people the bulk of the day. And I love it like that.

That's the way that Jesus lived his life. Which was pretty much my theme when I was along and in at the school. The Primary 6s again.

People obviously prayed about this time! It was terrific!

I'd e-mailed ahead the powerpoint presentation - and in the end I really wasn't bothered if it worked or not (although, true to form, when you don't really need it, it does and it therefore did!)

The theme today was the life of Jesus.

How on earth do you package that massive life into just a few moments of children's time? Well, I simply explained that the whole life of Jesus was really, at heart, full of people.

(I'd already touched on that a bit last week when I spoke about his birth. Three groups of people who were all involved - Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the 'wise men' from the east)

I think in many ways that best explains and best describes those three amazing years of earthly ministry. His life was full of people. Deliberately.

Four groups in particular we spoke about. 'We' because I didn't do the talking all myself. I got them chatting through the different groups themselves.

Learners (because Jesus wanted everyone to start living life to the full).

Losers (as in people kind of down on their luck and 'losing' the battles of life: people in need whom he was able and glad to help).

Loners (the people whom others ignored and avoided and therefore got left on their own: like lepers and outcasts and sinners and .. well, folk whose lives were a mess: and how he brought them kindness and forgiveness and got them on their feet again)

And then the leaders, too. Who were none too chuffed with the things he did and the line he took and the friends he made. And, well, who got more and more mad at the guy.

And by the end the children could all see why. As I say, it was great.

And then a boy stuck up his hand and asked if there wasn't a fifth group of people whom I hadn't referred to at all.

Like who? I asked.

Well, like all the other Jews, he said, the kind of general mass of folk who were around.

I had to agree! And thankfully on the powerpoint presentation I'd put right in the middle of these four important groups, a massive smiling face.

So I saved my own face by pointing to that and saying that they could think of that as the fifth group. The crowd of Jewish people at the time. Lots of them (which began with the letter 'L'!).

And also us today.

They had a choice. And so do we today. The choice as to how we respond to the guy. What do we make of the man?

I hadn't meant to push it quite like that. But the boy raised the point and, well, that's the way the whole thing finished off.

It was great. And the children were great and the chat and interaction, they were great as well!

Back here it was lunch with my long-standing friend, the rector from down the road. Except I don't really think of the man like that. As the 'rector' I mean. I think of him just as a friend.

It's good to have the chance to chat and then to pray together.

And then there was, a little later on, a kind of 'staff' time of prayer as well. That's always good. You sense even as we're praying that the Lord is in it all.

And in between I'd had some time with the sons of the woman who died last week. Listening, in the main. They really just wanted to talk. And I'm glad to soak it in.

It's like those funny pictures I remember as a child. A blank page in the book and then you painted the water across the page and bit by bit the picture started to form.

It's that sort of thing that's going on. Their talking away's like the water being brushed across the page. And the picture of the person that their mother was takes shape, fills out and soon there is a painting of the woman that she was.

And in that verbal painting there's the message from the Lord as well. That becomes clearer, too. I felt as they spoke I was getting God's word for the people who'll gather on Friday.

I'd meant to do some further preparation for the coming Sunday's services. But there were people to see and the time was all gone. So that'll have to wait. Again!

The evening involved a meeting up town. The Presbytery of Edinburgh once again. Longer than I'd thought (and hoped!) it might have been.

And that largely because of a lengthy debate which centred around the notion of just what it is that's going on when people are ordained to exercise the ministry of word and sacrament. An interesting debate in its way.

But I still don't really get it all. I often think it seems a million miles away from Jesus' own simplicity. It often feels as if we make it all a pretty complicated thing.

Too cluttered up with rules and regulations. Too formal and too many little 'safeguards' set in place.

As the debate went on (and as I say, it was interesting in its way), I did start to think what on earth a person might think who wandered in intent upon discovering what this Jesus thing is really all about.

I think he'd have felt he'd landed on an altogether different sort of planet from the one on which he lived his daily life. Sometimes I feel that too!

Jesus kept the whole thing down to earth. People understood him and the way he went about his life and work was nothing but simplicity itself.

I fear we've too much lost his touch in terms of contact with the people on the streets. And it's there I want to be. On the streets with the people. And not in the corridors of power.