questions

I need to learn brevity.

(I could leave today's post at that - and then you'd be assured I'd actually learned the lesson well!)

(But I won't)

My problem is that most of the time when I need to be brief I am usually far too long. And then when I'm brief ... well, it's then that I'm meant to be long. Sod's law.

One of the girls in her teenage years had asked me for help with the major dissertation that she's doing at this time.

She'd e-mailed me some questions and I'd e-mailed back some (brief and fairly rushed) responses. And then at night I was round at her house to talk things through again.

The dissertation's title was a fairly lengthy question. Does the existence of moral evil prove that God doesn't exist?

This is one of those times when it's actually really easy to be brief. But my simple one word answer, left the girl with 3,999 words still to find to explain why of course the answer's 'no'. She was finding it hard as well to explain the thing at length.

A lot of my time is spent with folk, addressing the questions they've got. Sometimes they're this pretty philosophical sort of thing. Sometimes they're more basic, pressing, personal, pastoral needs.

Sometimes, even, sometimes I'm addressing major questions which the person hasn't asked. Not yet.

In some ways, that's how days like this are filled. Settings where a group of people gather and I get the chance to talk.

The secondary school to start with at the outset of the day. A chance to speak to the pupils there (the second year students this time) and address with them the question as to how it is they're going to live their lives. What will be the epitaph that's written on their tomb?

From there it was on to the primary school. Well, in fact, the school came here. A service in the church. It was great!

The whole of the school was here. And all of the years were involved. Singing, dancing, reading, rapping, poetry. Such talented folk.

And I got the chance to speak to them, too, and tell them what Easter is really, at bottom, about.

A person. Who died. And came back to life.

The message is fairly brief!

The head and the deputy head, they stayed behind and we chatted over coffee for a while. A different sort of context where, again, there is the chance to be both listening to the issues people have and somehow sort of pointing up solutions.

Then there was the midweek lunch-time service to conduct. Different today, with a briefer word to allow us all to share the bread and wine and, during Holy Week, thus mark the death of Jesus.

There were some folk there who've not been out before, which was good to see. Including a lady who in a week or so's time will be a sprightly 101!

The place was mobbed at lunch as well. Not just the folk from the service in, but loads of others, too. It's brilliant seeing the whole place heaving in that way.

People. Just happy to be here, feeling at home. Some mums with their babies and children, for whom this is the only real contact they have with the church. And we, I suppose, are the message - the nearest they get to an answer to questions they've never quite framed.

There's a service of worship along at the chapel on Wednesday night during Holy Week. The 'stations of the cross'. A time to reflect and consider again the journey that Jesus made.

Alec, the priest, is having a dreadful time. He's already conducted a good thirty funerals - and that's since the start of the year.

What's going on? And how does he cope?

He says they're calling him Father Shipman now and wondering who'll be next. At least they're all still laughing!

But the questions remain. For him, and for us all. It's a strain, I can see, and it's taking its toll.

So, yes, I wonder, what's going on. And how does he cope?

He sort of answered the questions himself at the service tonight. He only makes sense of it all by seeing that he's called to embody his Lord.

This is the way of the cross. The path Jesus took.

That's the only answer he can find. It's pretty brief.

We're simply called to follow him. No matter what it costs.