mini-conversations

There's a school of artists, I seem to recall, who got it into their heads to create paintings by a collage of little 'dots'. I think the great Van Gogh himself might have done that sort of thing a bit.

If my day today was a painting, that was certainly the style. A multitude of different 'dots'.

I was out and about a fair old bit of the time. Two school assemblies, one at 9am and the next at 10am. With a half hour gap between I had just enough time to rush back here for the daily time of prayer, then rush back out to be back in time for the second assembly with the children of P1-3.

The value for the month is 'curiosity' and the Head in his talk was certainly making them curious.

I always enjoy being along at the school, the children are always great and the time with the staff in their fifteen minute mid-morning break gives a good chance for snatched conversation with a number of different teachers.

They always make me feel so very much at home. I never get to feel like I'm an outsider or anything.

The chance to talk is brief, of course, and that's been the pattern throughout the day. Both here in our halls and out on the streets, I couldn't even start to give an estimate of just how many different folk I met along the way and had the chance to chat with for a few brief fruitful minutes as we passed.

Old and young alike. A number of the children from school at different points: some of them over the garden fence as it were, some of them playing around in our gardens here.

They're always glad to stop and chat. Always full of interest. And most times pretty challegning as well.

"What are you going to do with your land then?" they blurted out.

They were talking about our grounds. They find it really hard, I think, to believe that we should still have more than 85% of our grounds under buildings, concrete or tar.

They think in cleaner, 'greener' categories than older generations tend to do.

I think they're on the ball in that regard. I'd spent some time as well today completing a piece for the next forthcoming issue of our magazine, a piece about the way we treat the world in which we live. And I managed to write it without ever mentioning once the word 'environment'!

But it wasn't just children I met with while out and about. All sorts of people, too. Some of them older, some of them stopping to talk, some of them walking along.

These little sort of 'mini-conversations', like the 'dots' upon the artist's starting canvas, are the very life-blood of a good and healthy, thriving village life. The warp and woof whereby the threads of our relationships are woven by our mini-conversations into tapestries of rich, fulfilling communal cohesion under God.

Which sounds a bit pretentious. But I think it's true!