Then I posted a pic of some 3d paper mache letters I get from Hobbycraft and use to make little visual displays in church. Fr Kirstin suggested that I put a new blog together and share these resources with others. And I hope others will comment too and share what they have.

Please note that this is not an official Scottish Episcopal Church website. I am not on the Liturgy Committee (shame!) either. This is merely a sharing of resources between denominations, clergy, lay people, etc. A sharing of what makes good liturgy. A sharing of my ideas and yours. Please feel free to comment and check in regularly at Eat Pray Love Liturgy. If you have recipes, prayers, craft ideas… anything at all to share, please let me know.

I went out for dinner with some friends and drank wine which I don’t often do these days because I either have the car or am working the next day. Who’d have thought in my youth that it would come to this? Not many of my friends, that’s for sure.

Struggled a bit with The Book of Human Skin because I think it is trying to be Perfume but not terribly well. I’m told it gets better so will persevere but the different fonts for each character are annoying me too. Then I re-read The Redbird Christmas for our book group today and that took an afternoon as it is deliciously short (and schmaltzy).

On Friday I went to see War Horse at the flicks. Blimey, but it was loud. And long. I’d read the book when I was in my ‘reading children’s books’ phase last year and loved it. And one of these days I’d dearly love to go to the theatre to see it done there. The film was good, but very Disney. To begin with it almost looked like it was set in Brigadoon and by the red sunset at the end I almost expected Derby O’Gill or a leprauchan to pop up too. But it was a beautiful film and great story. Still not exactly sure why it was so long because the book is pretty short, but I suppose it was padded out with dialogue. There was some sniffing and hankies being produced by the end from those next to me but I’m afraid I remained dry-eyed.

On Sunday I awoke early having had a most horrible nightmare. It was all about the pew sheet being wrong for Mother Ann who is covering for me and then having to write it out by hand, and nobody had found the correct page in the Lectionary, and so on. It was in fact all about me not being in control and it all falling to pieces.  Oh dear.  But as I was up so early I went back to my old haunt in Linlithgow for church because their service begins at 9.30am. It was so lovely to be pew fodder and Mother Marian is looking after them in the vacancy so nice to catch up with her too. In fact, as the eccentrics started playing up it was almost as if I’d never been away! (By the way, you may be thinking that it is not good form for a priest to revisit an old charge, but I did ask permission and I am covering for a few of their weekday services. However, it is still a difficult issue.)

So that’s my post-Christmas done and dusted. I do feel rested and refreshed. Only one funeral awaits me and a pile of mail and emails. But it is good to be back. Another week and I’d have gone mad.

The first book was sent to me by a friend whose taste in books I share. It is A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness and a Sunday Times Bestseller, no less. Now, I wasn’t really sure that I was going to enjoy it when I saw it was about witches, vampires and daemons albeit set in the world of academia. But in fact, I really enjoyed it. There was forbidden love (vampires and witches don’t usually get it together), adventures, baddies and goodies, and history too. In fact, it is Twilight for grown-ups or as Entertainment Weekly said ‘for the tweedy set’. Anyway it was great escapism and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My only complaint was that as I neared the end I realised the story was not going to be sewn up neatly but would be continued in the following books of the trilogy, as yet unwritten. I hate that! It’s like when ‘To Be Continued’ appears on the screen and you didn’t expect it. But at the same time the book also journeys into the world of time-travel and I can see that it will be like those old favourites by Diana Gabaldon beginning with Cross Stitch.

The next day, as the interruptions were many, I decided not to read but to watch the whole series of The Borgias. What a treat, that was. Sex, intrigue, politics, incest, murder, more sex, and all set within the confines of the church. Delicious. The vestments were lovely too.  Really one feels that one should never complain about the College of Bishops in our little church ever again.

The next book was Spanish Steps: One Man and his Ass on the Pilgrim Way to Santiago by Tim Moore. This was a Christmas present from the non-church-going husband of the Rector’s Warden who’d seen it and thought of me. Wasn’t that nice? Santiago is, as regular readers will know, on my bucket list but it is the walking that keeps it there. Tim Moore is a very funny writer and almost too funny to write a book. The jokes just came so thick and fast that I had to stop reading for a while every so often because it was just too much. Anyway, the story is as it says on the cover – his pilgrimage to Santiago with a donkey. He’s not religious so is not doing it for that reason, but is intrigued by the epic accounts of a pilgrimage undertaken by one in three medieval Europeans. Realising that walking all that distance with a rucksack ain’t gonna be a lot of fun, he decides to take a donkey along with him to carry the load. Of course, he knows nothing about donkeys. There is a wee bit of The Way in this story – non-religious person finds ‘spirituality’ on the road through the other people he meets. But there is also irreverence, amusing characters, and enough eccentrics to keep you going for a long time. There’s a touch of the Bill Bryson about it too, if that’s what you’re in to. I enjoyed it in doses.

I was showing my little church to a friendly curate last week and she asked where I got my stand-up letters from. Then it occurred to me that others might be interested too. They come from Hobbycraft and are 3D brown paper mache and stand about 8″ tall and are £1.99 each. I paint them with acrylic paint (2 coats) and they look wooden and quite substantial. At my old church they stood on the side altar, but here they are on a table at the door with tealights in front of them. Everyone remarks on how welcoming it is.  I have different words – REPENT for Lent, ADVENT, EMMANUEL and ALLELUIA for Easter. I might do a REMEMBER for November this year. Lent and Advent ones are painted purple (of course) and Easter and Christmas are gold. The candles definitely enhance them.

Perhaps you can think of other words to do? (Keep it clean please!)  Or any other visual ideas to share?

No, it was the sight of open doors and lonely people lying in beds and sitting on chairs staring at walls and sometimes crying out. Each room ‘decorated with your own furniture’ and fluffy toys and piles of unread books and dried out plants on window sills. Each room containing one lonely person desperate for human contact, calling out when anyone walked past. Of course they could go to the lounge and sit with others watching TV for 12 hours a day, but there’s never any conversation I’m told. “They’re all doolally in here.  We’d rather sit in our own rooms. ” But what if you need help to put on the wireless or TV in your own room? What if you need someone to get you into your chair with your newspaper by your side? What if you just want some company, someone to talk to, someone to share your memories with?

It all felt so desperately sad. So desperately lonely. Homes without love. That’s not home at all.

This year it might be better to be a bit more vague, I reckon.

1. More reading is definitely high on the list. I now have a huge bookcase and a Kindle which are full of unread books. I’d like to do a Susan Hill and make a vow to never buy another book this year and just read the ones I have, but I know that ain’t gonna happen. However, what I can do is make more time to watch less rubbish on TV and read more.
2. More blogging is another must for this year. Last year I’m not sure why there were so many large gaps in my blogging but I somehow got out of the way. But blogging is mission and mission is high on our priorities here at Christ Church this year so the blogging must improve.
3. More financial restraint is another must for this year. Already I have made some of my own Christmass presents and nobody threw up their hands in horror at the sight of a homemade fancy scarf.  I have removed myself from all the tempting emails that come in telling me of Emma Bridgewater, Molton Brown, Radley sales etc. I don’t need more handbags or shoes. I may want more, but I don’t need more. And I’m going to keep telling myself that. Really, I am.
4. More time with God might not be a bad thing either. I’ve loved doing the Daily Office during Advent with others, and will do that in Lent again. But I shall make sure I get a retreat this year and take all my holidays. I might even start something new in church for those who seek silence and quiet time.

I think that’ll do for now. So what are yours?

And do you have any predictions? I’m sure you can predict which of my new year resolutions will be broken by February. I see that a certain Provost has published his again this year.  (Without the help of Paul the Octopus, I’m told.) Have a look and see what you think. His first prediction affects those of us in the Edinburgh Diocese.

So there I was, scampering about lighting tea-lights, finding cardboard circles, inserting new eucharistic prayer pages into Altar Book, searching for white vestments, choosing which new Bambino to use to replace the broken-armed One of old and wrapping him tastefully in an old cotta, trying to find an extension to light up the inside of the font with twinkly lights, and telling the myriad of servers what they were to do. Yes, I really should have gone over earlier.

Mind you, it would have been too late to do anything about the service books in which I’d put the wrong hymns. There was a mixture of hymns for Christmass eve and Christmass day so that threw the organist into a tizz because he hadn’t practiced some of them. As a result we had the strangest tune ever for Love came down at Christmas.

The words of the Sacristy prayer escaped me too, so het up was I. But eventually we gathered at the back of the church and the solo of Once in Royal David’s City went swimmingly. And off we went, lighting candles on the way. (Small hiatus but we all made it in the end.) And as I neared the altar I realised that I had forgotten the most important Person… the Bambino. The baby Jesus was still lying on top of the music cupboard all ready to ‘go on’. And as the last lines of the last verse were sung I realised there was nothing I could do but confess all and scamper down to collect said Bambino amidst gales of laughter. What the visitors thought, I hate to think. But scampering (actually for ‘scampering’ read ‘thundering’) down the aisle and back left me a little breathless. Gasping, in fact. Bent over double trying to fill my asthmatic lungs with air which was made all the more tricky when the thurible was right under my nose, is not a good look for a priest who wants to look cool and in control. So I gasped my way through the blessing of the crib in very short phrases. The Bambino looked smug.

We’d also had a bit of trouble with the loop system over the past few days with a lot of interference coming through the speakers. Not being an electrician all I could do was shove all the wires in and give them a wiggle, and thump the top a few times. I even tried switching it off and back on again, which usually works, but to no avail. Earlier in the day at the Christingle service we’d ended up unplugging it altogether which was find as most of those attending had good hearing, being mostly under 75.  However, the same could not be said for those attending Midnight Mass and I thought I wasn’t sounding terribly loud so had to project my voice a little harder. Not easy when your lungs are fit to explode and you can’t find a glass of water for love nor money. However, by the time I climbed into the pulpit to do my sermon I saw the plug lying on the floor where it had been disconnected earlier. It all got a bit better after that.

Well I say that, but in fact there was the small incident with the wafers being cast asunder at communion but I think we got away with that one. And nobody was set on fire which frankly was a miracle with that many candles and tealights. And as the last hymn was being sung I kept casting an anxious eye on the person who had been given the task of popping the champagne. She was so enjoying that last hymn, that she completely forgot. So the choir, servers and I hightailed it down to the back and started to tear open the bubbly as they struggled to sing the descant for that last verse of O Come all Ye Faithful. I think they did terribly well under the circumstances.

So there we have it. All a bit of a disaster with nobody to blame but myself. Now I realise why my old parish priest used to get so tetchy before big services. It was because he wanted everything to be just right. And I was certainly not the best company or the most charitable person before that service either. Next year, I’ll be there much earlier. Or else I’ll get some tranquillisers from my Rector’s Warden.

Merry Christmass everyone!

Ah, the Christingles! Oh its alright, the Frasers are doing those.

But still I think that there is something important that should have been done that hasn’t. Like the year we lost the baby Jesus and I had to lay a folded hankie in the crib because it was either that or a cough sweet or microphone (all that was in my pocket at the time).

I did forget the disposable wine glasses but I’ve found some plastic cups which will have to do. Well you don’t want to have to go into the Pound Shop in Falkirk on Christmas Eve, do you?

After a rather large shop yesterday I came home, filled the fridge and realised we only had enough food for one meal. But we do have lots of Prosecco so who cares?

The presents finally were wrapped this morning but as yet we have no tree to put them under. Perhaps that’s what I forgot. But Son #2 did promise that he’d do it several weeks ago. After all, we don’t want it put up too early, do we?

For now, I shall wander about looking for the missing job. I know there is something I’ve still to do…

I have been at a few churches who have a knitted Nativity. In fact, in the past I may even have scoffed at such a notion. However, I am now in a position where I would willingly give my wisdom teeth for one, such is the lack of decent nativities in this part of the world.

However, there are still people who stop by this blog from all over the world for the Last Supper knitting pattern which waits patiently in the wings. (And thanks to the Foley family who so generously gave me one.)