Being around our building is, once more, to be very aware of the noise that building work can create. The building next door, this time, is the one that is being reconstructed, and there has a been a great deal of hammering and drilling. And today, there was more work being done on the road at the back, involving what appears to be elephants dancing on biscuits - loud and crunchy!
Also on a Tuesday - the day I am writing this - we have our "Waiting Prayer" meeting; a half hour of silent prayer, whcih, for those of us who attend, is a welcome oasis in a loud and busy life.
I ofund myself fantasising during the prayer today (I make no claims to be a disciplined prayer!) about running away to somewhere green, wind swept - and without mechanical noise. It would be so much easier to pray there, runs the imagining. I would not be so abstracted or wooly-witted. I would really achieve depths of communion with God.
But in fact, I believe that praying in this context - surrounded by noise and at times rather overwhelmed by the business and busyness of life in the city - keeps us real. If our prayer and worship only "works", only appears to have reality in pleasant, quiet, perhaps even "romantic" contexts,then we need to ask just what we think we are doing. There is no chance of that happening in our building; we are kept in touch with the life and demands, the joys and the challenges of living among people day to day.
And it keeps our day to day life real too. For as we pray and worship in the midst of the city, we keep alive the links between the complexities, joys and ever-pressing presence of living in our lives and in our city. Praying and worshipping in the noise and busyness not only stops our worship become isolated from the realities we live in; it also stops the everyday and immediate realities of our living becoming separated from the deep presence and activity of God.
So I am trying to give up my fantasy of a green space in order to be able to pray truly. And if you would like to explore with me even further the challenge of praying in our situation, come and join me sometime.

During the past week, I have been having a conversation with a friend about a particular series of novels. The main character in the books is somebody who lives according to a very strong moral sense, and a deep commitment to right, good and love. Fans of the writer often speak of the impact of this writing on their own sense of self, and of the model the character provides.
In talking about this - and other - books that have mattered to us, I have become even more convinced, or perhaps it is that I have managed more clearly than usual to articulate, the recognition that for many of us, there are guiding texts; they may be books, or films, music or TV programmes (Patrick Stewart, when he took the role of Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Star Ship Enterprise, in the series Star Trek, commented that he had been taken aback by the realisation that there were people who took his character as a life-model - and the responsibility that placed on him.)But whatever they are, they form a narrative that speaks to us of character, and what is admirable, of aims and how we might achieve them, of what it means to be a person, and how to do it.
The question is not will we have a base narrative - the question is do we know what it is, and have we chosen it with awareness.
Perhaps the year when we reflect on the translation of the Scriptures that we know as the Authorized Version, it is a good time to think further together about how, if at all, Scripture can be a base narrative for us?

The waiting over, the celebrations begun - and, it feels like, ended. Christmas is sooooo past now; we are into the new year, we are faced with putting away all the decorations, we are trying to lose the weight we have just put on, we have packed up the carol books....
But if Christmas means anything more than just a happy holiday, a lot to eat and some pretty pictures (to say nothing of the sheer delight of the nativity play)it mustn't be something we can pack away. Christmas is about birth; birth is about beginning; beginning implies continuity. And so, how do we continue? How to we go on with Christmas, or the implications of Christmas.
Perhaps we can do it through the other dominant theme this week; a new year's resolution. Perhaps we can resolve to do better, to live differently, to be better people.
Except - is that what the birth is about? Is that what we have been waiting for - a chance to try and get it right (again) and discover (again) that we can't do it?
Or might we have been waiting for something else? Might we dare to believe that the meaning we are offered in the birth is that it is not all down to us, that we are not the centre of the universe, nor the only ones who are responsible, nor is our strength all there is?
It's a new year, it's the Christmas season, it's the time when the promise "God with us" is offered anew.
I wonder if I can trust it? I wonder if you can? Might we do it together?