Sharing the light

That rather evangelical-sounding title might confuse the unwary in light (sorry!) of the fact that I spent several hours today at the annual meeting of the diocesan synod, which was held online this year despite the absence of a pandemic to blame ... but in fact this light is what got me out of bed this morning after a night's sleep disturbed by the effects (I think) of Monday's exertions in the garden. I then shared the photo on the Twitter thread posted this morning by Yaroslava, the young Ukrainian woman from Kyiv whom I've been following since the Russian invasion. She's been so amazingly optimistic and upbeat during all that time, but now I can hear the weariness in her tone, and I shared this in answer to a photo she had posted and in answer to the despair I sensed. She said it was a vision of Paradise, something I should remember when I moan about the rain. 

There was little time for anything but the meeting today; I'm not currently a voting member but as the Alternate attend to help out if the present Lay Rep should need me. In all the time I've been attending these things, from when I was the youngest lay member (in my mid-30s) of the old Provincial Synod, I've always felt young and very Scottish - and I realised today, over 40 years later, that nothing has changed. I must simply be childish ... Anyway, I spoke once and asked a brief rhetorical question another time - I find the chat box and the virtual hand to raise when you want to speak rather fun ...

In between sessions I instructed the gardener, who turned up in medias res, to do some drastic cutting back of the ivy which, we both agreed, was holding up the back garden wall. And when it was all over and I was hideously stiff and tired we went for a modest walk round the West Bay, just to get straightening up after all that sitting. 

The Budget seems to have occupied all evening - I know it didn't, but it was an awful long news coverage - and I fell asleep. Wake me up and tell me how it's going to affect me - I've lost the mojo! In other news, Trump. Trump!