Important post - The outcome of the case

We came home from my son's wonderful wedding (see previous post) to find the letter from the Archbishops council had arrived. I had known about it all day but had not opened it or told my wife; I wanted her to enjoy the wedding undistracted.

The letter was the most devastating news we could have. The council has decided that our vicar, who has utterly destroyed my wife's life with the effect that our family has also been blown apart, apparently has 'no case to answer'. They feel it is just 'a breakdown of the pastoral relationship'.

So my wife now feels much the same as those women who have been raped but see the perpetrator go un-prosecuted because the police do not believe her.

It really could not be worse. I think that even f someone had died it would feel better - grief yes but a knowledge that people die. This since of injustice and of being walked on and of having the powers of the church protect each other - as they used to in the paedophile priests cases - it is utterly devastating. I had not known how deeply one can feel hurt. And that is just me; my wife feels far worse than I do as it is her that is being rejected.

And it hurts to know that he will gloat over us, and over those of our children who still go to the church, and over my troubled teen daughter who takes his side, and over my other son who will announce his engagement n the church this morning. How deeply that will hurt!

The natural instinct is to think of all the things we can do to express our pain. I have visualised myself scratching obscenities into the paint of his car, which is his real god. I have imagined burning his house down. I have imagined the letters to the press, the letter to the Archbishop himself, the letter to the PCC ..... but all these things are limited human vengeance and ultimately counter productive.

We know from our recent string of miracles in connection with the house sale and the move to the new town that God is with us, and that he has been planning the move for us, and that he saw this outcome before we did, and even Calvinistically planned it for us. And so we still have faith that we must leave it in his hands. "'Vengeance is mine', says the Lord". And I think that his vengeance will be far more effective than any we could impose. Our God is not all nice and fluffy, he also has anger (just read the psalms!). And he also sees every thought that passes through the dark secret places of our hearts. So I would not really like to be in our Vicar's shoes when the Lord starts to implement his justice.

The Wedding

My son's wedding yesterday was really one of the most wonderful events I have attended in my life.

Obviously it was my sons wedding, so it was always going to be good. But they had planned it really well, with a strong and very attractive aesthetic theme running through everything which has taken them absolutely hours and hours to prepare. Part of his was the wedding breakfast, which rather than the standard roast dinner was en English tea party, with fancy porcelain tea cups, sandwiches on elegant stands, and array after array of Victoria sponges and other classic cakes made to perfection with that perfect balance of home-made appearance and professional baking.

There was a Ceilidh afterwards, and long conversations with family and friends reconnecting after years. And a generally wonderful dreamlike atmosphere throughout it all. I felt I was in and watching an Oscar-winning movie about family and the triumph of the human spirit.

Words fail me. It really was outstanding!!!

Troublesome teen

I'm doing my best for my 17 year old daughter. She is currenlty on a 'work experience' placement at the laboratory at my client's site, so I am giving her lifts, sharing lunch breaks, and arranging meetings with other professionals in the complex to give her careers advice.

we have also arranged accomodation with some friends, because she does not want to come with us to the new town half way thropugh her a levels.

So we are really trying to make her feel loved and cared for.

It's not working.

Fundamentally she thinks we are wrong to be moving and that we are wrong to be taking our Vicar to the clergy discipline tribunal. She thinks her Mum shares a significant part of the blame, and that we should just do the Christian thing and get on with the man. She thinks she knows things that we don't. She thinks her mum is crazy and brings the persecution on herself. That is to say, she is really siding with the Vicar.

So my wife feels terribly betrayed and hated. And my daughter feels unloved, hated even. They both hate me because I try to make each see the others viewpoint.

Please pray for family healing.

Wedding rehearsal

It's my son's wedding rehearsal tonight. I'm sure it will go well. this marks part of the changing of the chapters in our lives.

Slipping and kicking

Owing to my wife's rheumatoid arthritis, she is prone to falling because she can't move quickly to regain balance. then she can't move quickly to protect against the impact. The the impact hurts more because of the lack of flexibility in her joints. And then, once she is wallowing on the ground, she can't get up again and needs someone to pick her up.

So we teased her when we had to pick her up off a speed cushion in the road that she had tripped on - "that cushion is not for taking a nap!"

But last night she slipped in the shower. She spent ages trying to at least get herself out of the shower onto the bathroom floor, but she could not even get herself over the edge of the shower tray.

So in the end I had to kick the bathroom door in, step into the shower with her, and hoik her up into a standing position.

This sounds sexy, but a complete loss of all your dignity is not sexy.

It's coming apart....!

Bummer ... I've just been put on a three day week.

Well, I can use the time. And its probably the Lord's way fo stopping me form prioritising money when I should be prioritising family.

And presumably, since we are currenlty in the mode of having got out of the boat and wlaking on water in faith, presumably this is just one of those big waves that we have to see in perspective as we hold [perhaps rather tightly] onto the hand of Jesus.

Its coming together ....

We are now well advanced with packing things up for the move.

We had been through various plans of storing large amounts in the basement, then moving it to some other storage location, and the to our new house, but this would have involved paying removal men three times as well as the storage costs.

Now, lets face it, very little of our furniture is of any value; most of it came form charity shops anyway.

So now, most of it has been demosolished adn put in a skip.

It's quite cathartic really.

One does wonder where all this stuff came from. It's hard work carrying it all out the front door, but I didn't really otice most of it being carried into the house in the first place!

False widow?

Is this one of those notorious false widow spiders that's terrorising Britain? ( you may need to zoom in)

True to spider's innate ability to find the arachnophobe in any situation, this one ran across my hand.

Nail analogies - here is the chart missing from my previous post

Nail analogies

so, many months ago I gave up biting my finger nails. I achieved this largely by measuring them individually every few days and drawing a chart to show their growth. Thus every time I bite a nail, it shows up as an ugly downturn in the line on the graph.

I also have a similar graph for the total of all my nails, which I am going to try to attach to this post, technology permitting. If succesful it will be here: ....

The thing I note about the graph is that it rockets upwards at an almost steady state until the nails start to overhang the end of the finger. (There are actually several milestones or markers: there is the point at which the nail literally pokes out beyond the finger, and can be seen from below. Then, closer in, there is the point at which the nail is supposed to be physically attached to the finger as opposed to just being in contact with it. At this point there is a kink in the skin. next in is the point at which my recovering nail starts to leave the nail bed and launch out into the void. Further back is the point at which my recovering nails are attached to the nail bed in the way that they hould be. and then closer in still, is the now barley visible point marking the wrost extent of my nail biting before I stopped.) Onec the nail starts to grow beyond each of these points it becomes progressively more vulnerable to general wear and tear in addition to the increased temptation to bite. I can ofset the urge to bite by thinking about how I don't want a dip in my graph, but there is little that can be done about the wear and tear. So now that the nails extend beyond the finger tip, I have developed an almost feminine obsession with nails and complain loudly to the whole house if I break one. Partly because I now understand tath this actually hurts, but mainly becasue I am saying goodbye to three weeks of growth.

So back to my graphs, and why my post title is about analogies.

I postulate that nails are analogous to cigarrette smoke and to a hydraulic jump (the transition between supercritical and subcritical flow conditions) in an open channel of water.

You see, the cigarette smoke rises as a smooth column until the friction of the air slows it down enough, and then it becomes much jmore billowy. And the water in the channel shoots along it until the friction overcomes it and it reverts to a deeper slower flow by going through a big wave. You also see a hydraulic jump in your kitchen sink every day - it's that wave forming a ring around the point where the water from the tap hits the stainless steel. In both the cigaratte smoke and the water, you get relatively smooth fast jet up to a certain point and then it becomes chaotic. Similarly my nails grew bice and smoothly up to the point where they overhung the finger tip, and then with random breakages on top of occasional bites the line on the graph becoes very volatile.

Strangely, there is also a link to my cheese consumption: more cheese correlates to faster fingernail growth. But that's another story.