Farewell do - parachuting

Tomorrow I will be having my farewell do - a meal at a popular pub restaurant.

No doubt nice things will be said, good luck will be wished, and I might even get a card and a present.

But behind all that I will feel that it is analogous to an aeroplane containing a number of parachutists. Everybody knows whose turn it is to jump next, and that that person has no parachute, and that that person is me. They all have their own parachutes, which of course they need for their own jumps, and nobody begrudges them that. And of course I can smile and wave bravely as I jump. But the fact remains - I have to jump out of the plane with no parachute. And no amount of nice talk, good luck wishes, cards or presents will get around the simple fact that I will be outside the plane with no parachute, accelerating rapidly to certain doom.

Fortunately, my God has never let such things as the laws of physics obstruct him from achieving his purposes in my life.

Invisible woman

My wife has often complained that the church ignores her or dismisses her efforts.

So this week, we have been filling in froms for our second daughter to go to the same school as her sister. Becasue this [Catholic] school is oversubscribed, we now need to get the forms signed by our Vicar and provide a copy of her certificate of baptism. So my wife approached the vIcar and asked him to do this for her, which he readily agred to do. When she went to collect the from, she foud that it was in an envelope adressed to me. Why? I had had nothing to do with the request or the administration of it, I was not involved in any way. So why did they adress it to me? My wife said to me "Am I invisible?"

This probably seems like a small and trivial thing unless you know the history of her being rejected by the church, and in fact it illustrates how much damage can be done by carelessness.