Mike's musings

More walkies

Took Jo for another long walk - I think yesterday was probably around 6 miles, and today's around 5. She sleeps, I get some exercise, and Moo can have some time to herself. I try to convince her to sleep, which she did both yesterday and today. She's brilliant (Moo is) at getting up in the middle of the night to deal with Jo, and she needs all the relief from baby-care, and concomitant sleep that she can get over the weekends. I do try to get up from time to time, particularly over the weekends, but Jo seems to need feeding rather often when she wakes up (more than we'd like), and I can't really do much to help with that. And, during the week, it's helpful to get enough sleep that I can at least drive to work safely.

As I write this, there are big, big bangs going off. Although yesterday was Bonfire Night, some people seem to have decided that they might as well let off some rockets and bangers tonight (as well, I think). So far, Jo's sleeping through all the bangs, somewhat to our surprise.

I preached at two churches this morning: Helion's Bumpstead and Steeple Bumpstead (really, folks). They're part of the same benefice, and don't have an incumbent at the moment (translation: they're in the same group of parishes, and don't have a priest attached to them at the moment), and were very grateful to have me come to preach. They even gave me money for expenses (which I certainly wasn't expecting), and, what's more, before I'd even preached, the churchwardens at Helion's asked me to come again to do their Christingle service (3pm, 11th December, if anyone is thinking of coming).

I preached pretty much the same sermon in both parishes, on John 15:9-17 ("Greater love hath no man", etc.), and talked about how the word used for servant is actually "slave" in Greek, and that the word used for commandment has overtones of "behest", rather than just "order". For those of you with an interest, the words are: ἐντολὰς (entolas = commandment) and δοῦλος (doulos = slave).