I start today with better intentions and make it to a Sunday morning church service for the first time in over a year or two.
Sall and I arrive after all the seats have been filled and after some confusion of ‘this seat is reserved’, ‘no it isn’t’, ‘yes it is’, we find a little perch on the step leading up to the night stairs. Not the most comfortable seat in the house maybe, but at least it’s handy for an escape route.
A well-meaning steward insists she can find us seats in the choir stalls. Unfortunately yet again I hit the ‘sorry this seat is reserved’ issue and as the service starts I’m now stuck right up the front by the altar with no means of escape. I want the ground to open up and swallow me. However, given the solidity of the ancient stone slabs beneath my feet, I suspect that this isn’t about to happen.
I can feel myself start to panic, I just want to be out, gone, away.
Fortunately the same well-meaning steward realises what has happened and that I’m now stranded. She resolves the situation, but I’m left feeling awkward and ill in the mood for an act of worship, but hey worse things happen at sea.
Sally sadly had it no better as she explains here. Sat several rows behind I can see my lovely friend and 'roomie' getting upset and feel totally frustrated that there is no way I can get to her to comfort her. My heart lifts when I see the stranger next to her, reach out to her and offer comfort. I track her down in the pub later to say thanks. An angel in a time of need.
On the plus side, Martin Wroe's sermon was a highlight, not least for the aside that: "our orthodoxy should inform our orthopraxy and if we get it wrong we may end up gnashing our teeth in hell...in which case we'll need orthodontistry...".
Oh my, I think I've been reading too many of Stuart's theology essays...I get the joke.
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