Jim and Pam's 25th

Party at Jim and Pam's

Tonight was Jim and Pam's 25th wedding anniversary.

Jim had prepared a big party for over a hundred guests, hosted in their house and garden. A marquee filled much of the garden with the rest of it pressed into service as a kitchen and serving area.

In one corner of the marquee was a disco. People congregated in the house itself as well as in the front and back gardens.

Children were happy to play on the bouncy castle in the front garden.

Many of the guests already knew one another, a reflection of Jim and Pam's widespread circles of friends, both church based and in the wider community.

Donna and I knew many of the people there through one route or another. It was a truly great evening and everyone had a lot of fun.

(If you liked this you might also like Journeys of heart and mind and Quote me on this.)

Gibbous coffee

This cup of coffee is partly shaded, like a half moon. When a moon or planet is more than half illuminated it is said to be gibbous, hence a cup of gibbous coffee.

Coffee half shaded

Gibbous is astronomical jargon, a useful term with a precise meaning.

The coffee was part of our breakfast this morning at 'The Ambiance Cafe' in the Riverside Park in St Neots.

It's a popular place for people wanting a snack, a drink, an ice cream, or a simple meal, neatly and conveniently positioned between the car parking spaces and the grass and trees of the park itself.

After our breakfast and coffee/tea we headed off for a bench under a shady tree for the next part of 'The Forgotten Ways' by Alan Hirsch, a workbook we've been studying. This time we completed the section on the 'Missional-incarnational impulse' so we're ready next time to begin 'Apostolic environment'.

If this all sounds double-Dutch, please be reassured that it's most certainly not. It's actually a very interesting study on how church works and what makes it really fly. In a sense this book is telling us that we need to be fully in the light and not half in the dark, like the gibbous coffee.

(If you liked this you might also like Journeys of heart and mind and Quote me on this.)

A new path

We had a new greenhouse recently; building it was all a bit of a saga - but that's another story...

New path in the garden

The area between the old greenhouse and the fence had always been something of a nightmare.

It was overgrown, the hedge that preceded the fence was wide and left little room, and the ground was full of broken glass, old concrete posts, rusted bits of ironwork, you name it!

But now it all looks a lot more promising. I've built a new path with a rustic stone step where the levels change. I also added a narrow border beside the greenhouse base.

The new path makes it easy to get from the back door to the summerhouse. It's been fun to do despite the hot weather.

(If you liked this you might also like Journeys of heart and mind and Quote me on this.)

Sunshades on a hot day

We had a very hot day today and there are heatwave warnings that the next few days will be even hotter still.

A hot day in St Neots

The photo shows people at the Bridge Inn. They are sitting on the river terrace relaxing. This was earlier in the day but by mid afternoon most people were looking for shade or (even better) air conditioning.

The temperatures in the shade topped 28 C today, not high by some standards, but pretty good for northerly lands like the UK.

I did some work in the garden and made quite a bit of progress, but it felt better to work in the shade and not to be too active!

Days like this are really very welcome in Britain because we don't get that many of them. On the other hand we we start to grumble about a drought if weather like this went on for several more weeks.

You just can't please the Brits when it comes to weather!

(If you liked this you might also like Journeys of heart and mind and Quote me on this.)

Duckweed collector

This rather odd photo uses flash at night to image duckweed on our indoor pond (an Affinity Pool).

Duckweed on our pond

The water fountains up through the grey pipe and shoots out into a thin, hemispherical sheet of  water.

Oddly, this water action seems to collect the duckweed inside the falling water. It's trapped there, it can't escape, but sometimes more duckweed gets sucked inside.

Duckweed normally floats on the water surface as a single layer. But with this collection action it soon becomes two, three or more layers deep inside the water envelope.

Duckweed is a flowering plant, surely one of the smallest possible such plants. It's not usually part of the life in our pond, but today I added some water lily plants to the mix and there was pondweed stuck to the lily roots.

Duckweed is another example of viriditas - see yesterday's post.

(If you liked this you might also like Journeys of heart and mind and Quote me on this.)

Viriditas

Viriditas is a Latin word that means 'greenness'. The English equivalent is viridity.

Rapidly growing plants

Down the ages the Latin word has been used in a religious context to mean spiritual and physical health, but Kim Stanley Robinson used it in a different way in his Mars trilogy. By viriditas he meant the ability of living things to prosper and grow in rich abundance.

The plants in this pot have grown vigorously and are flowering abundantly so they are displaying considerable viriditas. Compare this post with the earlier one I posted on 9th June.

The idea of viriditas can be used to describe anything that is full of life. Flowers in the garden, trees and forests, fish in the sea, children, good ideas, successful companies, and successful churches.

So what are the underlying causes of viriditas?  Understanding that is the key to success. One important cause is organic growth, growth that feeds on its own success.

The more a child learns the more potential he or she has for further learning. Just think of the opportunities for learning that open up when a child learns to read.

The more a plant spreads this year, the more seeds there will be next year. How do you think this principle applies to a company or a church?

(If you liked this you might also like Journeys of heart and mind and Quote me on this.)

A third place

Here I am at McDonald's on the A1 just south of St Neots. We had eaten at home but wanted a dessert and we also wanted to continue working through 'The Forgotten Ways Handbook' together.

Working in a third place

So Donna and I took our notebooks and pens and our copies of the Handbook and headed a couple of miles down the A1 to McDonald's where Donna had a flake McFlurry and I chose a banana shake.

Then we got stuck into Session 1 of 'The Missional-Incarnational Impulse'.

The book calls places like McDonald's 'third places'. They are not home, they are not the workplace (or in our case church), but they are places where the community gathers. They are therefore good places to go if we want to connect with the community in a real and natural way.

It was interesting to look at it in this way, and I was able to have a friendly chat with a family in the queue just ahead of us. Small children are great conversation starters, and this group's three-year-old was no exception!

(If you liked this you might also like Journeys of heart and mind and Quote me on this.)