I've at last got around to posting a video of CaraMayan on You Tube after thinking about it for months! The other thing I'm doing is clearing my desk at long last. It was so cluttered and piled up it was difficult to find anything or even to think. Only half way there but it's at least on the go. Now there are piles on the floor instead waiting to be filed or decided on.

May Day. In England I remember as a child all the mayflowers were out and the warm weather was coming. Here the days are getting shorter and colder and the leaves of European trees are turning beautiful shades of red and yellow. Most of our Australian trees are Eucalypts and it is the new shoots that are red at any time of the year. The spectacular time is November when the bark from the Angophera eucalypts in our garden split and peel off to new pink bark beneath. At the same time the purple Jacaranda and the crimson flame trees. It's my favourite time of the year. In two weeks it will be Pentecost and I'm speaking at our monthly Christian Dance Fellowship meeting on Celebrating Pentecost and International Christian Dance Week which is the week before and including Pentecost. I don't know what I'll say and do yet but am excited to see how the Spirit leads. I'm always surprised that the Church as a whole doesn't seem to celebrate Pentecost in a big way - it's such a significant time with the Holy Spirit coming and the Church being born.

CaraMayan - Gaelic Blessing

Easter morning

We were up early on Easter day to drive to Bungwal for the service at a small wooden country church set on a hill overlooking a lake. It was a wild day - the wind wipping up the surf stretching along the coastline as we drove there. Inside the church, with seating for about 50, the light streamed through the windows which had panels of blue, red and yellow stained glass around central plain glass. The owner of the logging business that operated here in a big way 125 years ago brought over the stained glass and no doubt the bell from Scotland when he built the church for the Anglicans among those he employed as loggers. This Easter two priests shared the service - Jessica, a dynamic 30 year old woman and an older retired priest - a great combination. We started the service outside to light the paschal candle moving it into the small wooden porch to shield it from the wind. Then we all processed after the candle into the church. Jessica spoke about Mary at the tomb when Jesus appeared to her. When she thought he was the gardner Jesus spoke her name and she responded "Rabbi"! Jesus said to her "Do not hold onto me". Jessica suggested that in calling him "Rabbi" she was wanting him to be as he had always been and for things to return to what they had been. Jesus was urging her not to hold on to this but to see this was a new day and things were going to be different. A good message for us in this new decade. May we be ready to move on to the new things God has for us.

Monday March 29
What a great place to start a blog! I am at Bluey's beach and started this morning with Psalm 67 in CaraMayan looking out over the ocean. Yesterday we went to a wonderful Palm Sunday service at an outdoor chapel called the Green Cathedral sitting on simple wooden benches amongst masses of palm trees reaching up into the sky and looking out onto the lake.
Because of recent shoulder operation I have a new set of boring exercises to do but got inspired this morning to do them as a CaraMayan and to music looking out the sea. Much easier and enjoyable to do this way!