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I am carless again. Not sure if it was an act of generosity, a gesture in the direction of green living, a parental response to a carless daughter who could use some mobility and convenience for a couple of weeks. A mixture of these and other less obvious motives. Anyway, my car is away on holiday to Edinburgh. This will be an occasional but not drastic incovenience. I’ll still get to work. Two lengthy journeys planned this week can be done on the train, an education in patience, perhaps endurance, and certainly soul-training in greeting the unpredictable with either trusting equanimity or resigned and determined cheerfulness. Autonomous mobility is often important to any one of us, and at the moment we are working on the basis that those who have two cars should lend their daughter one!

It’s an interesting experience to hand over a car for a couple of weeks. The actual mechanical, physical, four-wheeled transporter will not be missed from the front window. But the freedom it represents, and which you get so used to, to go wherever, the independence of private available mobility, the convenience to cover miles in minutes, whether to visit someone else, go to B&Q, head out to that contemporary oasis of therapeutic ambience, the coffee shop – that needs some additional forethought, planning, and some of it may not get done because public transport would be such a pain!

It does raise an interesting question about car-sharing in families or at work though. My car is insured for two other named people apart from my wife and myself, my daughter and a colleague. Costs a bit more on insurance, but it does make life more flexible for others, if not for me when the car is with someone else. Maybe in a two car family if one of them was insured for several other occasional users it would provide the benefit of a car when really necessary without multiplying ownership. Would that be living wittily? Am I on to something, or am I trying to console myself by claiming an act of reckless generosity and intentional inconvenience was social responsibility in disguise!?

Selected Incoming Emails over two days.

1. A courtesy reminder from Glasgow Uni Library about books now due, with the gentle threat of draconian fines. So I returned them
2. Suggested arrangements from my pal Ken, coming over from the States and wanting to meet up. Where else, out at the Fort, in Borders, at Starbucks, near Christmas.
3. A friend informed me that a mutual friend has died suddenly, and my sadness is immediate and heartfelt. I pray for her and her family.
4. Amazon inform me that Jurgen Moltmann’s Autobiography, In a Broad Place, has just shipped from the US and will be with me by New Year. It will displace all other reading as soon as it arrives.
5. Confirmation a meeting is cancelled leaving space for other things that also need doing. The tyrranny of the diary occasionally broken.
6. Extra papers arrive for a big all day meeting on Monday. I refuse to open the attachments till early Monday. The tyrranny of the immediate, the urgent, the allegedly essential is also occasionally broken.
7. A thank you from the University nursery for sending now obsolete Paisley University headed paper to the nursery where children will ‘recycle’ them.

It’s too easy to moan and grump about email, the work it creates, the administrative nagging it represents, the impersonal tone and blunt instrument prose. But it also allows all kinds of social exchange – and can usually be humanised and made people friendly. On balance, I wouldn’t have wanted to not receive any of these emails – except maybe the late papers. But even then – why not make allowances for those times when people’s work is done late? How do I know the hassle, the late working, the impossible workloads, and the normal failings and mistakes of ordinary folk trying to do their job? Have I never missed a deadline, overlooked an important detail, failed with the best will in the world to get through the day’s ‘to do’ list? Course I have – and so have you.

Blessed are those who receive emails, and the wisdom, humour and patience, to see the humanity of the person who clicked ‘SEND’.

Back in circulation after returning from my jaunt to the Highland city of Inverness. New friendships, renewed friendships, thinking together with folk as we move into Advent, sensing and exploring the spiritual and pastoral life of another Christian community – all made it a great week-end.

Highlights other than the in-church activities included supporting Ross County as they tried to smite the Raith Rovers Amalekites; the steak pie at half time; an evening meal with friends from way back which included Morag’s chicken, cooked by Iain; Sunday lunch at the manse where hospitality is warm, generous and the home made chocolate sauce sinfully more-ish. I know cos I sinned!

Advent is an important time of waiting – perhaps in a culture which worships instant, we need a place in the practices of our faith where we learn again to wait, to anticipate, and to recognise that while patience is a virtue, impatience can sometimes be an indication of how important whatever we are waiting for is!

So morning by morning, with my advent candle lit, mind and heart and will turn towards the great promises of Isaiah, and I pray for an Isaianic vision of how what is can be renewed, how the status quo is rendered provisional by the God who has seen it all before. And so the light of Christ shines, and the darkness cannot comprehend it. I love the double meaning of that older word – the darkness can neither understand, or engulf, the light of Christ.

Thank you Hilton congregation for having me as your guest – and may Advent draw you into the future where God awaits you, and into which God accompanies you. And by the way, the photo of the Hilton Church, with the cross above the cherry blossom, is a rich symbol which carries with it a sense of the abundant, extravagant fruitfulness of life lived within all the promises and purposes of God. I know it’s a Spring picture – but Advent is about anticipation of light, growth, life and the renewal of creation by the Creator. Just look at the profusion of blossom, like a garland of grace – dead Advent that, so it is!