Singing New Songs

St Abbs Harbour This is my church today. The waves breathe in and out over the rocks and breathe into the harbour.  The wind breathes over the scene, lifting seabirds higher and then bringing them down gently. As for me, I am breathing in the clean, salty air and breathing out the cares of the last half term.  Breathing in the quiet and calm and breathing out the busyness of the new routine, the essay deadline, the reading, the meetings and rehearsals, the busy life that my whole family lead. I am taking the time that I have today - this precious, rare moment of not having to be anywhere or do anything - to breathe in all that has been good about this term so far: the new friends made, the things I have learnt, the kindness and hospitality of my new church. I am taking time to breathe in the sense of being God’s beloved daughter. I know that it’s always there but it does me good to consciously look for it and feel it, listening to him, knowing he delights in u

This week saw my first New Testament Greek lesson. There were about 50 of us intrepid early risers gathered in Lecture Room 2 at 8.30 on Monday morning, the rest of our cohort having decided (possibly wisely) to take the extra hour in bed, rather than get up to do a purely optional course. And, by the way, my journey felt even more of an adventure on Monday morning, thanks to a fabulously eccentric (award for understatement of the century) man on the Victoria Line Tube train.  He was wearing what was clearly a home-made cone hat made of foil and coke cans and brandishing a stick wrapped in the same kind of thing. I was only on the train for 4 stops or so but in that time he had managed to hold forth, in a high-pitched, slightly odd voice, about what "space" was and how the doors aren't just closing on the train but they are closing to heaven and we're all too late. As I got off at Victoria, he was just starting on a monologue about what peoples' eyes were do