Monthly Archives: May 2024

Having been asked the question, “how are you?” countless times since my stroke late on the 26th March and my return to the Phoenix stroke ward a fortnight later, I have gone from “I’m ok” to “oh very well thank you, miraculous really!”  At the same time metaphorically touching wood, crossing my fingers and actually offering up prayers of thanksgiving! I am back to attending meetings, training sessions and leading ZOOM services and I am back on the rota to preach from next week. So thank you very much to all who prayed, send cards and messages or asked after me… I am very grateful. I have been very very lucky….. I hesitate to use the word ‘blessed’ because it implies that friends who have been desperately unlucky with their health have not been blessed and I don’t believe that God picks and chooses and nor do I believe that everything ‘happens for a reason’. Should anyone want debate that, join us on Zoom ay 10am on a Monday morning 🙂 

My specsavers scans showed no deterioration and I await the results of my MRI scan with interest, and being able to re-apply for my driving license late in the Autumn but until then I am enjoing the novelty of my bus pass and wring out how to get to Epiphany Huse for various things.

I am looing forward to CMD training in September which I advertise here, not just because you might be interested too but in the hope of cadging a lift 🙂 : 

SIX HOURS WITH TWELVE PROPHETS
Thursday 19 September, 9.30am-3.30pm, Epiphany House, Truro
Led by Revd Howard Peskett

At the end of the (English) Old Testament are twelve prophetic books, commonly called “The Minor Prophets”, mainly because they are shorter in length than the “major” prophets. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is 272 words and lasted two minutes; but it is doubtful whether many people remember a word from Edward Everett’s two-hour speech which preceded it. In this workshop/retreat we will “helicopter” over these twelve books (were they ever intended as one book?), observing their main themes and reflecting on their relevance for our lives and work today. Rev Howard Peskett was Senior Hebrew Scholar of Cambridge University. He is a Cornish Bard and the Coordinator of the Cornish Bible Project. He has been a teacher in Singapore, Bristol and Rural Dean in Penwith. He has spent a lifetime encouraging believers that they can discover for themselves the meaning and wonder of the Bible as they seek to love and follow Christ.
BOOK HERE

You can download the whole CMD programme  for 2024 here 2024-CMD-Programme.pdf 

 

Last week I attended the session with Rev Mark James on AI in the church which was informative, fascinating and worth investigating as well as a great conversation piece.  This is worth a whole blog piece on its own but I would like some more study and conversation first! 

 

Chaplain’s Blog Stardate May 2024

The last six weeks has been an interesting journey (to put it mildly) beginning with a haemorrhagic stroke in the last week of March and the first of two short stays in phoenix Ward in Treliske Hospital.  The second stay was a little over a week later with a mild seizure apparently caused by the stroke!  The result was an interesting array of pills, a number of scans and tests, a sheaf of paperwork from the DVLA and instructions about surrendering my driving license and how I can re-apply in six months time. On Monday 13th I have to report for an MRI scan which means I will not be hosting Readers in conversation on ZOOM and some time after that a chat with the consultant.

In that time praying has been tricky and I have felt carried by the prayer of many others for which I am very grateful. My recovery has been relatively quick as these things go and I am back leading our house group, Morning Prayer on Zoom and seeing various folk for things like spiritual direction….. I am also back to clocking up ten thousand steps a day with the dog although I am a bit slower than before and have to stop every now and then to do some physio!

 The prayer time gets longer by the day, as does the desire to be more active and the frustration of discovering that the energy required to do things, including writing things like a blog, is limited!

Now I am not a person who thinks that ‘everything happens for a reason’ – rather, I am a person who believes in the philosophy of “stuff or s**t just happens.”  God does not want me to have a stroke- and I could probably have insisted that the doctor should have upped my blood pressure medication. What I do hold onto is that trough the tricky things we face God helps us through. That help might well teach us a lesson or two, it might give us an encouraging healing (as it has for me thus far), but for others it might not! I went for my last MRI scan several years ago – going in worried and very nervous and leaving at the end of 40 minutes of counting clicking magnets calm and spiritually refreshed- I hope the scan next week will go as smoothly!

In the meantime, although restricted to lifts and public transport, I am pretty much back to normal and looking forward to being able to contribute more as the weeks go on.

In my prayers are the patients and staff on Phoenix ward and the wonderful paramedics I met over the last month.

It is ironic that I have been writing “visit the carwash!” on nearly every to-do list through february and March, the car getting ever green with moss and road dirt only to have to wash the beast by hand in the driveway yesterday because I am not allowed to drive to the carwash. The chauffeur was garening and i did not want to disturb her! Those little inconveniences remeing me of how fortunate I have been, whether lucky or blessed and give thanks for all the prayers, good wishes, genral enquiries and especially to the folks who have filled in while I have been away from my duties.