Richard's Ramblings

I think I’ve told you the story about Rev Peter Hobson coming into the Synod complex refectory wearing a Cowboys t-shirt, straight after Rev Garry Hardingham had asked me whether I was interested in Kirwan Uniting (would have been nice if he’d asked Kirwan Uniting if they were interested in me, but them’s the breaks). “Hey, Peter”, I said to him, “Are you from North Queensland, what do you know about Kirwan?” “Great church”, he replied, “my mum’s a member, and Peter Ireland led me to the Lord”. I thought of this episode when I had a Facebook message overnight from someone who had been in my youth group, mumble mumble (OK, forty) years ago. She had noticed my name pop up on mutual Friends’ walls, and wondered, is that youth leader Richard from ancient history? I’ve stayed in touch with one of my co-leaders from those distant days (she lives in France now, I’m taking a Zoom service at her church in a couple of weeks time), and a little while ago one of our (then young) people who has sta...

“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings” says Psalm 8 in the AV (Archaic Version). Except that our cousins aren’t babes and sucklings any longer, although Leisa and I might fondly still remember them thus. They came up to visit us last week, Leisa’s maternal cousin and his two ‘children’ (now 24 and 21). The, er, babes and sucklings taught this old dog three new tricks. Probably, you know all of them. One was that I noticed that their Prado’s (the 21yo – I thought myself lucky at that age to have a 1960s vintage minivan) front windscreen sun blind didn’t fall down, as mine does. That is because she pulls the sun visors down over the blind. Duh. Another was that her sister could read the Hervey Range Tearoom’s miniscule menu lettering by viewing it through her iPhone camera on zoom. Duh. Yet another was that the accumulated candle wax on our various candlesticks and holders (yes, very 1970s, but that’s what KUC gets when the Presbytery Minister lumbers you with a Baby Boomer) comes eas...