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...

Many of you will have heard of “Virtual Digital Assistants”, like Apple Siri, Google Assist and Amazon’s Alexa. Some of you use one or other of them, I expect. They are voice-activated artificial intelligence programmes built into smart phones and speakers. So for example, when I’m driving and can’t handle my iPhone, I say “Hey Siri”, wait for a response beep to indicate that Siri has heard me, and ask “Call (whoever) mobile” or “Call (whoever) home” or “work”. Or “Hey Siri, navigate to (whatever address)”, and Apple Maps Satnav bursts into action. Or at home or outside, “Hey Siri, what’s the weather forecast for Cardwell tomorrow?” and a charming young Australian man tells me that it’s going to snow. You can choose whom you want to be Siri, girl or boy, Australian, Kiwi, Pom, American. I find the women a bit schoolmarmly, the Aussie chaps are more blokey. At a Trivia Quiz, I can whisper, “Hey Siri, who won the FA Cup Final in 1952?” A problem is that any phrase which sounds vaguely li...

 I’m not a fan of opening the bible at random to find advice for a particular problem, or course of action.  There is a good joke about that sort of thing, treating God’s Word like a ouija board, and perhaps I’ll weave it into a sermon one Sunday when the lectionary reading is suitable. Although now I think about it, the punchline assumes knowledge of American bankruptcy law, so it might be a bit esoteric. However! My birthday last week, like all birthdays at my age, had me wondering when it would be a good time to hang up my pastor boots, in fairness to KUC as well as to me. Which, to digress, reminds me of the story about Denis Healey, the great British Labour Party figure who was “The finest Labour Prime Minister we never had”. On his 90th birthday, a BBC interviewer asked, “Lord Healey, what’s it like to be 90?” The sprightly old sage shot back “Better than the alternative”. But to get back to wondering about mortality, pastoral as well as biological, I happened at the sa...

Y ou know those schoolboy/girl bible riddles, “Who was the first hoon in the bible?” “Jehu, he drove furiously” (referencing 2 Kings 9:20). Or “When was the first cricket match in the bible?” “Acts 2 14, Peter lifted up his voice with the Eleven and was bold”. Acts 2:14 doesn’t say quite that, but why let facts stand in the way of a good (bad) schoolyard joke? The best (worst) of these riddles use archaic King James. And “When is the first locomotive in the bible?” “Isaiah 6, His train filled the temple”. That last came to mind when Leisa told me what she has planned for my birthday. For my 64 th , to demonstrate that she wasn’t limited to the Beatles feeding and needing, she bought a model train set. And this year, for my mumble mumble th , she’s ordered a table to go in the ballroom (have to keep Hugo away from it when Yoof nights restart) so that the now-extended train set can be reassembled.   I love that opening line of Isaiah 6. I only have to read, or hear, or think of “In t...

I had a haircut on Wednesday. You’ll see its aftermath on Sunday morning – some of you, earlier – in the will of the Lord and if the creek don’t rise. Aces and Eights in Tavern Street did the deed, along the road from Gene and Eleanor’s house, and temptingly opposite Dan Murphy (to which temptation I didn’t yield on Wednesday, by the prevenient grace of God). An attraction of the salon (bit posh to call it that, it’s a traditional men’s barber shop) is the resident Staffie, who sniffingly inspects every customer as they walk in. Favoured clients get a lingering Staffie lick. I used to attempt to disguise a receding hairline by brushing forward what was left. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, said the preacher’s wife. So off I took myself to Aces and Eights. One look at the increasingly ineffective brushover was enough to elicit from barber Alex, “Mate, yer need a buzzcut”. Later that evening, I told Leisa that I was really tired. She said, it’s probably the haircut, now you know how Samso...

Most of you know that I’m waiting for an op date for a cochlear implant. Should be within the next couple of months. If you don’t know what a cochlear implant is, it’s an electronic device inserted inside my skull and then attached by a magnet to a receiver outside, which mimics what undamaged hearing nerves would do, first to actually “hear” sounds and then to interpret them as words (or music, or a door slamming, or whatever). Actually, it’s my brain which does the interpreting, and that needs retraining after 25 years of total deafness in my left ear. The receiver thingy outside looks like a beer-bottle cap, you might have seen people sporting them and wondered what they were. My audiologist said that he’d order a device to match my hair colour. “Silver-grey OK?” My meta-physical poet mate George Herbert (remember him from last week?) wrote:   The harbingers are come. See, see their mark: White is their colour, and behold my head. But must they have my brain? Must they dispark T...