les Davey de France

A super team. Good weather. Pleasant folk. Good food. So far all good.

I usually take Monday as my day off and Pat and I embark on adventures and explorations around Bordeaux. This week Monday was busy, but we have a day off today and... we're off to a concert at the Opera House. The awesome Marc Minkovsky has a production of La Vie Parisienne running just now - I haven't yet dared to look at the price of tickets - BUT yesterday on twitter I saw that the tenor lead is doing a lunchtime recital. These lunchtime concerts are a real bargain so they sell out quickly, but I tried for two seats and got them! Yippeee!

Arrived. Fine people from USA, France, England, Canada.

Mrs Davey has a flare-up of her back problem.

Falling over : Mrs Davey fell over this morning. She thinks there is only superficial injury, thankfully.

We have had an episcopal visitation from Rhys and Jane Morgan over the past few days:

It was good to be back pouring the paths again... A little punctuated by my unsettled asthma, but it'll improve.

For some time I have been using "compatible" printer cartridges. Everything I print in colour has been less and less well rendered over time, to the point where everything had an unpleasant blueish tinge. It was time to splash out on some genuine Canon printer cartridges and see what that does. And I am happy to say that the results are positive. We have yellows, reds and greens once more! Now I need to stock up on paper.

For a little while my asthma has been unsettled... Noisy breathing, especially at night... In the meantime I've developed a chronically runny nose! Then I THINK I have a little outbreak of shingles - little itchy spots here and there. (When I had some before the doctor said it was that.) I think I know what the problem is - too many evenings out doing this, that and the other. I can't work morning, noon and night any more. I have to take a break now and again, and sadly at the rentrée it is sometimes not possible. Usually when I have some little health niggle I do what British people do all over the world. I ignore it and hope it goes away. But yesterday I decided to mention it to a couple people. "Ah, you need a break", said one person. Well we might take a little breakette, perhaps, at the beginning of October, just after Mission Week. Meanwhile, ha! Last night Pat and I had an evening in alone. Yay! We decided to have an early night. Yay! Then ...

It's not easy, is it, and the beginner preacher can get into some rather sticky situations. Here's some thoughts: 1) It isn't easy and I don't think our task is necessarily to make it look easy to talk about the incarnation. The degree of unease and discomfort that people see can reinforce what we're talking about; people can see and hear that we are somewhat outranked by the truth that we're struggling to convey. 2) Be familiar with the classic systematic formulations. For example, the definition of Chalcedon really helps if you will think about it and master it, or rather allow what it expresses to master you: We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manho...

I had a colleague years ago who attended a church where you could be healed of your money worries. Needless to say, the queues for this were long, and never seemed to diminish. I've read stuff about the prosperity gospel and encountered the edges of it in the pressure put on folks from some backgrounds to succeed in their studies and so prove their faithfulness to God. In fact, years ago in a Christian bookshop in Wales I overheard a conversation where a student's first class honours degree was hailed with "What a testimony!". Well maybe, or maybe not... Anyway it's been a very different experience to talk recently with someone coming from a prosperity gospel background and to discover what a full-on culture of that produces in your life. The person concerned summed it up under four headings : What did Jesus die to secure for us?  Did Jesus go to the cross to buy us wealth, health and worldly success, or to secure our holiness and fellowship with God? Sa...

From time to time people say that our church's sermons should be online. I have a couple of issues with this: 1) I see myself as a housewife rather than a TV chef, someone who is called to feed a family rather than to run a classy restaurant. This means that I aim to preach domestically rather than globally. 2) The Interweb is stuffed with sermon podcasts from every kind of style and stream of Christianity imaginable, and several more that defy the imagination. You need a very good reason to add to this. But when people ask you to it makes you think. And then came Anchor, an application for iPhone which makes it easy to make a podcast and even to publish it via Apple and Google. I have a good recorder. Or rather Gwilym does, but it's here in France and he's in England. So we launched it. The Bordeaux Church Sermon Podcast. We do have a bijou problemette... we cannot accurately predict when people will be unable to follow adequately in English, so that means th...

Lots of people are finding it hard. Here are some links that may help: http://www.bordeauxchurch.info/p/coming-to-bordeaux.html

It's the rentrée scolaire this week, back to school week. And every year it's nuts. I don't know why. We haven't had kids in school now for three years, but still back to school week is nuts. Still, today I have a chance to catch up with myself and with things, just a little.

So I joined this choir, right? I did tell you? Partly to meet folk, partly for therapy. I like music. I like singing. It's good for me, though less good for my family... Anyway I joined the choir, I think, in February. They were in the throes of preparing two choral pieces for a concert in October. The pieces are the Mass by Peteris Vasks, a living Baltic composer who's the son of a Baptist pastor, and Bach's cantata no. 4, Christ lag in Todesbanden. I have had a ball. The Vasks is dense, swirly, a bit complex harmonically and rhythmically, you have to read and keep your wits about you. The Bach I have sung before, in 1978, when I was a student, in the Aberystwyth Bach Society Choir. It's great fun. Easier harmonically but still you need to read is well and keep alert. Non-trivial. The conductor is great. He's cheerful, happy, appreciative, musical, disciplined without being too severe and generally extremely likeable. And the choir has been glad to have m...

One of our old meet-up places, Les Mots Bleus, is under new management and has a new name. Horace. Yes, I know. I spotted it one day back in the summer and yesterday walked past to see what gives. It's open. It's being run by the guys from the best coffee shop in Bordeaux and they have kept on some of the staff from Les Mots Bleus. This morning Pat and I had arranged to meet some workers from the USA for a coffee, so we met them at Horace. It was great!

The meeting room of the brethren assembly has been closed for refurbishment since the end of June. They've had an architect in who has done some major remodelling, indulging adding a new vestibule, a staircase and an upper room for children's activities. Scheduled to take the month of July, the works have expended to fill July and August, but next Sunday we are dur to be back in the premises once more. Meanwhile we have met in our flat or in James' flat. The drawback is that there is obviously less room and, to avoid annoyance, we have not belted out our usual rowdy songs. However there have been fewer people present these summer months and we have been able to eat together after the service. So last night was the night of the end of the sausages. Merguez, to be exact. A spicy mix of lamb and beef, I think they are the morrocan answer to the ubiquitous pork chipolata. Still the amount of fat that comes out of them is alarming and the indigestion in the wee hours makes...