les Davey de France

On Sunday at crack of dawn I got up and off to catch the early buses to Villenave d'Ornon where a group of us were meeting up to go to the conference of the Gospel Coalition at Geneva, Evangile21. The trip to Geneva goes through almost the full range of French inland scenery - the wooded valleys of the Dordogne, the mountains of the Auvergne, Saint-Etienne, the Rhone valley, then the Alps! We were to stay in a ski chalet owned by the family of two of our party, not far from Geneva but over the French border just beyond Annemasse. And it was a very beautiful place, in a lovely green valley with gentle ski slopes higher up - no snow now, of course. The conference was centred on an exposition of almost all of Galatians, with sections taken in turns by the main speakers, Don Carson, Tim Keller and Henri Blocher, and one section taken by Mike Evans, director of the IBG. Then there were sessions on the demands of church planting, from Tim Keller and on the New Perspective, from Don...

I played in a big band. I might go back to it, if I can. It was great! Great fun! The folks were friendly. The music was pumping. We were very popular. An evening with the Pessac Jazz Band was a good evening. But sometimes I would look at the music we played - swing, funk, blues, latin - and think, "All of this music dates from about 1940 onwards. It's been around perhaps 70 years at the most, and most of it will not last much longer. Already it's niche, old-fashioned, and soon it will probably be forgotten." It's all so ephemeral! I'd think of my love of classical music. Music of the 1900s (Prokofiev, Messaien, Milhaud, Poulenc). Of the 1800s (Saint-Saens, Mahler, Schubert). Of the 1700s (Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn). Of the 1600s (Purcell, Bach, Handel). We're talking, what, 500 years? Maximum? And it's the year 2014! It's all so ephemeral! Lierature. Dickens. Austen. Shakespeare. Even Chaucer. Even Marcus Aurelius or Aristophanes.... ...

Since meeting at Dan we make a song-sheet every week. They're great, song sheets, you can put the reading on there and all kinds of information. But they do use a lot of ink cartridges. Not only that, but we've worked out a way of printing out One-to-One booklets on John's gospel to encourage people to use them together and with their friends. They REALLY use up your cartridges. OK. It's time to go laser. So I've ordered one, a Brother. I got some info from the people at Cartridge World and it should be delivered mid-week.

Today is fête des voisins. Today you're supposed to get together with your neighbours and celebrate neighbourliness and your neighbourhood and stuff. For YEARS we have thought how cool it would be to invite the neighbours round for fête des voisins, but it's SO SCARY!!! You invite people for a meal, and you have to remember to have bread, and to serve stuff in the right order, including a salad somewhere (between starter and main course) and cheese before dessert. You invite people for an apéritif and you have to have a variety of different kinds of booze, which won't be drunk, and which will then sit in your cupboard gently evaporating, after costing you £50. You see the problem... Anyway one of our neighbours announced a BIG APERO in the street for fête des voisins. We'd all take out our tables and stools and crisps and stuff and have a STREET PARTY, like for the Silver Jubilee in 1977, or for the Investiture of Prince Charles - only I missed that one b...

www.uniontheology.org Very exciting!