Virtual Methodist

I've effectively been offline for a couple of days thanks to ongoing technical difficulties together with a lack of time in which to address them properly... I'll be back on the phone tomorrow... Anyway, that has meant I've missed a couple of days of "thanksgiving" as per my most recent self-imposed blogging discipline... Had that not be the case yesterday I would definitely have been thanking those who helped out at our Coffee Morning at the manse and those who donated to the Save a Heart Campaign which we were raising money for, a scheme whereby a team from the Royal Victoria Hospital Cardiothoracic Department are helping to revitalise cardiac care in Nigeria. In the light of that, on Friday I had planned to put on record, yet again, my thankfulness for our own wonderful, if much-derided, National Health Service and the privilege it is to work as a chaplain within it. But I may well come back to that later in the month... But for today I offer an awkward ...

On this day any words by me seem trivial. Instead I post the words of "Woodbine Willie", the Rev. G.A. Studdert Kennedy , a padre in the Great War. He published many poems , most of which were deeply influenced by his experiences on the Western Front. Some are profoundly anti-war. Some seem anti-church, or at least anti-the hypocrisy that seems endemic in churches. But here's a short one for the day the guns fell silent... for a short while at least. Waste of Muscle, waste of Brain, Waste of Patience, waste of Pain, Waste of Manhood, waste of Health, Waste of Beauty, waste of Wealth, Waste of blood, and waste of Tears, Waste of Youth's most precious years, Waste of ways the Saints have trod, Waste of Glory, waste of God, - War! Shalom