You know it’s been too long when you have to log into your own blog!!!

So here I am to right a wrong … and tell you where I’ve been for so long…

(And ooooooooh they’ve improved WordPress in my absence! All of you who don’t currently blog here, come join our happy band right now!)

(… wow, and there’s even a little counter thing telling me how many words I’ve typed as I go along… 65 … 67 … … … yeah actually that feels quite pressurising now)

OK Ok – back to the point…

So, birthdays nicely tucked out of the way, that’s when the real work began. Spring is a busy time for me. It has nothing to do with budding plant-life or hatching chickens; it’s all about Christian conferences.

Spring Harvest, Minehead, 10th-15th April
(Everyone wave to George!!!! Hi George!!!!)

You see, George gets a flag on her snazzy computer everytime I mention Spring Harvest…. Spring Harvest Spring Harvest Spring Harvest!!!!

So, I went to SPRING HARVEST…

Oh, enough of the tomfoolery Lyndall, just get on with it. People have better things to do in life than read your prattling…

At Spring Harvest I was part-responsible for the Radio 4 zone. This is a series of 4 teaching sessions for the more academically-minded. I can’t help thinking that the person who named the teaching streams isn’t really a Radio 4 devottee – well not like me anyway – because if he/she was, he/she would know that being a Radio 4 listener is no guarantee of academic prowess. Most of us listen to it for The Archers, The News Quiz and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue (can you *believe Humph is dead!), and switch off when the unattainably stratospheric heights of File on 4 and In Our Time come on…

But nevertheless there I was. Me and the Bishop of Croydon. Teaching on the entire Bible in 4 days… well, it felt like it. We tackled such lofty matters as creation and contingency, the redemptive nature of death, the true significance of resurrection versus resuscitation, matters of faithful improvisation, and the problem of extrapolation and imagination where understanding Heaven/the new heavens and the new earth is concerned.

It was awesome! I am rarely asked to speak on the kind of stuff which truly stretches my brain rather than just my heart and spirit, so it did me a world of good to give myself a mental work-out, as well as to work with someone who has almost lost me after 3 sentences if I don’t bother to pay attention properly

Spring Harvest is always a joy to be part of, but for me I am most grateful to it (and God) because it takes me way out of my comfort zones and makes me a better speaker.

There was another sovereign highlight though…

It’s one of those things you get used to in life when you’re blind – the fact that you can’t communicate well with people who can’t hear. In spite of the best and most devoted interpreters, there is an inherent psychological barrier which makes us feel worlds apart, even though we may only be standing 3 feet away from each other.

Part of my job as a member of the Adult Speaker Team was to be on hand to help with the appeals and responses in the Big Top evening sessions. One night we were equipped with pots of oil and invited to anoint people as they came forward. I stood with my oil pot, feeling insignificant and small at the front of the huge tent, and the first person to make a bee-line for me was a partially deaf lady in my church. She greeted me warmly, then informed me that quite a few of the deaf people with her would like prayer for healing please!!

So I began. The wall becomes necessarily irrelevant when the first in the queue is standing before you, and the lovely interpreter is explaining that I will need to look at her as I pray, so she can sign what I’m saying. You just gotta get on with it, and I did. And it was an amazing experience to *feel* the reaction my words were having as they were translated, and to know that, in spite of the old familiar wall, the Holy Spirit was intensely at work.

It is my privilege to pray with many, but I have rarely ever been so blessed as I was in praying for those deaf people. God doesn’t half use the weak, foolish an illogical things of the world to shame a whole stack of strong, wise and sensible stuff.

Oh go on then… just another highlight, since I know you’re dying not to have to go back to doing work just yet!

Spring Harvest is special to me because much of my spiritual growing-up has happened there. I started going when I was about 17, and spent several years in the youth programmes, before graduating to the adult programme and then to the speaker team. Those first few years were a lifeline to me, at a time when church wasn’t, with all due respect, giving me the full picture of what Christianity had to offer. I loved it all – especially the talks – but there is one story which has defined me as I’ve grown older and potentially wiser over these years.

The story was told by a nice-sounding chap called Stuart. He probably preached a great sermon, but I only remember the story. He told us of a time when he’d been picnicking somewhere in the countryside in the USA. In one hand he held some celery, and in the other a cupcake. Suddenly a chipmunk appeared and began scaling his leg. It eventually managed to steal the cupcake and stumble amusingly off into the trees, nearly suffocated under the weight of the confectionery.

The details are probably highly distorted by now, and I’ve no doubt embellished the truth a little, but the key point is what really struck home in me. Stuart asked if we were going to be the type of chipmunks who went for the cupcake, or the type who just went for the celery. The celery would have been much easier to handle, and less risky, but so much less fun in the end!

Like I say, it was seminal for me. I knew there and then where I was heading in my faith… cupcakes all the way, thankyou very much!

So imagine my delight when Stuart turns up on the Speaker Team this year! It was a real pleasure to be able to tell him what an impact he’d made on me all those years ago, and to thank him for being faithful in passing it on to my generation. I think he was encouraged