Back Again

So I have been off blog for a couple of weeks and the truth is the Christmas Wave has meant that I have just about managing to hold my head above water, and today after going to bed at 3.00 a.m. I have managed to sit still for long enough to write this blog.
It's been funny not writing the blog, a conversation interrupted really and a discovery, from the number of people who have commented on the fact that I have stopped blogging that people are reading it.
Sad news just now of the death another of my flock at Cragg means that next week I will probably conduct three funerals in this parish of 600 people, quite significant really, all ways round, not least in that they were all lovely people.
John Donne's no man is an island, which calls for us all to consider that when the bell tolls it tolls for us is particularly poignant for this little communities, where we can't afford to lose people.
So another prayer for another bereaved family and after the briefest of respites the vocation makes its call back to work.