stranded on the rocks

I jumped across the little stream. My trainers squelched in the sand and my shadow, long and unusual, wobbled about as I found my balance. It looked funny today, my shadow. The wind was blustering in from the Atlantic, as it always does at Newgale, and ruffling my hair. The uneven sand forced the dark shape to roll over the undulations in the beach like a hall of mirrors. I felt a bit like Perseus, doing his best not to catch sight of Medusa while her shadow snaked about in the sand.

The sea was sparkling. Under a pure blue sky, it gleamed to the horizon in the afternoon sun. As the waves pounded into the shore and the surfers stumbled onto their boards, the sunlight caught the spray and lit up the surf. Crash, boom, seep, went the ocean in its ancient rhythm. I shoved my hands into my hoodie and strolled around the headland. On this part of the coastline, the tide goes out a long way, leaving a vast expanse of flat wet sand. Studded with pebbles and rocks, the beach stretches out and around the cliffs, exposing an extra half-mile of sand that sweeps round the bay. It's here where stratus rocks lie angled into the shore, and deep diagonal caves gape into the cliff-face. Today, as I walked (looking for one cove in particular) I saw children in wet-suits splashing in deep green rock-pools that had formed in some of the caves, dogs chasing bouncing rubber balls and white toes pointing skyward to catch the sun. These natural alcoves it seems, form natural windbreaks for young families, away from the kite-surfers and trendy couples of the main stretch at Newgale. Tartan blankets flapped in the breeze, held down by thermos flasks and coolbags.

I like being alone. It bothers me sometimes, makes me worry about the moments when it won't be possible to escape the company of others. For me though, holidays like this are a perfect chance to wander anonymously across the sand, clamber over dripping rocks and explore caves and rock-pools with no thought of time or responsibility. We had laughed at Dad when I was younger - how he would disappear along the beach with his metal detector. For an hour or so, Mum would wonder whether we should 'get on with lunch' without him, and I would pull out my copy of 'A Brief History of Time' or start looking for stones to skim.

I think I understand now. I'm often more like him than I'm prepared to admit. No family were waiting for me though today.

I found it. It looked a bit different when the tide was out, but this must have been the place. Rocks zig-zagged in the wet sand like jagged stepping stones, huge walls either side, and at the back, a smooth flat rock about the size of a table with another smaller stone in front. Behind, and unseen from the beach, there was a dark underpass, a tunnel connecting to the next cove along the shoreline. It was here that I had been almost stranded by the tide two years ago. I remember sitting on the table-rock, Bible in hand as the water lapped around my feet and surged in through the tunnel. It was different today. Sometimes, I reasoned, the lesson is about what you do when you're waiting for the tide to change.

-

So, home tomorrow. It's been a great holiday this - mathematics, brain-twisting rubik's cube games, cats named after the Greek alphabet, good food, great company, sunshine, church, windy-walks along the cliffs, long lie-ins and hardly a thought about the world I left behind. I kind of wish though, I could just... well... keep that mobile phone switched off... it's so nice without it. And a world without facebook seems somehow, simpler, better, more... innocent and unaware. As one who complicates things beyond belief sometimes, I'm all for keeping things simple - believe it or not. Maybe, in some ways all this is just God's way of telling me that even in the seeping, surging craziness of life around me, I should spend more time stranded on the rock.

a tale of two churches

"The key question is," said Bill Miller, holding out his hands, "Do you trust me?"

Oliver stood a little stage-struck at the front of the little church. This strange man in a strange suit, in front of all these people, was asking a question that was more complicated than his four year old brain could handle. He must have wondered whether it was some kind of trick. At his age, I probably would have wondered that too. After all, the Reverend Miller, a stranger to Broad Haven Baptist Church, was offering him the choice between a pound coin, lying open in his left palm, or the promise of something better, enclosed secretly in his right.

This rather-Morpheus-like visual demonstration was my first experience of the Baptist phenomenon known as 'preaching-with-a-view' - something prospective Baptist ministers do as a kind of interview with the congregation before they decide (or he decides, or the deacons decide) whether they'll all get along in the symbiotic relationship of Baptist Church and Baptist Minister. And this being a Baptist church with Baptist children, the prospective Reverend was giving a children's talk - before the children went off to Sunday School.

He was right though. That is the key question. Oliver, being four, reached out and took the pound coin, despite the fact that Miller had promised him that there was something better in the other hand. I don't think he was tremendously disappointed either when the preacher then revealed a two-pound-coin to the rest of the congregation. I thought about that moment for a long while afterwards. In a strange way, it seemed wholly relevant to my own situation - wondering whether to leap into the unknown or take the comfortable route of that which I can see lying in my path. It felt for all the world like God was asking me that same key question. Do you trust me?

-

Later, I found myself in an altogether different church. Where Broad Haven Baptist had been lavender and mahogany, Calvary Church, Haverfordwest, was plastic flowers and vinyl trousers. It was quite a place. Middle-aged ladies with lacquered hair sat behind the electric organ and piano respectively, Hugh Laurie sat behind the drums in a shirt and tie and clicked in time with the incredible music, and all around, the congregation was filled with bored children in their Sunday best, slumping into their bucket-seats, young men in suits, and balding men wearing cream slip-ons, purple-socks and tight fitting shirts from the 1970s. For a while, I did wonder whether I'd accidentally had some sort of time-travel-related accident.

Then, the pastor (who led everything else as well it seemed) preached for 64 minutes on the Second Coming. Presumably, the way to encourage your congregation to long for Jesus' return, is to preach for such a long time that they're desperate enough to pray for it there and then. I jest, of course. Actually, when all the tangents about the folly of the 'Modern Church' were removed, what he said was pretty solid. I'm not sure how much practical application the smiley folks would have taken home with them, but it was at least, all true I think.

The weird thing was that I felt far more at home in the stiff wooden pews of the Baptist church this morning. Weird because Calvary was much much closer to the kind of church I grew up in, and in fact I still know some people who would feel so comfortable there they'd be planning the coffee rota before the tambourines hit the velvet carpet. The reasoning I came to in the end, was that God has been the God of the journey for me - and this shocking leap backward into the past was a jolting reminder of where my own Christian journey has taken me. And actually, yes, I'm not 5 any more with a clip on tie and a fascination with flicking through the hymn book. At Broad Haven, the structure confused me (I still don't understand the significance of the enormous pulpit) and the preaching style was harder to listen to. Yet, I heard God far more easily through it - and I enjoyed his secret company in the quiet times. Funny how that works out.

For the record, I hate the tambourine. Perhaps that had something to do with it.

-

Today's maths news, by the way, is this:

three thousand six hundred and one, times eight hundred and seventy three... is three million, one hundred and forty three thousand, six hundred and seventy three. Which I thought was rather neat.

Set Theory in Pembrokeshire

Red wine was coursing round my system. My nerves felt like they were on fire and yet were somehow slowly dropping off to sleep. The mathematics continued:

(∃x)(∀y)(y∉x)

"So this states (it's an axiom really) that there exists a set x for all y, such that y is not a member of x. It vacuously proves the existence of the empty set..."

Now then. I'm on holiday. The sun had already dipped into a golden sky over the sparkling sea, and the whitest of moons had joined Venus in the fading sky. What on Earth was I doing then, learning the basic principles of Set Theory? This, I reasoned, is what happens when you go on holiday and stay with a brilliant mathematician who is also an atheist.

I was wondering, quite nervously, whether he was beguiling me like an ingenious barrister. There is an empty set... There can't logically be a set that contains every other set... Therefore... a universal, omniscient deity can't logically exist... what do you think about that, Slighty-Tipsy-God-boy?

Thankfully, there was no such cliff-edge in the conversation, and no sheer drop into the chasm of metaphysics or theology. Clive simply cycled through his new tee-shirt designs, explaining as he went. His favourite proofs seem to describe ways of determining the mathematical constant pi (π)... which appears in sums and integrals and other complicated looking formulae, inscribed on mugs, bathroom tiles, the front door, and yes, several dozen custom-made tee-shirts. In case you're interested, if you square π and divide it by 6, you get the same number as you would by adding together the reciprocals of all the squares of all the real positive numbers. And if you're not, well - I doubt you're alone.

I love mathematicians. In essence they're like mountain-bikers. They get excited by thrills that most of us would find terrifying. They love talking about the tools they use, the problems they had to solve and the awesomeness of finding yourself exactly where you wanted to be; still alive, if a little-shaken up by what you've been through, and desperate to tell anyone who will listen. Exhilaration comes in strange forms for the math-boffins. They relive their calculations through the Nth dimension, the scree-laden slope of a discontinuous function, and the possibilities and probabilities that perhaps no-one else thinks about. They ride rough-shod over primes, googolplexes, equations and singularities, gripping the handlebars given them by Euler and Euclid and Gauss, like there's no 'TODAY+1'. This morning, for example, I was more than a little astonished to discover that there are different orders of infinity. In other words, some infinities are bigger than others. I jest not. But who knew?

-

I'm reluctant to let you into a secret. Here it is though: Wales is beautiful. I guess, my reluctancy stems from the fact that this part of the country is often completely ignored - and this enhances its lonely desperate beauty. Today, I stood completely alone on the top of a grassy mountain in the Preseli hills. The wind was rushing through my hair, warm and salty as it blew in from the Atlantic. In the distance, the ocean stretched away, cool and blue, deep and mysterious. Great and ancient hills rose up around me, bathed in the rolling, changing shadows cast by low clouds and cheery sunlight. It was breathtakingly peaceful. And with no phone, no facebook, no email, nothing to connect me to the other world, I felt completely free and alone with God.

The God who thought up π and made it the exact ratio of a circle's circumference and diameter. The God who invented gravity and chuckled when Isaac Newton cottoned-on to the way it works. The God who positioned Venus exactly where it is, so that one-day, in a little village in Pembrokeshire, a confused former physics graduate could spot it sparkling next to the moon and smile while the sun dipped majestically below the horizon.

I love that God; even when I'm slightly inebriated and confused by Set Theory.

home for a bit of perspective, then off again...

So I got back yesterday to find Reuben and James had arranged all their empty drinks cans on the kitchen floor to form the shape of the Microsoft pointer arrow. Also, the news told me, some lady had put a cat in a bin, everyone was astonished that the X-Factor producers had duped them with auto-tune, and William Hill was taking bets on what the Camerons would call their new baby.

I suddenly had a sinking feeling about the world. In Pakistan right now, thousands of children are dying in their own filth because there is no clean water. One fifth of the country is underwater. That's like Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, West and East Sussex and most of Kent being suddenly submerged. In Niger, 100,000 people are homeless and starving. Many of them will simply die, unnoticed and unremarkably forgotten. It seems even the World Food Programme recently had to cut its food distribution to 40% because of a 'funding shortfall'.

A funding shortfall? We're betting on whether a baby will be called Marnie or Enid! Or who can stay the longest in a plastic house... and if that's not our cup-of-tea, we've got the opportunity to flick over the TV and laugh our socks off at people with self-esteem issues singing in front of a panel of gargoyles.

Gargoyles with a personal fortune of something in the region of £200m between them, I might add. Don't tell Steve Brookstein. He'll choke on his coco-pops.

The other piece of news that unfolded as I drove up the M5 was that a Catholic priest had been strongly suspected of organising a terrorist bombing in 1972 and had gotten away with it because the Catholic church had 'struck a deal' with the police and the UK government. Way to go there Catholics... The current Bishop of Derry came on the radio to explain the church's position, and he fell over himself, trying to explain that it was almost forty years ago. Nine people lost their lives, many more were injured - and Father Jimmy Chesney, we're told, the man with traces of explosives in his car, the man who parked a bomb outside a shop where an eight-year old girl was washing the windows, was 'moved to another parish in the Republic.'

I do wonder who's going to stand up for justice when the best people for the job are actively fighting against it. The scary part is that I thought Father Ted was satire. Then, when I see the news reports of pot-bellied children surrounded by flies and desperation, and muddy floodwaters scourging through a collapsing village while men can only stand and watch, I can't help wondering what I'm doing...

-

Well, after my long journey home from Devon, it is nice to be back in sunny Reading. And by sunny, I of course mean, overcast and depressing. Within the space of about four hours I had been dragged in to stress and anxiety once again. I do it to myself I think.

So today, I'm off to Swindon for the next bit of my holiday. Yes, Swindon. First Swindon and then Pembrokeshire - which has a lot more seaside.

Hmmm.

Further Adventures in Devon

I've just driven from Bigbury-on-Sea to Kingsbridge through a cloud, in the dark, through single-track country lanes in the searing rain. As I flicked my lights from dipped to main beam, and the ghostly hedges raced past, I aimed the car at the dark and shot through the torrent, hoping beyond hope that I had read the road well.

"You know the sharp bend to the right," he said, peering out of his open window.

"Er, not really," I said, "I'm not from round here."

"Well," he went on in his Devonshire accent, "iss flooded." The rain pounded in and spat on my face as the stranger leaned out of his car. "... and again, jus' before the narrows... completely flooded it is, an you won' see it in the dark so jus go easy..."

"Cheers mate," I said soundingly uncharacteristically Cockneyish. As it was, the passing Devonian was quite right. At the sharp bend a diluvian flood had submerged the road and I had to rev up to hurtle through it. I wondered at that point, whether I'd get back to Kingsbridge at all. The deep water fountained up either side of the car and was briefly illuminated by the headlamps. I loosened my grip on the steering wheel and tested the brakes.

Funnily enough, I still wouldn't change this for a package holiday to 'the sun'. I've never really understood why people go to the trouble of flying hundreds of miles in a tin can, essentially to spend a fortnight reading a book. A book, which I might add, they have taken with them.

I like holidays to be adventures. Where you feel like you could do anything today - see dinosaur fossils, dig a hole so deep you can bury your dad, run like Cheetarah along a flat sandy beach, or climb the highest cliff or the tallest mountain, just because it'd be fun to see the world from the top. I like stuff to do: walks to ramble through and games of chess, draughts, pit or rummy and end the day with a steaming cup of well-earned hot-chocolate.

What, you might ask, did I do today then?

Well, I have to admit a little sheepishly that I put my feet up and read a book. Alright, alright. It wasn't the only thing I did. Actually, I did walk along the cliff tops and I did manage to have a little prayer time with the waves crashing beneath me. And I did play some Playstation with Jospeh, who is very nearly 3 and trained himself to use the potty. For some reason, he seems to find it easier to refer to me as 'Daddy's Friend', rather than my name - which is certainly not a challenge of pronunciation. Still, it was rather good fun to use the piano to make up thunder, rain and lightning music. His face lit up whenever he got to play the deep rumbling notes.

"Andrew guess how much this was," said Rachel in the doorway. She was holding the instant barbecue fondue set we never used because it had been raining. It was no more than a tray of oversized chocolate buttons, sealed in aluminium and cardboard.

"Twelve pounds?" said Andrew.

"No! That's not the way it works!" said she, crestfallen. "You're supposed to guess lower than that!"

It struck me that the rules of this guessing game aren't as simple as they seem. In fact, they're not simple at all. In some sort of inverted way, the object of the game is to help the person feel the rush of self-assertion at purchasing some sort of a bargain, or solidarity in having been ripped-off. And as men, we are required to become experts at working out which it is and sympathising accordingly. As men of course, we are quite quite rubbish at that most of the time. Making an accurate estimate that achieves the goal can often be tricky for items with a variable price. Andrew had gone too high of course. The actual retail price was about £7 which Rachel clearly considered to be a lot. By going higher, Andrew had inadvertently shown that what she considered to be high, was not that high at all, and hence her perception of the bargain she felt she'd achieved (£3) was undermined. Fascinating. I wondered whether women fully understand the risk of games like this. It made me ponder the roles of husband and wife really carefully actually...

... I know, this is crazy. It was only a fleeting thing. What if, though, I thought to myself, this highlights something about the way the marriage relationship works. One person brings a question or suggestion to the two-person team that is a vulnerable one. How do I look? Is it OK if I go off to the pub with the lads? Darling, what would you say to us getting a puppy? To a difference engine, an algorithm or a computer, these are all quite straightforward questions. You look terrible in my opinion, says the android husband. No, it is not OK, you stand a 78% chance of returning drunk. And, "I would say 'yes' because it would delay the decision about having children by approximately 16 months and logically this is advantageous..."

You can see the android husband not lasting very long. I wondered tonight just how much marriage (or maybe even any close relationship) is about learning and adapting to the codes we use; the questions behind the questions. The give-and-take dance that two people slowly learn as they grow together, stepping on each other's toes, out-of-time with the music, frustrating and loving and living and learning. I had a little smile to myself, as I realised how complicated I seem to make things for just myself. It'll be a lot of fun one day, learning to dance.

Then I realised that without the music, without understanding the rhythm, and without really flowing in time with the person God gave you, it'd be pretty difficult to do it well, if it all. So, how do people cope without God binding it all together? It's a great mystery.

Maybe one day I'll find out whether I'm right. If I can drive out of the county without getting swept away in the deluge.

Adventures in Devon

There's a section on the A38 where it always rains. I don't fully understand why; something to do with the relief of the road or the way the weather sweeps across the west country, but whatever the reason, at the hill where the road forks by the Shell Garage, it always rains.

More often than not (and today wasn't an exception) I've taken the right hand fork that is signposted to Plymouth. Here, the A38 climbs into the fog, and trucks and caravans and old bangers get overtaken by flashier cars, beaming their headlamps into the murky mist that lies atop the hill. The left hand road angles off to Torquay, a place made famous by a badly run hotel.

Today I was on my way to see Andrew and Rachel, who live in a delightful place called Bigbury-on-Sea. And so, I took the right hand option. As my car trundled up the steep incline, and the inevitable rain spattered upon my windscreen, I looked back in my rear-view mirror to the road behind. Blue sky and sunlight gradually receded into the distance as I drove into the clouds. Welcome to Devon.

Devon is the 4th largest county in the United Kingdom. It is the only county with two separate coastlines and it has a truly spectacular mix of rolling hills, sandy beaches and undulating countryside. It is in fact, so beautiful, that the locals have decided to hide most of it away from passing travellers, by encasing all the roads with impossibly high hedges. What's more, the yokels must have chuckled at deviously, as they sat round their farmhouse tables, the roads are so incredibly narrow, it takes all the concentration of Lewis Hamilton to drive down them without scraping your wingmirrors or skidding round a tight bend slowly enough to avoid the Unavoidable Tractor chuntering toward you in the other direction. I must admit, today I was a bit cross with Claudia, my Satnav, but it wasn't really her fault.

Bigbury-on-Sea is delightful. It's tiny, like a seaside hamlet. When the tide is out, a strip of sandy beach juts out into the sea to a small island (Burgh Island), complete with pub, hotel and well-kept gardens. Around the island, the tide comes in from two different directions and meets in a crash of waves when the tide is in. Over on the mainland of course, the hill sweeps down to the sea, and houses with huge glass windows face out toward the ocean. A caravan park seems to rise infinitely up the hillside, criss-crossed with static vans and holiday-makers. By the shore, surfers flap and flip in the car-park, their car-boots wide open and towels pinned to the parcel shelves, as the rain-flecked wind tousles their hair. Kites fly, balls bounce, and the sea-tractor chugs its way across the tidal beach like an amphibious prison-cage on wheels.

It's a nice place to live, and Andrew and Rachel and their children, probably couldn't be anywhere better. As we chatted tonight, it became obvious to me that they are really quite relaxed after their short stays in York and London. I think Rachel, particularly found city-life tough.

"It was just like living in concrete," she said, "and no-one could understand what was going on. I felt like God was showing me things all the time and it was just - well I felt like I couldn't see properly, you know, in the Spiritual realm."

Rachel is, what some people might call a prophetess. Actually, she calls herself a 'seer' - and if tonight was anything to go by, she seems to 'see' things pretty much all the time. It occurred to me that seeing things spiritually and continually, would almost certainly be as difficult as it would be rewarding; a little like Agatha and the precogs in the film Minority Report, haunted by the reality of what they saw and could not stop seeing.

As she spoke to me tonight, she interrupted herself to point out angels in the room. She sees this often, and not just angels - demons, visions, dreams, pictures. It seems God shows her things in a way that is quite real. God gave her a vision for me that was identical to one that I had received three weeks ago, and she seemed to know about my struggles with self-esteem and situations going on in my life. It was quite something. For about an hour, she was speaking into my life and encouraging me and reminding who I am.

As she got up, she went on to explain that sometimes in these moments, God sends gold-dust to rest on her hands. I've heard of this. In some circles, people claim to have seen gold flakes tumbling from the ceiling during a powerful time in God's presence. Others have been astonished to find that their fillings have turned to gold. They say it's just a supernatural way of God showering his people with abundant blessing.

Rachel stood in the light and peered into her palms. She looked a bit like a butterfly collector, examining something resting in her hand.

"Oooh!" she exclaimed, "there!"

I came over, excitedly, to have a look. I couldn't see anything, and for a moment the scientist in me was disappointed. I was intrigued though, by the fact that she definitely could see it. How would it be that one person could see something physical, when someone else standing in the same light with the same...ooh.

I saw it. There was something tiny, like a miniscule fragment of a piece of glitter, catching the light. Wait! As I watched, more and more little scintillations were appearing on her fingers and up her hands. It was amazing - and yes, quite inexplicable - but there it was. I was quite astonished, but recognising the Presence of God, it felt like the immediate thing to do was to hold out my own hands.

Before long, the gold-dust was settling on my hands too. Palms and fingertips, sparkling with the glory of God. I was truly astonished and humbled. I wondered for a while, whether God had planned the whole thing of me coming here, and him speaking to me and then... well this - and I purposed to write down everything he had said.

-

"This is normal," said Andrew, smiling. I understood what he meant I think. Things like this do make me wonder about the kind of life we live as Christians sometimes. My friend Peter at my old job used to say he was perplexed by Christians who lived just like everybody else, even though their faith made extraordinary claims about their destiny, their purpose and their existence.

As for me, I've come to realise that the battles I face, reflect the importance of what God requires me to do. My destiny, my purpose, my existence is a threat to the enemy that he can't ignore. In the last two years he's thrown me into depression, cut my brake pipes on the M5, attacked my relationships with the people closest to me, dragged me through sin, pushed me into rejection and hidden away the truth of who I am.

But I am still here and I'm still fighting.

Click - My Day as a Photographer

I promised my friend Emmie that I would write something about my day helping her shoot a wedding. Emmie is a photographer (check out http://www.emmiebates.co.uk) and on something of a whim, she invited me along to assist her with a job last weekend, when her husband couldn't make it.

I think it came out of me helping her with a photography project a while ago, where I just thought about stuff and she wrote it down. I can do thinking. Actually framing and snapping though, might be a different ballgame...

"I want you to try to catch some really natural shots," she said in the car, "people's reactions, their faces and smiles in those unguarded moments." Emmie explained that she would simply hand me a camera and set me loose. It occurred to me of course, that this is by far the best thing to say to a creative person - off you go, have fun, come back with something a bit like this... and enjoy it. I smiled.

Hours later, as the air grew chilly and we packed away the mobile studio, I found myself reflecting on the day. The disco blared inside, and the lights flashed hypnotically. Outside on the grass, suited couples clutched plastic glasses and laughed in the long shadows. Boys with untucked shirts were flinging a frisbee around and a little girl was blowing bubbles. Everyone seemed remarkably happy. I realised that this in itself was part of the job; helping people to enjoy their day. And as wedding photographers, we must surely have helped with that.

Emmie herself, understands this well. Somehow, in a way I know I couldn't have done, Emmie created an atmosphere where everybody felt at ease but was in exactly the right place at the right time. I surmised from all of that, that being in the right place at the right time is at the heart of all photography. My innovative quest to find a step-ladder for the group shot was a bit too late, so I had to return it to Tony at Donnington Motors. It's all about timing.

Timing, and positioning... I was quite astonished by how easy it is to be invisible as a photographer. Emmie and I roamed the service, shuffling down the aisles of the red-bricked church, snapping silently as the vicar rambled and the happy couple stood at the centre. At one point, Emmie was hanging off the balcony thirty feet above the nave to catch a crowd shot. I don't know whether it's just the way mind works, but it reminded me of Jimmy Olsen, the photographer in Superman III who gets stuck up a crane while a chemical factory is about to explode. It can clearly be quite a daring occupation.

Despite the vicar's odd sermon about love holding you together when you're old and paralysed... the service itself was quite straightforward. I was amused at the point where he processed to the vestry for the signing of the register and forgot to switch off his radio-mic. Moments later, crowded into the little room while the groom clutched an inky fountain pen, I hoped the good reverend had realised before he joked about being a vampire with purple fingers.

The part of the day I enjoyed the most I suppose, was the portrait stuff we did with just the bride and groom. This is where the wedding photographer comes into her own. Emmie was brilliant. Despite having worked their way through an eternity of group shots with extended families, uni friends and people who vaguely knew them... the bride and groom were still up for the more intimate portraits of the 'happy couple' in the afternoon sunshine. And somehow, even though their cheeks must have been aching and their feet killing them, Emmie created an atmosphere where they could sink happily into each other's arms and sigh romantically, as she moved them and snapped them. These photos, I thought, would be the ones that end up on their mantlepiece.

At the end of it all, as I loosened my tie and handed back the spare battery, I thought about the emotions of a wedding. The nerves, the exhilaration, the hilarity, the joy, the love, the relief, the dancing, the exhaustion... there's not really anything else quite like it. As photographers, we view and capture it all from the other side of the lens, preserving memories, downloading happiness for others to enjoy for the rest of their lives. Invisible and unnoticed, we move through the service, the reception, the speeches and the disco, never appearing in the photographs, unseen and largely unremembered. Emmie squished the equipment in the boot and shut the boot of her SmartCar with a satisfied click. The sound reminded me of a shutter opening and closing. "Good job!" she said.

Indeed.

Blue Sky Thinking

I've just been sitting outside on the wall with a cup of tea, a piece of cake, and an amazing sky. I laid back on the cold concrete to watch the clouds shifting across the blue expanse. Sunlight was bursting through, making the low fluffy cumulus look like gilded angels wings, while cirrus clouds flew ethereally above like wispy lace. I love watching the sky move. Last week at Monkton Combe, I lay on Emmie's blanket outside her teepee and watched the clouds whip across the view. It made it look like the tent was moving, and if I half-squinted I could pretend I was onboard the deck of a fine ship, with a billowing canvas and a thin gold mast.

The sky is huge. Some time soon the sun will sink below the horizon and the stars will pop out like pinholes in a velvet sheet. God has been speaking to me a lot about the stars recently. Here is a little bit of Psalm 8 to set the mood.

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.

It amazes me too, to think that God knows my name. I mean the Psalmist wrote the Psalms, surely God knows his name... but Matt Stubbs (32), failing piano teacher and worship leader, of Reading, Berkshire?

Then, as Cassiopeia and Orion, the Great Bear and the Pleiades emerge from the sunset, thousands of light years away (and long ago), and the moon beams brightly through the silvery sky, I can't help thinking just how small I am. One of six billion names, lost in the ocean of humanity on a tiny, insignificant planet. There are 9 billion other stars in our galaxy, and countless galaxies spinning and filling the Universe, and here I am looking up at a little patch of night on a cold stone wall. And yet, he is mindful of me. He cares for me, and crowns me with glory and honour. That deserves a wow. He doesn't just know of me, he cares for me! Wow, wow, wow. He crowns me! He what? He gives me a crown?? I mean, seriously? of what? of glory and of honour. God Almighty, creator of the proton, the whirlpool galaxy, quantum mechanics and the bumblebee... actually wants me (doubter, sinner, liar, cheat, foolish, emotionally unstable Matt Stubbs (32) of Reading, Berkshire) to reflect some of his glory? It is frankly preposterous. :)

Rich Mullins once wrote a song with the line: "Sometimes I think of Abraham, how one star he saw was lit for me." I like that. It reminds me that the little portion of his glory God set aside for me and designed for me to reflect, is just the same down here on this cold stone wall. A little pinhole of light in a velvet canvas.

I wonder how well I'm shining. I wonder what he sees.