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This photo was taken by my daughter Catherine, when I was about 50. I think she did a pretty good job.  The number 70 has a kind of Biblical gravitas. It’s the number of elders appointed by Moses to lead the recalcitrant Israelites, and the number of people who went down to join Joseph, in Egypt. Jesus sent 70 disciples out to minister in his name, and the first Jewish Sanhedrin had 70 blokes in it. And, of course, there is Psalm 90:10:  “ The days of our life are threescore years and ten, and if by reason of strength they be fourscore, yet is their strength labour and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away ”. All this has some personal import because I turn 70 today, and can no longer fool myself that I am middle aged. I’m old. And before you feed me one of the lines of balderdash that pass for wisdom in our culture - “you’re only as old as you feel”; “70 is the new 50”; “age is just a number” or some other such nonsense, let me tell you that I am happy to be old. Del...

Our synod was short. After a Friday night start, we were all fnished by 3:30 pm on Saturday, and that included a presentation of my Strategic Plan , discussion of the same in small groups and a potentially divisive but in the end not so discussion on the ordination of folks in same gender relationships. We ended with a dinner hosted by the St Barnabas home at which Phil Clark of the Church Army spoke. Phil is the best public speaker I have heard in a very long while. He was thought provoking and eloquent and surprising and very funny - his table companions spent much of the meal fighting for composure as the liquid bits of their dinners ran out of their noses. He spoke of taking over the Church Army, an organisation which was formed a long time ago to evangelise the working classes. The methods and structures which proved so successful through the first half of the 20th Century have not proven durable however, and the Church Army has been in decline for a while. Phil Clark is not a ma...

I saw the oncologist today. At least, I saw his 14 year old Chinese registrar, which was a good sign right from the start: the fact that he wasn't seeing me himself meant that there was obviously nothing complicated to convey and no hard news to give. The boy in the white coat peered at me through his rimless glasses. He asked how I was doing, and wanted to know if I had trouble with my waterworks or any unusual aches and pains. He smiled and nodded encouragingly at all my answers. He told me that my PSA levels have declined to barely above the detectable level, which means that the cancer has gone. I will go back to the hospital in 6 months just to make sure and after that my GP will keep an eye on developments, or more likely, the lack of them. I felt a bit stunned and I don't think I can have looked appropriately celebratory. I walked back to the car, texted my loved ones and drove home. On Pitt Street both my girls phoned and I pulled over to answer them, then burst...

copyright unknown I usually get up around 6:00 so this morning was no exception. What was different was breaking my routine to turn on the TV and watch Barack Obama be sworn in as the 44th president of The United States of America. It was a moving few minutes. Everyone else in Washington DC was togged up against the weather but the new president stood in his suitcoat, calm and strong and not shivering in the freezing noontime air. He then spoke to the crowd in an address which struck me for what I did not hear. I was listening for the carefully crafted phrase: the line which would be quoted back for decades to come. I was listening for the gem which some employed poet, one of a team working in an Illinois office somewhere over the past 6 months, had come up with and honed and refined and reshaped so that it would resound down through the television speakers of the world over the next few decades. It didn't come. Praise God, it didn't come. To be sure the speech was polished ...

The year has started brilliantly. Only two days in and it's been good news all the way. We have a big house: five bedrooms (six if you count the upstairs sunroom) and four living rooms (five if you count the downstairs sunroom) and we began the new year with every room occupied. People in every bed and trundle beds in every place they would fit. We borrowed a trestle table from the parish hall in order to seat everyone for big, shambling, lengthy, noisy meals for which most adults present had had a part in preparation. With people coming and going at different times we had three sessions sitting around the Christmas tree unwrapping stuff and being surprised at one another's thoughfulness.We didn't do much else. We watched a few videos ( Anne of Green Gables , Prince Caspian , and, when the kids weren't around, Green Wing and The Office [the real one ie the British one, of course]). Some people went for a daily run or a trip to the gym. I went off to have my inna...

We went and saw the urologist again on Friday. He discussed options for further treatment. He outlined the probable side effects of radiotherapy and then said, "Most of these side effects will happen in about ten years, so, of course, they aren't going to be an issue for you. " It was double take, knock me down with a feather, go back a sentence or two if you don't mind time. He's a very frank, matter of fact sort of guy. He spends his days from morning til night dealing almost exclusively with men who have prostate cancer. He knows my profile. He knows the odds. He was telling me the truth as he saw it. This was 8:30 in the morning, and I spent the rest of the day in a sobre sort of way. I did some internet research and was even more sobred. I emailed and texted my family and friends. And I got on, as best I could, with preparations for our parish fair and with the other things that would normally have happened on a Friday. Life was suddenly very rich and real an...

I saw my surgeon again this morning. Last time I saw him he arranged to meet me in November to check my progress, but about ten days ago I had a blood test and a week ago his secretary rang to suggest we might need to move the appointment forward. So there were no great surprises about what he had to tell me. There is still some cancer down there somewhere, skulking about in my nether regions playing a winner takes all version of hide 'n' seek. I'll have a CT scan sometime in the next week to see if they can rumble where the little blighter is holing up, and depending on what they find, there'll be more treatment. None of it is likely to hurt much, but every available option will have side effects that I'd really rather avoid; and at least some of it is going to happen, sooner or later, probably sooner. My reading for this morning included psalm 57: Take pity on me, God, take pity for in you I take refuge... I went to St. Clair and had a soy latte ( the best of b...

There's some things you don't want to hear: "This is your captain speaking. There's no need to panic," for instance or "Sir, these tickets are for the flight that left last Saturday," or the one I heard on Tuesday, "Hello Mr. Wright, this is Mr. Samalia. We have your lab results back. I know we have an appointment for Friday, but could you please come and see me at 4:30 tomorrow? Oh... and you'd better bring your wife." Bugger. Bridget, who was with me when the phone call came, burst into tears, and, for the first time in this whole process, so did I. Yesterday was another of those extremely long days but in the end it was not so bad. I have, apparently had cancer for as long as 10-12 years. It is aggressive, meaning not so much that it is speedy, but that it shows no scruples about invading organs other than its host. It had moved outside of the prostate and into surrounding tissues, but not extensively and the surgeon is confident tha...