One Door

I had an odd conversation with my neighbour yesterday. They have been trying to sell their house and move for some time. In the UK this can be a very fraught and drawn out process. My neighbour told me that she had received serious interest from a retired priest and it was as likely as not that he would be the next owner.
The odd thing about this is that our own parish priest will be leaving his post at the end of December. We only have the one priest so this means that our parish will have an interregnum, that is waiting period before a new priest is appointed. This can be a good time for a Church community to let it grow in faith as it takes on some of the tasks that the priest just did as routine. It Can also be a time when people opt out of a church community and go elsewhere. For Sunday services priests are begged, borrowed and stolen from anywhere that can be found. It would be really nice to have a local retired priest that could fill in and provide some support. In my experience priests never really retire, they slow down. Having said that it would be wrong to drag the poor sod in and hand him the church. Just a little support and the comfort of having a person with a collar about could make a lot of difference to a Church struggling ( as ours will) with a suddenly absent priest.
It may be that the priest never buys the house or if he does never comes to our church and I am being careful not to count my chickens but God does have a wonderful way of providing and as one door closes often another opens, it's a case of seeing it happen.

Peace Dave.

LuLu Anticipation.

A few months ago I found a website called Lulu.com . Lulu provides an online publishing service for all kinds of writers that would otherwise be ignored and overlooked. Their publishing is by demand only so there are no set up costs. They are very helpful with simple instructions and plenty of tutorials. It's a bit like EBay for writers. The bottom line is that it's all down to you. If you decide to publish badly written rubbish and not advertise it well it won't sell and no one will make anything out of it. If on the other hand you put some effort and thinking into your project and support it well it may well sell and that's good for everyone.
For me the exiting part is that my poetry will be in print properly not through some vanity press or compilation that I can buy at a pound discount. I'm never going to be a professional poet, I accept that but that does not mean that poems aren't good enough to be in print. At the end of the day it's the customer that will decide and that's how lulu works. It's worthwhile having a mooch on the Lulu site even if you never want to be in print. Before going for general release I have to read an approval copy of my work which should arrive soon. If that's OK then the book will be made available through Lulu's website and there will be an advert on my blog, believe it.
I told my friend Pat about this and her reaction was "ooh that's exiting, I have a copy please".
Wow, I thought, I already sold a copy!