It’s my turn again to do the prayer/reading at staff briefing. I defiantly cling (not very devoutly, it must be admitted) to the notion that the Christmas season extends through to Candlemas, so this morning I went with a festive theme:

And is the meaning that we look for in the vast expanse of space,
or in our silent inner place,
really in the screaming newborn face
of a baby, oblivious to its fate,
innocent, incapable of hate?
Is it in an epiphany that needs to wait
until, like Magi, tugged towards the East
we too will turn to face the least
likely agent of God’s grace, and feast
ourselves on that ridiculous plan:
Himself, in a tattered corner of his universe, made man.

It’s that 3-way-pull time again.

Today I spent mainly doing craft-y things with my little girl as if it were still properly the holidays, but it didn’t feel like it. With my wife back at work today,  a training day for me tomorrow, a stack of work still awaiting, and the distraction of Owen Coyle’s apparently imminent departure from Burnley filling the sports news, I feel as though I’m in no-man’s-land.

I know that – as is the case after every holiday – I’ll miss my family like mad; but equally I know that the routine will soon erase that pang and, well, it’ll be OK.