Head on over to Beth’s Blog

I think it is time to give Beth a shout out and encourage you all to head over to her blog The Road Less Travelled.

Beth is training to be a doctor and is very often found around about St Mary’s but at the moment she is in Tanzania trying not to get eaten by rhinos and working in an A & E department over there for a bit. Don’t worry, she’s lived in Partick. She’ll probably cope just fine.

Here she is describing part of a trip in the Serengeti on safari. (The nearest we have here is a trip to the South Side….)

What I do have the words to describe is the unexpected coldness of that part of Tanzania at night. Everyone says that the Equator gets cold, but we weren’t expecting it to be quite that cold. I huddled in my sleeping bag, dressed in two pairs of socks and scrub bottoms and a t-shirt and a hoodie with the hood up, and I announced to those who had the misfortune to be sharing a tent with me, “The last time I was this cold, it was January and it was Glasgow and my central heating had been broken for nine days!” In reality, I may have used more expletives than that. It was worth it, though, for the sunrise the next morning and for the hilarity of keeping warm by trying to do the Dashing White Sergeant at our campsite high above the crater.

Don’t miss her thoughts on the Anglican Communion after having been to church either:

It was comprised of the previously mentioned Anglican liturgy; an English deacon who preached for half an hour on three different subjects, gave chapter and verse every time he quoted anything from Scripture and then made us all wait while he leafed through his Bible to find the thing that he had just quoted, and drew the whole thing to a conclusion five or six times before going off on new tangents; a building and decor straight out of traditional Anglicanism except for the pink fabric draped artistically across the altar rail and secured by white ribbons; and the very worst in English evangelical praise music led by the very very worst in English evangelical praise music musicians as issued forth from tinny laptop speakers, at which point I thought of at least eight different people who would have lain down and wept.

But despite all of that, the thing is that I sat down on Sunday in a church in a town in the middle of Tanzania and in company with thousands of people across the whole world, a congregation of God’s people said, “We do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your compassionate and great mercy.” I’d find it difficult to think of another institution whose internationality is quite so striking as that.

Catch more, a good deal more on her blog – The Road Less Travelled – http://wanderingmedic.wordpress.com/