Blog posts, much like sermons, Hollywood witch covens and Super Nintendo boss fights, operate according to a very strict established convention: the rule of three. Sermons always have to have three central points, with bonus points awarded if the headings all start with the same letter. Hollywood witch covens always have to have three sisters, with bonus points awarded if they are actually sisters. Twins and/or triplets is the ideal here. And it’s well established that you have to jump on Bowser’s head three times to kill him. Or grab the hammer. Whatever.

And so it is with blog posts. Before you can take some aspect or happenstance of your week and inform everyone on the internet (or your mum and a few friends) of how worthy of their attention it is, you need to have three items that you can write about, ideally with some thematic link.

As you know, here at Cum Tacent Clament, we’re very careful about the way we value inherent structure, respect established conventions and stick to a finely defined line of argument. This is why it has been a little longer than it should have been between posts this month; I’ve just been so flat out trying to find a set of blogable experiences that are simultaneously appropriate, memorable and threefold. But this afternoon I managed to do just that.

First off on this morning’s thematically consistent Saturday was another trip out to Berrimah Correctional Facility. Prison ministry is still going strong, and continues to be an enlightening, enriching and engaging experience for the prisoners, the officers, and us.

Next stop was the very first practice session for One Body NT, which turns out to be a worship service and intercongradenomenagalactical church network rather than a discount gym franchise. We’re still putting the play list together for the first time, but I’m really excited to be finally getting the idea off the ground, even if it is going to start small. Next Saturday promises to dynamic, lustrous and cutting edge. It may or may not renege on that promise.

Thirdly and lastly I called in at my old church, Darwin Memorial Uniting, to get re-acquainted with the organ there, since they had asked me to play for them Sunday morning. It’s got some nice sounds on it, but the user interface always takes me half an hour to get used to. I mean, obviously the keys and stops and things are the same, but the settings to turn the reverb down and get some kind of decent volume out of the swell needs some experimentation in order to get your head around the confusing, uninformative and thoroughly non-intuitive settings menu. It’s the only church organ I’ve ever seen that has a remote control. It would be really cool if that meant you could play the processional from outside in the car park, but unfortunately all you can do is turn the  reverb on and off, unless you want to start mucking around with the tuning, which given the tone of an organ in the first place, probably isn’t a good idea.

And fourthly I had Portuguese chicken for dinner. Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs