part time priest

bauble

I wonder what Jesus would have made of the season of Advent. In one of his contretemps with the Pharisees, when they were busy observing correctly religious practice, he defended his disciples picking ears of corn on the Sabbath. Simply, they were hungry, food was available, what’s the problem? On another occasion John’s disciples asked…

hidden sparkle

Added to the dross of leaves today was the sparkle of frost. I never can get on top of the leaves this time of year. The hour you’ve swept, they re-pile, massing into gaps by walls and blocking drains. But today there was frost to add sparkle. Seems apposite at this time of year as…

happening now

People often talk these days about the power of NOW. Among many unsettling moments at Theological College was the time when one of our lecturers, who liked to provoke both Catholics and Evangelicals (not to mention Liberals) was discussing with us ‘the sacrament of the present moment’. Various people were nodding sagely and thinking ‘Oh yes,…

purple

Who doesn’t love a bit of purple? It took me a long time to appreciate the Anglican predilection for liturgical colours. Once pieced together, however, and I was away. Purple is long associated with royalty, richness, penitence (hence Lent), funerals and, in my mind, cold end of autumn days, and of course Advent. A long…

chance of fog

Fog can be dangerous because you lose a sense of where you’re going. Same with spiritual fog, from which I have been suffering a bit recently. Spiritual fog may not be a commonly known term, but others have written of ‘spiritual depression’ (Martin Lloyd Jones) and ‘acedia’ (Christopher Jamison). Spiritual fog is dangerous because it…

comes advent

Why begin at the end? Advent comes at the end of the calendar year and yet it begins the church year. I always find myself feeling a little bit more sober as it approaches. It’s almost as if I need a season to prepare for Advent, preparing as it is itself, for Christmas…a sort of…

the resilient life

How do you keep going as a Christian, let alone an ordained minister of the Church? It’s now a few years since I got ordained in the Anglican Church and I feel like I’m just getting into my stride. Will I still be enthusiastic in another few years, say another ten, or twenty? Veteran pastor, Gordon…

dear diary

I don’t know why I started writing a journal, but when I look back on all the things I felt the need to chronicle, circa 1981, it seems it was mainly to do with the price of food in the Sixth Form College cafe (‘sausage roll, 50p; cookie, 35p’ etc.) and whether I could make…