Today Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America. I, for one, will not be watching. My New Year’s Resolution was to avoid all news of Trump, being how it was making me feel depressed and anxious. But no doubt that will prove to be impossible to maintain as…
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sing a new song
I wonder what your ‘new’ is this year. Are you looking out on January 2017 with your spirits singing or plummeting? Psalm 40 was set in church today – and we heard how God lifts us out of the pit we’ve got ourselves into and how in response we ‘sing a new song’. U2 (Irish…
epiphany snow
I had not thought it could be so white. Ice white under frost white long shadows blue white. The cold bite of a winter street houses squat stiff walls, safe as a knot. The ground as a sheet unyielding hard as a promise is to keep. The everyday suspended. Sitting in its place,…
Losing time but gaining now
Each new marker of time brings up the same conversation, be it new school year (September) or new calendar year (January). ‘Where has the time gone?’ ‘Time’s rushing away with me’; ‘The days are slipping by’… I suspect these inevitable thoughts about time didn’t happen during childhood, but they seem to be a feature of…
being known
The new year’s lectionary readings bring us to John. First chapter, skipping Jesus as a baby, we go straight to Jesus as a man. A man who knows. Even before chapter one is done, he is calling people to follow him. ‘The next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to…
feast or famine
Post Christmas, and the pendulum swings from feast to famine. How can the broadsheets advertise a ‘new fitness regime for 2017′ across the front page of January 1st? We’ve heard it all before. Adverts from November to Christmas Eve: feasts of turkey and wine; chocolate mountains; indulgence of expensive perfumes not normally smelt the rest…
fuzzy feelings
Do you ever get that nice fuzzy feeling when you’ve been Christmas shopping and now you’re feeling really in the mood? It happens when the warmth of shops, the loveliness of the gifts and the frothy coffee inside you win out over the queues, the heavy bags and the aching feet. I get it looking…
the pink one
This Sunday is the third in Advent and in liturgical churches up and down the land, while most other normal people go shopping, someone will be lighting a pink candle, aka ‘the pink one’, for Gaudete (Rejoice!) Sunday. When someone used to mention pink, I would think of girls’ tutus, or sugary nougat, or a…
part time priest 