Category: Seasons
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124 In Defence of Angels
June 2023 The Church has a tendency to make simple things difficult, like prayer & faith, both of which are simple in principle but challenging in practice. Society has a tendency to trivialise important things like miracles and angels. I’ve written about ’Everyday Miracles’, so now I’m going to write “In defence of Angels”. School…
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117. Lent & Holy Week
March 2023 One of the blessings for me of going feral is that it releases me from the obligation of joining in the church’s activities around the major Christian festivals. There is a downside to that of course, but there’s an upside too. Advent for example has come alive for me because I have both…
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102. Wise men, wise women
January 2022 As one year comes to an end and a new one begins there is much to feel depressed and ashamed about, and little to lift our spirits, both in the world at large and in the behaviour of our own Government. “Where has God been in all this?”, we might ask, “Where is…
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101. Christmas is Coming
December 2021 The culmination of Advent with the coming of Christmas calls us once again to celebrate the birth of Jesus. John’s Gospel talks of Jesus existing with God from the beginning, before being incarnated as a human being, and of then returning to be with God after His death & resurrection. This is the…
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100. An Advent Story
November 2021 A small village nestled high up in the mountains had developed over the centuries a series of traditions by which they marked Advent every year. All the men in the village used to dress up as shepherds and bring symbols of their trades to the little village church, as gifts for the Christ-child.…
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76. Advent Thoughts
December 2019 Recent events have left me feeling helpless and in a dark place. Our decision, based mainly on lies, to leave the EU, leaves me with a sense of shame at being English. We are letting both ourselves and our European friends down badly. We have a government which is already underfunding the NHS, our…
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56. Roy’s Christmas reflection
January 2018 I first met Roy Gregory many years ago as a fellow member of the ‘Soul Space’ team offering spiritual direction at Greenbelt. We got on well from the off, despite supporting rival football teams, and our friendship has blossomed over the intervening years. It was Roy who one day at Greenbelt was kind enough…
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55. In praise of Christmas cards
January 2018 We shall soon be taking down out Christmas cards. I send a lot of Christmas cards, and we receive a lot too. We noticed this year that most of the cards we received and just about all the cards we sent had an explicitly Biblical reference. Visiting other homes during the season and seeing other peoples’…
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40 Words for the turning of the year: God and the Church
January 2017 The Church of England is facing, and has been for some considerable time now, what it sees as a crisis. The numbers of people attending church on a Sunday has been in decline for many years, and the money is running out to the point where some Dioceses are talking about facing bankruptcy.…
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39. Words for the turning of the year: Christian Bobin
December 2016 My friend Keith recently introduced me to a french writer, Christian Bobin, and I have been stimulated by reading an anthology of his writings, translated into English, and entitled ‘The Eighth Day of Creation.’ Somewhere in it he writes: “ I should like to know how to pray. I should like to know how…
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 