‘Huh!’ I hadn’t exactly heard that before. I was at the ELCE’s Pastors’ Study Week and, as you can imagine, the general discussion was about God, faith, Christian discipleship and living – the things pastors might be expected to discuss and study and learn 😉 –…
I’m still with the solar eclipse from earlier this week. As I mentioned on Ascension’s Facebook such astronomical phenomena remind us viscerally that we exist in the vastness of a universe. We usually have no sense that we are the ones spinning on a…
I laughed. I read it on Twitter. It must be true. I saw the photo. Seeing is believing. A woman was flying from Melbourne to Brisbane when the plane was unexpectedly diverted to Sydney. The flight attendant explained that there would be a delay…
Even after all these years here, I still occasionally get the quizzical look because something is unexpected. Occasionally it is that I’m Lutheran. (What’s that?) More often it is because of my accent. (I repeat that I don’t have an accent 😉 – well,…
It was a ‘slow news day’ I think. The tagline read ‘Kookaburra spotted living in Suffolk countryside’. I clicked. There was a 28 second clip of it sitting on a branch. It didn’t laugh though you could hear noise on the clip but I…
When you hear the phrase “this isn’t your grandfather’s church” you know you are in the environment of stability and change, public doctrine and pious opinion, questions about tradition and decisions about specific circumstances. I hear it among many churches particularly those with a…
Ah, the unexpected! I was heading home on Sunday from Coventry along the A14 when the tell-tale signature of red tails lights said I wasn’t going anywhere. I stopped. Fire brigade, ambulances, police all came past. We waited. Four hours later Highways turned the…
When I was a Boarding Chaplain (and teacher) in a Lutheran school in Australia where students had daily chapel and the boarders also had Sunday evening chapel, there was one song that was often chosen by them and sung year in and year out…
This week a working paper in economics from the University of Cambridge* was released and it garnered a bit of publicity because its summary conclusion was that religious people coped better in the pandemic in comparison to non religious people. I didn’t understand the…
In this past week, I try and make a few extra visits to the police to see how the teams are faring. We all want happy times at Christmas – holidays and good family vibes – but the police often see another side to…
