Hilary Mantel, in last year’s Reith Lectures, said: As soon as we die, we enter into fiction. Just ask two different family members to tell you about someone recently gone, and you will see what I mean. Once we can no longer speak for…
In my Easter sermon I asked the questions: Do you want to be a Christian? Do you want to be a Muslim? Do you want to be a Hindu? Do you want to be a Buddhist? And the replies were a resounding ‘No’ and…
Last week I mentioned that my phone was dying – almost on life support with its constant need to be plugged into the wall for intravenous electricity. I’m sorry to say that my phone died. No matter how many times I tried an electronic…
It was one of those incidental conversations that happen at the back of an airplane. Old(er) men walking and stretching; a camaraderie in avoiding thrombosis. We struck up a conversa-tion and it wasn’t too long before I was in a world of international development…
I am speaking to you but you have no idea where I am. Where I am right now. (To be fair, I only have a hunch about where you are when you’re reading this.) You know the hemi-sphere and the country of my whereabouts…
I walked the Via Dolorosa – the traditional walk of the faithful recalling the steps Jesus took from his condemnation by Pilate to his crucifixion and placement in the tomb and thus the site of his resurrection – when I was in Jerusalem. It…
It certainly was a fascinating time, this journey to Israel. To be in a group of mainly clergy (there were a few religious and a lawyer) with all our denominations, travelling together to see both the history of the land in terms of the…
Last week at the European Lutheran Conference in Germany the Bishop of the Kyrgyzstan Lutheran Church, Kenzhebek Botobaev, made a presentation to a number of people who were ‘friends of his church’. I was one who received a special Kyrgyz gift – an ak-kalpak…
Last week I ruminated about the Church as busi-ness and what I saw as the tension between organ-isational conformity and chaotic freedom. We need both and both can get us into trouble. This week I’m drawn to the thought of alliances, fellowship, and identity…
For whatever images one has of the Christian Church – congregation, body (of Christ), people (of God), a spiritual house (made of living stones), branches (of the vine), the household (of God), the Christian Resources Exhibition held this week at Sandown Park, Esher added…
