The Baptism of the Lord, 9th January 2022 Nothing is as it seems, or so it seems. In Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism there is no dialogue between Jesus and John and the revelation of who he is seems a very private matter for Jesus alone for later John sends …
The Epiphany of the Lord, 6th January 2022 Physiotherapists encourage people experiencing relentless post-viral fatigue to gently push at the limits of what they can do in terms of physical effort. They’ve found that if those limits are not tested, then the realm of the possible begins to shrink – …
Second Sunday after Christmas, 2nd January 2022 Wisdom is elusive, easily lost. This is the story of Israel, of Jerusalem, of humankind and the story too of Jesus. God’s spirit has been at work throughout but our history is one of evasion, of hiding from wisdom’s truths, of observing them …
Mary, Mother of God, 1st January 2022 As pickpockets see only pockets so birdwatchers see only birds, or so it may seem but where we place our attention matters, Consider this wonderful passage from Iris Murdoch: I am looking out of my window in an anxious state of mind, oblivious …
Feast of the Holy Innocents, 28th December 2021 ‘Half of my family were killed in Shatila,’ Fatima told me after dinner. ‘My mother’s sister and all her immediate family. Her daughter was pregnant and the Israeli soldiers made a bet, for a can of beer – boy or girl? Then …
Feast of St John the Evangelist, 27th December 2021 You hear it all the time, ‘We grew up poor but we didn’t know it’ – a comment on and by Appalachian coal miners who suddenly find themselves at the mercy of forces far away: hedge fund investors who see them …
Feast of the Holy Family, Sunday 26th December 2021 Reality is where you place your attention That’s a quote worth pondering on from Dom Lawrence Freeman, as is the following as he wanders around the exhibits at the recent Cop26 conference in Glasgow: I listened to a presentation at a …
Mass of Christmas Day I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.What hours. What black hours we have spentThis night! What sights you, heart, saw, ways you went!And more must, in yet longer lights’ delay. From the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who struggled much with depression and read …
Midnight Mass, 2021 We tell ourselves stories in order to live. Joan Didion, an American writer, of whom I’m woefully ignorant, but who I know has just died and, whatever her intentions or religious persuasion, has left us with a quote worth pondering in the light of today’s great feast, …
The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, 10th January 2021 There is a tide in the affairs of men,which taken at the flood leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeis bound in shallows and in miseries. Some very well known words from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, here …
