To partake in wilderness (1st Lent)

Psychological or spiritual development always requires a greater capacity in us for the toleration of anxiety and ambiguity. The capacity to accept this troubled state, abide it, and commit to life, is the moral measure of our maturity. James Hollis What happens if we accept this challenge of stepping out of the known into the …

It was Christmas evening…

I ‘ve always loved Christmas and I succumbed to the traditions of the high-church at Christmas time; I loved Midnight-Mass (when I attended it for the first time in London in my 30’s) and I still love the Nine Carols and Readings service from Kings college chapel in Cambridge that is broadcast at 3.00 pm …

The Marriage of Time and Eternity

While we have been talking about weddings we’ve really been considering our own faith tradition, the way that a service is constructed; its why’s and wherefore’s.  We began with the experience of arrival, of the importance of transition when we come into contact with the Sacred and Holy - however we conceive that to be, …

Guests at a wedding…

"... God said: Light itself needs rest. Some things are best seen, unseen, in darkness unhindered by Great Light. Me, for example." Robert Fulton Macpherson I once thought science could give the answer to every question. As I learned more, I found that, for every question answered, two more were generated; so the likelihood of …

The wedding of reverence and memory

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility. ~ …

Hands full of blood

The prophets who stand on the reredos behind me are curious religious icons: it’s not just that, as John Barton points out in his marvellous History of the Bible, they were neither Priests nor teachers, it seems to me that the awe inspiring writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezkiel very rarely coincide with the format or …

Untranslated

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?I have no idea.My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,and I intend to end up there. but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?Who says words …

It’s a magic number…

what does it all mean? Today is Trinity Sunday. So soon after Pentacost I ‘m a little unwilling to leave off the festival of Whitsun-tide. The Holy Spirit is my favourite part of Trinitarian theology. It’s like having a favourite Beatle. The Holy Spirit is definitely the Walrus. When I was first studying theology the …

Blues for Michael

It is a feature of our society that we are goal oriented: we value results and judge a thing by its outcome.The philosopher and psychiatrist Dr. Iain McGilchrist has been researching and writing over many years on the ‘two hemispheres’ theory of neurology which seeks to understand the human brain in relation to the curious …

A participatory (insurrectionary) Spirituality

Unitarian Free Christian theologian David Doel wrote (in ‘The Man they Called the Christ’ UCA books) that: ‘...resurrection invites us to consider that personal transformation, awakening, is an authentic and ever present possibility…’Doel quotes ancient gnostic scripture which teaches that resurrection is ‘the revealing of what truly exists … and a transition into newness’. Now, …