Author: stuart

  • An Ecology Year

    An Ecology Year A list of opportunities to reflect on the Environment & Human Ecology throughout the year.   Inspirational people, dates and times for action and occasions for reflection throughout the year. Some are fixed dates, others change each year.  You can find it here.

  • Fisher King

    There are few stories that endure retelling quite as much as those of Arthurian legend and few even within that realm that have been told in countless forms anew for each generation. There is one though that returns again and again. It might not be the one which springs to mind immediately for the feast…

  • Heart and Stone

    Heart and Stone

    So the Jerusalem scene we are offered in Mark’s Gospel is not so far from home this weekend as violence spreads across the capital of France.  It will only fuel the divisions of East and West.  As Ghandi said:  ‘An eye for an eye leaves us both blind.’  Such violence is also seen on the…

  • Welsh Poppies for a Bright Future

    Welsh Poppies for a Bright Future

    There is a lovely book by Palestinian Melchite Priest Elias Chacour.  It documents his struggle to live in the occupied territories of Palestine.  It is titled, ‘We belong to the Land’.  He writes about the passage you have just heard from Matthew’s Gospel: Blessed are those… Gwyn eu Byd y rhai…  This phrase in English…

  • Lament and Rejoice

    All Saints is a time To Lament and to Rejoice. How empty stands the winter tree, once with a canopy full of leaves. How bare you are without adornments, No green covering to shade and protect. You wept bitterly in the early autumn sun, As golden leaves turned from the sky and fell to earth.…

  • Autumn saint autumn sun

    An autumn sun for an autumn saint sits low and pale behind the mists of the morning as a million lost causes hang on to tree branches in a final colourful prayer of disobedience. A stray breeze releases them to the ground. Is that a prayer I choose this day? To be released.  Or is…

  • with a little knowledge

    with a little knowledge

    Today is Bible Sunday.  I wonder in what condition yours is in?  Perhaps the beautiful leather bound variety, kept in a case and on a special shelf.  So important it should not be touched by grubby fingers.  Or perhaps the paperback losing its pages and held together with tape because its pages have been so…

  • towards the light

    towards the light

    We stand and watch what remains of an orange-red glow Slipping gently through a gap between sea and clouds Past the edge of the sea as clouds shift to change its final shape. Our eyes cannot hold its gaze for long. The infectious silence breaks with a sigh as the last ember winks out Which…

  • Build Bridges, not Walls

    Two years ago in August I met a most extraordinary man.  He had made the rather circuitous journey from Bethlehem through Jordan to the UK and then to Cheltenham of all places.  He then had the mis-fortune of being driven around by my colleagues and I.  He had come to speak about his work of…

  • At the end of the line

    At the end of the line

    First shall be last and the last shall be first.  A Bishop always walks last in procession, though that is not quite true, as the Bishop’s chaplain follows  on behind as servant to the servant of all.  Donald Trump who suggested that his secret spy name should be ‘humble.’ Though he once arrived in Scotland…