Author: stuart

  • Oh would you just listen!

    I’ve been walking in the company of ghosts for the past few weeks, spending time in burial grounds and a number of sacred sites in preparation to write about how we deal with such places.  The transfiguration – a traditional reading for the Sunday before Lent, is a reading about being in the company of…

  • Day 49 – Foodbank Challenge

    As day 49 of the food bank challenge comes to a close, it’s time for a biblical jubilee. Beginning again on 5th march as Lent begins and #EndHungerFAST gets up to speed…

  • Dirty Carrots and the Kingdom of Heaven

    Carrots, which do you buy? I’d like to suggest that it is the ‘dirty carrots’ that can help to bring closer the kingdom of God. Today is Creation Sunday, and tomorrow begins Fairtrade Fortnight. It seems an appropriate time therefore to dwell on our relationship with the earth and all that we consume from it.…

  • Jesus on Jeremy Vine

    The Jeremy vine show on Radio two can be summed up (and it’s a bit of a caricature I know…) as follows:  Take the ten most opinionated people from across britain and give them an open microphone on a live radio show to discuss (not sure that discuss is the right word) topical issues of…

  • Pimping the ride of compassion?

    It seemed as good a title as any… You don’t light a lamp and put a bowl over it says Jesus.  The Twitterati with thanks to @thechurchmouse who came up with a list of modern equivalents for this message: No one turns on the light then shuts his eyes Nobody has one of the world’s…

  • demolishing the demons of domination

    Monty Python once asked:  What have the Romans ever done for us? This question ends with a rather long list: the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health.  But what have the Romans ever done for us?  To which the final answer is given:  Brought peace? …

  • Justice through radical compassion

    Keith Hebden, Priest in Mansfield: “author of “Seeking Justice: The Radical Compassion of Jesus”. This website is being developed to support those who want to find ways to build a new world in the shell of the old one in their neighbourhoods.” compasionistas.net is a website resource for all those seeking justice for folk in…

  • The point of Baptism?

    An American Lady travelling to Paris 1913 asked Ezra Pound what art is for. Reply:  What is a rose bush for?  If someone asks me what is baptism for, I might reply with the same. Water as we have seen only too often in recent weeks is regularly the means of destruction, often violent extreme…

  • Epiphany: offerings that cost us nothing?

    “We will not offer to God, offerings that cost us nothing” An opening verse and response from the morning prayer of Iona Abbey. Offerings for a newborn:  The top ten required gift items maybe?  Cloth nappies wraps & pins, changing mat, grow-suit, (Though it seems you can spend your life in one of these now…

  • Fight or Flight?

    I wonder how comfortable we are?  I’m not referring to the need to loosen the belt a little after Christmas lunch.  Or the uncomfortable feeling that we might have forgotten to send a card to someone important this year, or even the uncomfortable job of writing thank-you letters. How comfortable are we sat here in…