Category: ‘Sermon’ like material

  • Chalk and Cheese

    Chalk and Cheese

    A bit like Chalk and Cheese or Harold and Hilda, Hay and Straw even, Peter and Paul are alike, but different.  If I can add one more pair into that – Deacon and Priest.  Alike but different.  Yesterday we saw Lorraine and Sam ordained as priests and Jonathan as a deacon.  I’ll return for a…

  • Ar Daith – Labyrinth style

    Ar Daith – Labyrinth style

    Yesterday whilst standing in the middle of a labyrinth looking out over the sea towards a forest of windmills I felt a deep sense of calm, of protection and of safety.  It was midsummer yesterday.  We gathered on the beach for Forest Church, neither in a forest or a church! but still Forest Church –…

  • The fourth person of the Trinity?

    The fourth person of the Trinity?

    And so on Trinity Sunday we reflect on the godhead of the Christian faith, alternatively the mathematical impossibilities of three in one and one in three.  That which few understand and fewer share, yet the part which is present in pretty much every liturgy – God: Father, Son and Spirit as if rising from the…

  • Riding the wings of Wild Geese

    Riding the wings of Wild Geese

    Riding the wings of Wild Geese, AKA filled with the Holy Spirit.  Tongues of fire is a phrase that comes to my mind most often when I have just had a particularly lively plate of chilli rather than making me think about the Holy Spirit – sad to say, but true.  Other images we might…

  • Look up is the new Look Down

    Look up is the new Look Down

    ‘Look up’ is the new ‘Look down’.  Just as oil is the new slavery, pale is the new tan, Sugar is the new fat, television is the new reality, knitting is the new rock ‘n’ roll, Mission area is the new Deanery and everything it seems is the new black.  (See “the diagram” click on…

  • Are we worshipping at the altar of the ‘unknown god’ ?

    Are we worshipping at the altar of the ‘unknown god’ Look how many gods there are in our market place. gods for instant gratification, gods for the greedy, gods of indulgence, gods of nationalism, gods with all the answers, gods of magic, gods of institutions, gods to bolster the political system, gods to support the…

  • breaking the walls of fear

    breaking the walls of fear

    I finally heard my first Cuckoo of the year this last week as the Clychau’r Gog (Bluebells – lit. Cuckoo bells) ring in her arrival in glorious carpets of blue.  The arrival of the cuckoo seemed to inspire a number of welsh plant names whose emergence is timed with the arrival of our elusive spring…

  • Trains, Chips & Pilgrimages

    Trains, Chips & Pilgrimages

    I’m sorry not to be joining the pilgrims on the train tomorrow, First Class, Heritage Diesel engine and rolling stock, what’s not to like?  And I’m also sorry not to be going to Glasgow itself.  The big smoke has many delights, the least of these, the chippy round the corner from Central station by the…

  • Where there’s doubt there’s faith

    I remember making someone cry – not the baby at the baptism, that’s far too easy! I suggested once at a youth group that those who did not have any doubts about their faith whatsoever were really kidding themselves and if they would want to grow in faith then a good deal of doubting would…

  • Jesus, the Stubborn Loaf: Still rising

    Jesus, the Stubborn Loaf: Still rising

    We’re going to get to the end of the story of the Devil wears Prada, or at least the point at which the film ends, but first I think an explanation or two might be required: Perhaps it was a typo, he meant to write risen, but missed and got rising instead.  No.  Rising is…