Tag: Lent

  • Searching for the garden

    Searching for the garden

    The blackthorn is in blossom, the birds are beginning to find their nests once again so spring is, I suppose, upon us as the days begin noticeably to lengthen. WH Auden in his poem ‘For the time being’ writes: “For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it Until…

  • Shaking off the dust on The Way

    Knowing when to stay, knowing when to leave is one of the most challenging invitations for discernment that we will ever encounter and no this is not about the politics shenanigans surrounding the dreaded ‘b’ word.  When is it time to move on, to shake the dust from your feet and to continue on the…

  • Wilderness

    I’ve been reading I, Daniel Blake.  It is a true story, though not real.  The contents of the story are happening all around us, though this particular telling has not actually taken place.  It is in some sense a wilderness book.  It leads us to a place from where there can be no escape if…

  • One Day won't last forever

    One Day won't last forever

    Passion Sunday for me is about being uncomfortable in a comfortable place.  A bolt hole, a place of refuge, a place to go before a difficult encounter.  A favourite cafe.  A bench on a hill.  A place with friends where one can be natural, uninhibited, perhaps.  A place to relax and let the hair down. …

  • One Day – in the City

    One Day – in the City

    So if the wilderness doesn’t get you, perhaps that fox in the city will.  In the reading from Luke today Jesus compares Herod to a fox and the people of Jerusalem as a hen’s brood – Jesus of course is the would be mother hen, protecting the people, but they reject him!  I’ve been slowly…

  • Jesus – Factionless

    So what happens when you don’t fit in? What happens when the society you live in believes you are an outcast or that your face does not fit the picture they would like it to? What happens when a society that nurtured you and brought you into being decides that your views are too radical?…

  • Jesus, Divergent or Abnegation?

    Jesus, Divergent or Abnegation?

    As we begin Lent it is time to go out into the wilderness… And time to begin a new Film – Divergent. At Christmas eve I suggested that to take the cultural temperature of our time we might delve into some teenage fiction.  Well Divergent isn’t a Christmas film, but it is very much a…

  • The Jesus – Jerusalem / Prada – Paris dilemma

    The Jesus – Jerusalem / Prada – Paris dilemma

    I want to offer you an image, a tableaux, a freeze frame image if you like from The Devil Wears Prada.  Andrea is standing in the road with Nate her boyfriend, or I should say, just about to be ex-boyfriend.  She has to make a choice.  She has been offered a chance to go to…

  • The Prada Saga continues: by night…

    The Prada Saga continues: by night…

    Poor Nicodemus.  Perhaps he was the one who arrived at the Rabbi’s meeting late?  Did he lose out on the pulling of straws?  Maybe he wanted to speak to Jesus privately for himself?  Whatever the reason, he seeks out Jesus under cover of darkness and has a truly strange conversation.  Of course when listening to…

  • The devil wears the wilderness well

    The devil wears the wilderness well. Devil attacks when it’s easy – when we are vulnerable and in need.  Our basic desires are attacked with temptation:  Bread for the hungry.  Riches for the poor.  Power for the weak. But is this true:  What is it the hungry truly need, but any meal.  What do the…