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Monthly Archives: February 2014

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Sermon for Sunday, 2nd March 2014

For the fainthearted . . .

“Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here ” Matthew 17:3

On 2nd December 1985, I remember going to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral for the Advent carol service. It was a fine afternoon; the last beams of a watery, winter sun shone through the windows and ,as the light died, the air was cut by the voice of a boy chorister. The service was an occasion of astonishing beauty, a moment when we were gathered up from our mundane, worldly existence and taken up to …

The land of Arthur

For the fainthearted . . .

The English architect sitting in the Dublin pub came from Somerset and not only did he come from Somerset, he knew the villages I called home and he knew Glastonbury.

Glastonbury was the centre of the world when I was a child; the stories with which we grew up made it the most important place in Britain. It was a place that resonated with hope of a different and a better world.

The Arthurian stories promised heroes who would again ride forth and right all wrongs. Layamon’s Brut from c.1200, …

Bang Bang, you’re still alive

For the fainthearted . . .

As we sat in Fallon’s pub, eating toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches, our companion said, “There’s Bang Bang”.

“There’s who?” we asked.

“Bang Bang”, he said, pointing at a picture of a man, hanging on the wall of the snug. “He used to have an old church key that he pretended was a gun and he would pretend to shoot at people with it. He would stand on the platform at the back of buses and he would “shoot ” at people on the pavement, and , he was so …

February Sermon Series: What do we really believe about . . . the church?

For the fainthearted . . .

“I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” Matthew 16:18

When people talk about the “church” what do they mean? Perhaps it is one or other of two things, “church” can mean some vaguely defined organisation that is “out there” somewhere, or it can mean something very local and precise, a particular building in a particular place that is attended by particular people. Two very different understandings, both of which lead people to beliefs about the church that are very far from the church …

How to become invisible

For the fainthearted . . .

I think I understand, now, how the woman walked through the riot, I had often wondered about her.

I saw her on television one Saturday evening in the early 1990s as, I sat watching the BBC Northern Ireland news. There had been trouble in North Belfast, disturbances on the streets and the throwing of bricks and petrol bombs. The rioting was in daylight and the BBC news cameras, positioned behind a row of grey RUC Land Rovers, showed youth wearing balaclavas, or with handkerchiefs tied across their faces, showering the …

You are closing down your town

For the fainthearted . . .

There is probably a clinical term for feeling excessive empathy towards a person, particularly towards a stranger of whom one knows nothing. Passing a shop premises which has its fourth different business in four years, there was an overwhelming sense of sadness at looking in the window and seeing it devoid of customers and the shopkeeper sat at the cashdesk and looking glum. It wasn’t even as though I could have gone in and bought something, his stock was the military and fantasy figures used in games played by teenage …

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