September 2008 – Page 2 – For the fainthearted . . .

Unsisterly death

It’s time for the annual rant against Francis of Assisi. To say anything critical of the 13th Century is on a par with saying nasty things about Princess Diana or Mother Theresa, but every year around this time his Canticle of the Sun appears somewhere – at some Saint Francis’ Day celebration or at harvest festival – and gets under the skin.

It’s benign stuff, until the penultimate stanza:

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord,
All praise is Yours, all glory, honour and blessings.
To you alone, Most High, do they

…

When words will not do

Sometimes words just don’t work. There will be some thought, some picture that comes to mind, but as soon as an attempt is made to put it into a sequence of symbols on a page, it gets lost.

W.G Sebald’s novel Austerlitz makes a passing reference to a lady called Enid calling in her cat at night. For a moment there was a sense of absolute security as the reference conjured up a thought of a lady standing at the back door of her house on a warm English summer’s …

Unreliable sources

My friend David Chillingworth writes on his blog of the past pupils of his old school, Portora Royal in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh including Henry Francis Lyte, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett. Being convinced that Wilde had shared an educational background, as well as a year of birth, with Edward Carson, the barrister who outwitted him in the trial of the Marquess of Queensberry, I searched through the pages of Wikipedia. My memory had failed me, Carson had attended the same university, but not the same school. All …

Sermon for Proper 20/25th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2008

Sermon at Saint Matthias’ Church on Sunday, 21st September at 7 pm

“the whole community grumbled ” Exodus 16:2

There is a cartoon that shows Moses standing on dry ground with walls of water on either side of him, waving at the people of Israel to follow and calling out, “What do you mean. ‘It’s a bit muddy?'”

In a humorous way, the cartoon captures Moses’ years of struggle with the Israelites. At every point in the story there seems to be discontent, no doubt there were some among the …

Coping with grief

Bible stories are read so often in church that people stop listening. It is assumed that nothing more is to be heard, that nothing more can be learned. Maybe the problem arises from discontinuity, breaking the material up into chapters and verses, reading so much and then stopping until next Sunday, instead of reading it as you would any other story.

John the Baptist is killed by henchmen of the vicious thug Herod, the consequence of a drunken whim. Many people without the slightest church connection will know the story; …

Sermon for Proper 20/25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sermon at Saint Matthias’ Church at 9 am on Sunday, 21st September

“Without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you”

Philippians 1:28

I attended the induction of the new parish priest of Ballybrack last Sunday lunchtime. Twenty years ago, in the North, attendance at such an event would have been an invitation to abuse and threats from the ‘defenders’ of the Protestant faith. Taking part in cross-community or ecumenical gatherings in the mid-80s used to be fun, not so much because the gatherings themselves were particularly inspiring, …