The Bishop’s Bicentenary Dear friends Bishop Shute Barrington died in London two hundred years ago last month, at the grand old age of ninety two. He had been the Lord Bishop of Durham for thirty five years, the Bishop of Salisbury before that, the Bishop of Llandaff (that’s Cardiff) before that, and a Canon of both St Paul’s and St George’s, Windsor.…
Dirty Church Dear friends, However you care to describe it (Scruffy Church, Grubby Church, Messy Church?) Checkendon Church needs some tender loving care right now in the sprucing-up department. Please join me this coming Saturday from 10am-12noon for a spot of hoovering, mopping, polishing, dusting, tidying, pruning, sweeping, weeding and edging. All ages and stages are very welcome! Please bring your choice…
The old sea mine Dear friends, As a child, my sister and I would sometimes be taken by our parents for a “Saturday outing”, which was invariably Gravesend. This was a twenty minute drive from our village, up the one in four Vigo Hill to the join the Wrotham Road at the top of the North Downs, and then follow this old…
The Holy Sepulchre Dear friends, It is Holy Week. Bu the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is closed, along with all the pilgrim sites in the Old City, due to the threat from Iranian missile strikes. Christian communities in the Holy Land once again face a severely restricted Easter. Clergy are making preparations for limited services to be conducted online.…
The Lost Garden Dear friends, I wonder if you know where the Garden of Eden is? Whilst it might be hard to put a cross on the map, as far as the Bible goes, the garden of Eden could be anywhere between the pointy bits of the “Fertile Crescent” – comprising the currently most contested parts of the Middle East, with the…
Simple Gifts Dear friends “Simplicity is the only thing that can sufficiently reorient our lives so that possessions can genuinely be enjoyed without destroying us.” So wrote Richard Foster in the 1970’s. Outside my window the blue tits come close and flutter noisily, sometimes bashing the pane with their wings. They want me to notice that the fat balls have all gone,…
Looking sideways Dear friends, I remember the cycling proficiency lady that came to our Primary School who impressed upon us all the life saving need to look in every single direction including behind you, when negotiating traffic on a bicycle, and especially at road junctions. “Right, left, right again, ahead and behind, then do it again!” I feel the world could do…
A greeting Dear friends “Peace be with you” we say to one another. It is a formal liturgical greeting in our services, when we will often add “(The) peace (of the Lord) be (always) with you.” This greeting not only goes back to the earliest church, but it reflects one of the deepest human desires – in the end, we tire of…
Welsh Fire Dear friends Gifted speakers change lives. They can both motivate, and inspire. A few well chosen and carefully thought words can make all the difference, for both good, or ill. This last week America mourned the death of the Revd Jesse Jackson, whose life and mission was spent carrying the torch passed to him by Martin Luther King. It is…
Pray for Ezekiel Dear friends, Sometimes it is easier to pray for just one person than a whole country. So, may I ask you to pray this week for Ezekiel Kondo, the Anglican Archbishop of Sudan? He and his team have recently been able to return to Khartoum from their enforced internal exile at Port Sudan. The civil war in Sudan has…