But then, we knew this already.
Add comment December 16, 2008
Surprise visit
We hadn’t seen this chap or any of his family for a good nine months. For a while we wondered whether they’d quietly left the neighbourhood – although a couple of weeks ago, a characteristic track appeared across our front garden…
… tonight it was a delight to have him (her?) snuffling around just a few feet away, whilst we watched from the other side of the back door.
The bread was meant for the birds though – is it ok for badgers to scoff that much? They’re meant to be carnivores aren’t they?
Add comment October 18, 2008
City boy
Ever since moving away from the London suburbs some 5 years ago, I’ve said to anyone who’ll listen that I really enjoyed growing up in the Capital but I really don’t feel drawn to the idea of moving back there.
I wouldn’t say that I’ve that become a convert to country living – ok, part of my pastorate is semi-rural and I’m finding it not as alien as I would once have imagined, but home now is in a town of about 25,000 and I still really value and need the convenience that such an environment affords: the shops (especially the ones that open late), the transport links, and so on.
Still, it’s only since leaving the city that I’ve realised how – well – urban it can be. When I’m there now I find myself quietly grieving for the paucity of trees; subconsciously breathing a little less deeply as if in protest at the polluted air.
How different the experience today, though, when I arrived in another capital city.
I like Edinburgh. I can’t say I know it well – hardly even superficially, for I’ve only been here about 4 or 5 times and rarely with much free time to speak of.
In fact, although it’s only a couple of months since I last passed through, I’d forgotten how much I do like Edinburgh. But after a crowded train journey today, I found myself really glad of the time to walk from the station to our training venue near the Botanic Gardens.
Glad to pass some of the shops that you just don’t get in villages or towns – the department stores and fast food outlets on Princes Street, the piano shop with a striking blue Bechstein upright, the two or three hybrid antique shop/pawnbrokers.
Glad also to find myself on a street called Dundas, and thus to be reminded of my training placement in Toronto and all that I learned there about cultural identity. Glad to notice a shop sign in cyrillic script, and thus to find myself in a place that knows about multicultural living.
I found myself glad not only for the time to walk, but for the fact that I was in a city.
Add comment September 27, 2008
Eucharistic sufficiency
Nothing quite so profound as the post title might suggest – I was just quite intrigued yesterday evening by the fact that, for the second communion service in a row and notwithstanding a bigger-than-usual evening congregation, the stewards had prepared beforehand exactly the right number of little glasses.
There’s a theological reflection in there somewhere…
1 comment August 18, 2008
Theological aphorism of the day
Trying to explain the Trinity is like trying to describe the sound of three hands clapping.
Add comment August 5, 2008
“To the ends of the earth, not to the end of our tethers”
Simon Barrow of Ekklesia writes on the missiological aspect of the current strife in the Anglican Communion. We’ve been here before, he says – as early as the first century CE and the angst between Peter and Paul, between Jewish-Christians and Gentile-Christians:
What does all this have to teach us today? Well, it might suggest to us that Jerusalem isn’t always right – or wrong! It might make us ponder the idea that if we take the Bible seriously, then scriptural precedent… should not become an obstacle to the Good News and to God’s gracious work among those we may have come to think of as unclean or unworthy. The mission of Acts is to the ends of the earth, not to the end of our tethers.
Add comment July 3, 2008
That Doctor Who cliffhanger
Lots of speculation after Saturday’s cracking penultimate episode The Stolen Earth. Is this a genuine regeneration? And if so, who’s going to be the 11th Doctor?
After literally minutes of rigorous conjecture, I believe I have the answer…
A bold move, but the pictures speak for themselves.
3 comments June 30, 2008
Fissiparity
Surely it’s only a matter of time before some biblical archaeologist somewhere uncovers a fragment of parchment with a textual variant for Matthew 18:20…
For where two or three are gathered in my name, there is schism in the midst of them.
Add comment June 25, 2008
Rainbow Cloud
Driving from one meeting to another yesterday lunchtime, my attention was caught by a small, wispy but very bright cloud. It seemed to shine with a green-blue light; over the next few minutes other colours became visible, until all the colours of the rainbow could be seen along its length. Then, after another few minutes, it was gone.
I didn’t have a camera with me, but it looked something like this… only brighter, more vivid.
Its proper name is a circumhorizontal arc, according to the National Geographic:
The arc isn’t a rainbow in the traditional sense—it is caused by light passing through wispy, high-altitude cirrus clouds. The sight occurs only when the sun is very high in the sky (more than 58° above the horizon). What’s more, the hexagonal ice crystals that make up cirrus clouds must be shaped like thick plates with their faces parallel to the ground.
When light enters through a vertical side face of such an ice crystal and leaves from the bottom face, it refracts, or bends, in the same way that light passes through a prism. If a cirrus’s crystals are aligned just right, the whole cloud lights up in a spectrum of colors.
It was a thing of beauty, and the privilege of seeing it was a moment of blessing. Deo gloria!
2 comments June 25, 2008
