Occasionally circumstances are such that it is necessary to go to Court. The reasons vary from being on a jury to being the accused person. There is a difference between a civil case and a criminal case but for all except those working in the judicial system, the process is rather daunting and may even…

At work, when my colleagues talk about resource, or more often than not, the lack of resource, they are often referring euphemistically to time or people. Quite why people find it necessary to say that ‘finding resource is challenging’ when they could say ‘I haven’t got time’ is interesting. Having written about holidays and renewals…

Last week I wrote about holidays, times of rest and battery recharging. I am sure we are all different in this respect but for me, a holiday is a time to let go and recalibrate myself. It is a when I put back into perspective the parts of life that may have got distorted by…

By the time you read this we should be away on holiday, somewhere off the coast of Norway enjoying a trip we had planned, booked and paid for before Covid derailed everyone’s best intentions. I will believe it when we get there, such is the effect of the last two years of changed plans and…

We have been delighted over the last three or four weeks to watch a hummingbird hawk moth busily feeding outside our dining room window while we are feeding inside it. Then I realised something I should have noticed before, namely, bees and other insects busily feeding on flowers do not waste their time coming in…

When we think about slavery we tend to think of the relatively recent past and the dilemmas thrown up by wealth derived from slavery, or we think about modern slavery. All this is about abuse and the curtailment of the lifestyle of one person or group by another person or group. Yes, that is simplistic…

Christine O’Neil’s recent Thought about William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ concluded, ‘Jerusalem is very popular, but is it a hymn?’. I have been thinking about that question ever since, having almost never chosen Jerusalem in over forty years leading worship. Indeed, it is absent from many hymn books. Like many people, I like the rousing tune and…

I am not usually forthcoming in conversations with taxi drivers. When at work I am inclined to be preoccupied with thoughts of the day ahead. Often, in foreign countries, the language barrier precludes discussion. My driver in Helsinki recently was different. It turned out that this man had given up his business because cancer forced…

I have a weakness for overusing the exclamation mark in written exchanges, especially in those short replies that are a feature of social media ‘correspondence’. Punctuation is important, and to over use is to devalue the impact of something that should be more than a throw-away symbol. The same is true of the careless deployment…

In 1789, Benjamin Franklin, a significant figure in early American history, coined a phrase that is still quoted today. He said, ‘Nothing is certain except death and taxes’. Sunday 12th June is Tax Justice Sunday; an opportunity for churches simultaneously to address the two certainties that Benjamin Franklin spoke of. We have a gospel that…