Last October I wrote about the contrast afforded by a dead tree. It was an old friend but the time has come for change; it has been cut down and the stump pulled out. It was probably becoming dangerous and was certainly in the way of farm machinery. Someone has gained a useful supply of…

I grew up within an hour’s drive of ‘Big Ben’. Before the days of congestion charging or any proper understanding of the damage done by pollution caused by internal combustion engines, we used to go by car to concerts in London. It took about an hour to get to the Royal Festival Hall and just…

Reindeer feature in our lives from the earliest years of faith; not our Christian Faith but our faith in the arrival of Father Christmas, or whatever the benevolent giver of Christmas presents is called in your family. The arrival of the mysterious gift giver is partially dependent on the good behaviour of the child, in…

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…