The walking guide that we followed assiduously said, ‘when you reach here you have crossed Foxtor Mire and are alive to tell the tale’. It was probably irresponsible for two people of broadly sound mind to cross a notoriously dangerous Dartmoor bog when there was no compulsion to do so. But what is compulsion when…

The daily bible readings recommended this week (see the centre of the Methodist Prayer Handbook if you have it) are from the book of Ruth. The overall theme for the week is ‘Faith in Providence.’ There are many interwoven themes in Ruth but that of Providence runs through the book. Providence means different things in…

We recently saw a staged adaptation of Herman Melville’s story, ‘Moby Dick’ or ‘The Whale.’ In the version we saw, a small company did an excellent job of evoking the sea, the gore, the fear, and the insanity at the heart of Melville’s tale. Miles from the sea, with no white whale in sight it…

Whenever an old wireless or early television broadcast is replayed it is obvious how much the use of language and valuing of accent and dialect have changed over the years. When we listen to or watch a news broadcast we no longer hear, or even want to hear the same stereotypical ‘BBC voice’. We are…

Thirty years and a fortnight ago I first sat in my study and looked out over the top of the cherry tree in the garden below. Flowers in the winter and leaves in summer have always been there. I moved out when our first baby moved in to ‘his room’, but when he grew up…

Voyager 1 ascended into space in the year in which I was in the lower sixth form at school. Ever since then it has been travelling further and further from our planet and sending back images which have enhanced human understanding of things God knows and sees. By the time my son was the age…

The old fashioned saying from past generations, ‘well I never’ or ‘well I never did’ has always struck me as strange. It seemed a peculiar way of saying, ‘that’s odd’. There are a lot of things ‘I never did’ that are not odd, but perfectly normal for other people. A few evenings ago that changed…

Detail from a window in the parish church of SS Mary and Lambert, Stonham Aspal, Suffolk, with stained glass representing St Mark the Evangelist Today is the feast day of Saint Mark the Evangelist. The reason for the date, according to Wikipedia, is that, ‘He is the founder of the church in Alexandria, Egypt. It is believed that…

Today’s reading from Romans 6:1-14 asks the question, ‘Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase?’. Saint Paul answers the rhetorical question with a resounding ‘no’, going on to explain that that God’s call is to something altogether different. On a long train journey recently I was in the same carriage as a…

In the Bible, God asked Cain the whereabouts of his brother Abel, whom he had murdered. Cain’s brush off response was, ‘I don’t know, am I my brother’s keeper?’” (Genesis 4:9). John Ferguson wrote a hymn (Rejoice and Sing 609) that opens with Cain’s question. It deals with Cain in the first verse, with Pontius…