Category Archives: Uncategorized

Yes Lent is a time of repentance, a time when we acknowledge our sinfulness and ask forgiveness for our sins.  It’s also traditionally a time when we “give up” something.  When we deny ourselves a pleasure – and take it … Continue reading →

It’s hard to know how I would respond if a member of my family were murdered.  I say “respond” because I’m sure that my initial “reaction” would be one of shock and disbelief that this had happened, followed by grief … Continue reading →

“I have a lot of commitments this week”, is a phrase we use when we are facing a busy week.   It says, “I am really busy, so I have little time for anything else.  My time is taken up with … Continue reading →

I like the concept of “lovingkindness” – yes it’s joined up like that in the Authorised Version of the Bible.  I think of it as compassion in action. Compassion arising from empathy, that ability to see and feel the world … Continue reading →

“It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘try to be a little kinder.’” So said … Continue reading →

Christmas and New Year are often a time of recollection, reflection, and a bit of nostalgia. Family stories re-told round the dinner table, or by the fire.  Re-lived in the telling.  Stories with a meaning for those involved.  Family myths … Continue reading →

How will you your Christmas keep? With a family of four in two rooms.  No space, no privacy, no room to breathe.  Or in a tent in the derelict doorway of the once upon a time John Lewis store. Or … Continue reading →

We had a Congregational chapel in our village, but in all my 25 years living there I never saw inside it.  We were C. of E.  In my teenage years I had a Quaker girlfriend.  There was never a word … Continue reading →

Words can be enlightening.  They can also limit our deeper understanding.  It’s natural for us to explain, to solve, to work things out through words.  But this keeps us in our head and in the realm of ideas and some … Continue reading →

What we focus on expands and grows and any emotion attached to it increases and intensifies.  It’s easy to overload ourselves with negative input by what we notice around us, by what we watch, what we listen to and by … Continue reading →