Still-to-come, coming…

Posted on by
Reply

I have been writing some things for an up and coming Aoradh Wilderness retreat. We are heading off to the McCormaig Islands at the head of Loch Sween in a few weeks- 12 of us this year, and so I have been preparing some resources.

Here is part of a set of dispatches…

You are wrapped up in me

And I am bound up in you

.

We are held together by soft binding

Like tender shoot and stake

Like gift and gift giver

Like mud and gentle rain

Like worn shoe and weary foot

Like hot tea and cracked pot

.

Like universe and all those flickering stars

Like ocean and rolling wave

Like field and each tender blade of grass

 

There is now

And there is our still-to-come

.

Coming

 

Family road trip…

Posted on by
Reply

We are home after a rather exhausting trip round the country, visiting family.

First my brother and his wife, and little Jaimie at their new home in Haddington, below Edinburgh. Then down to Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire to see our wider family. It was lovely to see them all-

Michaela’s mum and my Mum.

My sister and her family. (Including a lovely night sat round a fire singing songs in their garden.)

Michaela’s brother and sister.

And her dad and his wife.

Then a trip down to Towcester to deliver Emily, who is off on a sailing trip on the Norfolk broads.

Then home via a wee party in Lancashire with some old friends.

Throw in some decorating, DIY, shopping trips and a lovely service in Derby Cathedral with some other old friends, and no wonder we are tired.

Tonight we will sleep soundly in our own beds…

Yesterday was Michaela’s birthday. We went on a trip to a public hall in South Normanton, where there was a display of local historical photographs- including this one, of Michaela’s paternal grandmother and great aunt, pushing two of her aunts in prams back in 1938.

 

We took this photograph- of three generations of Michaela’s family- her father (and wife Janet,) along with his sister Mavis (one of the babies in the prams above) then Michaela and her brother Chris, finally William.

Family is important. The threads that hold us all are stretched over long distances now, but it was a good journey…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Good Book- AC Grayling…

Posted on by
Reply

A C Grayling, secular humanist/atheist has taken it upon himself to re-write the Bible- as a secular, moral document. It seems his motivation was to make available the ‘good’ stuff whilst editing out the ‘God’ stuff.

Fair play to the bloke, people have accused me of the same. The whole emerging church conversation has often been accused of sanitising the unpleasant judgmental side of the Bible in favour of a more accessible and cuddly message.

I do not agree with either Grayling, or the assessment of EC critics of course…

Because the God we encounter in the stories of the Bible is capricious, glorious, confusing, challenging, forgiving, condemning, war making, peace bringing. Because of this, no matter how hard we try, systematising and defusing our ideas of God always fail.

It might be possible to read the Bible as a book of moral fables, of quaint historical interest, but also vaguely character building in indefinable ways. You will have to ignore whole bits of the Bible to do this of course, and along the way may come to wonder whether the Bible can be regarded as ‘moral’ at all.

What makes the Bible vital, engaging and alive is the spine tingling possibility of- God. What transforms the reading of the Bible is the fact that we use it to approach- God.

Without God- there would seem very little point in reading this miscellany of stories of ancient people.

So sorry AC- I will not be reading your ‘Good book’, I will stick to my not so good one, in all its messy challenge.

But then you did not expect me to do anything else did you?