As I sit to write this I have been the Vicar of this parish for almost exactly seven years. Seven years ago on 29thJanuary 2014 I was ‘put in’ as the jargon goes. (The official name of the service was ‘collation and induction’, which I continue to feel makes it sound like a buffet on a labour ward.)
Category Archives: Weekly Letter
Be Kind to Everyone – Including Yourself
If you have opportunity to ask people how they are these days, whether by phone or email or video call, the chances are that one word will jump out at you – weary. There is a tiredness, a peculiar kind of tiredness, that has come with the experience of spending much of the last year under a kind of house arrest. It isn’t a physical tiredness, or even a mental one. Whether you’re very busy or don’t have quite enough to do – and there are plenty of people in both camps – the weariness comes not from activity or inactivity but from the constant strain of the pandemic.
Amazing Grace
If you have the BBC iPlayer, you might want to check out the film ‘Amazing Grace’. It’s a documentary about the making of Aretha Franklin’s album of the same name.
All Shall Be Well
My brother sent me a joke earlier this week. “After my free seven-day trial I am returning 2021 as it has not lived up to my expectations.”
Happy New Year!
The Weekly Letter will resume next week. In the meantime, Happy New Year everyone.
The Crib and the Cross
Merry Christmas everyone!
A Different Kind of Hope
Back in the early summer I had a notion that we might be able to restore our normal pattern of worship around the middle of the autumn. It seemed like a conservative hope at the time. Yet here we are at Christmas with Covid cases rising once more, restrictions still in place in what we are permitted to do in church, and the spectre of a third national lockdown haunting us. It’s an odd time to be writing about hope.
St John the Baptist
I’ve always had an affection for St John the Baptist. He seems to me to be precisely the sort of earnest but sour person we need to set against the prevailing culture of impulsive, consumerist religion that we find in the world around us.
New Ministries
As we mentioned in the notices last week, this weekend marks the beginning of two new ministries in our Parish.
Hope and Imagination
I’ve spent much of the past month wrestling with minor illnesses. While this has been irritating and not especially pleasant, it has had a couple of benefits. The first is that I have been very grateful not to have caught the Coronavirus. Anything that encourages gratitude is a blessing. The second is that I have been able to watch a few Netflix shows that I would probably not have found time for otherwise.