Recent Posts

Archive

Tags

Healing Through the Fisher King

(Daniel 5; John 6:1-15) "I sat upon the shore fishing, with the arid plains behind me Shall I at least set my lands in order? " (Lines from T S Eliot’s The Waste Land) If Eliot’s words are enigmatic, then ambiguous is the designation of Christ as king. Here is one, after all, who was laid in a manger. Who said, he came not to be served, but to serve. Who was hailed only unequivocally as a king when he hung upon a cross. Yet, we say, his is the name that is above all other names. Who has ascended to the heavens to reign at the right hand of the Father. Whose kingdom will have no end. As providence has it I was exploring again Eliot’s epic modernist poem The Waste Land. And encountered

Good News

(Hebrews 9:24-end; Mark 1:14-22) “After John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.” Good news! We could do with a bit more of that. Because there is an awful lot of bad news around at the moment. There always is, but it seems especially bad at the moment. Globally and nationally. I won’t spell it out, because it’s there all the time on the news. But locally, too, services are in decline, shops are closing, and there are building works and road works everywhere you turn. While a far number of us are coping with our own share of personal or family worries and woes. We could do with some good news! And they probably thought that in Jesus’ day. Look, th

Sensing Loss

It can be hard to talk about. Because there is an inner hurt we’d rather not reveal. And we don’t want to put other people in an embarrassing situation – even those who are most sympathetic. And of course they don’t really know what to say. And don’t want to upset us in return. Death. Even the word itself can be one we want to avoid. So we find other ways of putting it. ‘He’s passed away.’ ‘She’s passed on.’ And those who have died become “the departed.” Of course what these ways of speaking do express is the sense of loss. The tangible presence of the person we knew has indeed departed. Left us. Gone on in some way. The sense of absence is real. An aching void is left. C.S.Lew