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The Three mile an hour God One of the things I miss about my work as a minister is visiting people in their homes.  For me each visit was like a gift of time and hospitality which enriched me greatly…many thanks!   The gift of hospitality is one of our most precious gifts because it says that we value the other person.  This does not mean always opening our home, but can just by stopping in the street and taking time to slow down enough to listen to each other.   Hospitality is creating a space for another person and in the bible we find a God who also wants to create a space for us. A Japanese Theologian, Kosuke Koyama once called God the “Three miles an hour God”.    Love has its speed.  It is a spiritual speed.  It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed.   It goes in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, at three miles an hour.  It is the speed we wal...

The privilege of being taken for granted. (On our departure for Sri Lanka) We have just been told that we can now meet with people from another household.     There will be a lot of benefit from this because nearly all research shows that people who mix with others tend to be happier.    Human contact with friends and family is built into our DNA and psyche and is a vital part of our mental well-being and happiness.   As we draw towards the end of mental health awareness week such a relaxing of restrictions could not have come at a better time. So, what are you looking forward to most about meeting up again with people you love and care for?    There is so much extra joy in the anticipation, don’t wish this coming week away but savour the waiting and the expectation of sharing finally face to face, even if you can’t hug!    Think of all you appreciate about this person, what makes them so unique, what their gift to the world is...

                              Like many teenagers 'Lord of the Flies' was part of my reading list for O'level English.  I n this modern parable William Golding's rather depressing view of human nature portrays civilised values being brutally replaced by something much darker and violent.    Research over the last 20 years into human behaviour in times of crisis has revealed that people will usually respond with solidarity and support rather than selfishness and violence.   A book coming out next week called 'Human Kind: a hopeful history' sketches out some of this more positive view of human nature and our prospects for the future. In this book the author writes of how he hears of a story of a group of teenage boys from Tonga who were stranded for 15 months in 1965  on a Pacific island in almost identical circumstances to Golding's novel and interviews them (now...

75 years ago saw almost a million people gather in London to rejoice at the end of the war in Europe.   BBC reporter Howard Marshall was among the crowds. "The entire space, the whole scene is one dense mass of people in the gayest colours.    "Still," he added, "the feeling is one of thanksgiving rather than of celebration, a quiet and deep joyousness.   Meanwhile BBC’s Denis Johnston arrived at Hitler's Bavarian retreat at Berchtesgaden. In his dispatch, he seems subdued. He had been reporting on the war for three years and is audibly struggling to grasp that it is, in Europe at least, over at last. "It's rather hard to know what to say," he says. "There have been so many false dawns. We are quite unprepared. And in San Francisco, a young reporter called Alistair Cooke described a much more subdued atmosphere. "San Francisco is certainly relieved that it doesn't have to go on looking over its shoulder at the deaths of...

Clapping One of the great verses in the bible is in Isaiah where the writers says that one day when they return from their own version of a 70 year lockdown in exile ' the trees of the field will clap their hands and we'll go out with joy.'   A wonderful image of even nature overflowing with joy at the return of the people of Israel.   s Like most of you we have been clapping along with our neighbours on Thursday evenings.  I actually missed the first one as I was on a phone call and hadn’t quite picked up it was ‘a  thing’ and totally forgot.   It’s been good to do since then and not least as it is a way of seeing our neighbours and actually feeling a bit more connected than usual.  And then there’s the ‘who is going to stop clapping first’ bit you get to after 3 or 4 minutes and your hands are beginning to feel numb.  Ina has put in our window a picture of all the key workers we are clapping for and hope that the postie and the bin m...