· stillpoint ·

  This year, All Saints Day, or ‘All Hallows’ falls on a Sunday.   The day is known to the rest of the world as November 1 st , the start of another month, another rotation of the earth in its’ journey around the sun.    I do love the ring of ‘All Hallows’ though, that echo of an ancient story, a continuous narrative arc through the centuries,   of Christians who have gone before us and tried to live out their faith in their time.    The church of course has lots of Saints Days for all the premier league saints, but there are so many obscure and less well known saints and this day celebrates their lives.     There is a richness and connectivity that “November 1 st” doesn’t quite have.    The difference lies, I believe, in the music that those Christians were listening to, the beat that guided and sustained their lives, often through far greater troubles and fears than we will ever have to face.   I am going to have to co-o...

  Today Ina and I are heading out yet again to the Trossachs, drawn once more by the autumn colours and this time a walk amongst the birches of Loch Lomond.   Each weekend comes round and I can usually adjust my day off to the Friday or the Saturday depending on the weather so that we can make the most of the shortening days.      Beauty catches our breath again and again as we come round a bend and walk into a cascade of colour, or catch a panoramic view of ridges unfolding, or notice a glade of ferns -a home for the fair folk.   Time and again we find ourselves loitering, noticing, revelling in the gift of this unique moment of cloud, light, shade, heather, bracken and slow turning of the season.    You really can’t move until the show is over.    I’m reading Henry Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ which as some of you will know is the reflections of a young man in the late 19 th Century who lives in a homemade cabin for two years by Walden p...

  We have just finished praying our way through the Beatitudes at Tuesday evening prayer and are around half way through studying them together on the Pilgrim Course.   They remain immensely challenging and inspiring after 20 centuries.   One of the themes that run through them is that appearances can deceive and that we can sometimes find blessing in the unsought for and undervalued experiences of our lives.    These can include mourning, hunger, poverty of spirit and so on. As we were discussing this recently someone shared with us these insights from the Mahatma who said once that if more Christians were like their master the whole world would be Christian!   Gandhi's 7 Dangers to Human Virtue : 1 - Wealth Without Work 2 - Pleasure Without Conscience 3 - Knowledge Without Character 4 - Business Without Ethics  5 - Science Without Humanity  6 - Religion Without Sacrifice  7  - Politics Without Principle I share...

The tranquility of the shopping street was shattered one sunny morning by the yelping of a dog and a strange metallic clattering.    Suddenly a crazed greyhound came scrabbling around the corner, weaving between shoppers hotly pursued by a cheap chrome bistro chair.    The chair which was attached by the other end of the dog’s lead, seemed alive like a dancing snake weaving and flailing, striking and biting at that terrified animal’s rear.    A movement must have made that chair twitch, which made the dog jump, which had made the chair leap, which had made the dog run pursued by a terrifying piece of metal.   The faster the dog ran the wilder the chair’s pursuit.   (Peter Greig, How to Pray, p36). This funny story illustrates Pete’s point that we can live our lives sometimes like the demented greyhound, driven and disoriented by irrational fears, pursued by packs of bloodthirsty bistro chairs, too scared to simply stop.      Wit...

  I was out walking the dog yesterday when I met one of the young mums from our messy church who I hadn’t seen for quite a while.   She’s working from home and will be for quite some time to come and, being an outgoing kind of person, misses the office chat and relational side of things.   Having a dog gets her out of the house, but otherwise she would be home 12/13 hours a day. Her husband has not been able to see his parents in the south of England as they have been shielding and with his sister in America he feels the distance.   Their lovely wee lass has settled back into school again but didn’t find it easy at the start as she had been away for so long.    Just a glimpse of a fairly normal family dealing with the fallout of Covid and trying to keep the show on the road. As I was turning away she said, ‘oh by the way we have started our own business’.   Now, being deaf, I thought I’d misheard her, but sure enough so they have.    They...