• Fireworks for the Feast of St John

    Today is the Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist. (We only celebrate three birthdays in the church calendar – John the B, his cousin Jesus and Mary, Mother of Our Lord and Aunty of John the B).
    I’ve been on retreat for the last week – something I last did 2 years ago. It has been very good too, looking at wounded healers – Henri Nouwen, Brother Roger, Mychal Judge and John O’Donohoe.
    The town that I’ve been staying in goes rather large on celebrating the Eve of  the Feast of St John, so we got a firework display just before midnight, a big fire by the sea and the local population all turning up to dip their feet into the water at midnight.
    Anyway, here are a few firework photographs. It was a great retreat week and this was a rather spectacular conclusion.

    image

    image

    image

One response to “For the Bible Tells Me So”

  1. Rosemary Hannah Avatar
    Rosemary Hannah

    Personally, I’ve never had a problem with churches – my last church knew my son as a person and if anybody did have reservations they were not going to voice them about one of their own to one of their own – most members of the congregation were totally OK as one would expect.

    What I have occasionally had problems with: the occasional Christian saying something which made me yearn for a pick axe, like ‘but one day we will cure homosexuals’ (over my dead body do you cure my son of being himself. Take this literally for the good of your own health.)
    ‘Most of this congregation are wholly accepting of gay Christians. Of course I can see it is more difficult if it is your own child’. (Only different in so far as it is better, sonny)

    It should not be an issue. Except perhaps outside the church. I clean for a lovely elderly couple. Mrs is eagerly awaiting further news of my outfit for son’s civil union in the summer – she lives in terror of Mr saying something crashingly tactless. I wish I could say something to reassure her that I know Mr is just about as tactful as I am, and he is forgiven beforehand. No offence meant and none taken as ’twere.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • Every breath we drew was hallelujah

    Frankly, I prefer the versions by Mr Buckley and Mr Handel to this nonsense from the X-Factor. And all people of good taste agree with me.

  • Glasgow Terror Attack Broadcast

    There have been two things recently which have very strongly reminded me of the service which was broadcast on Radio 4 from St Mary's on 1 July 2008. Firstly, one of those responsible has just been found guilty in an English court. Reading the reports of the court case has been unnerving. It is hard…

  • Advent 3

    Here is this morning’s sermon in video. I’ll add the text later when I have access to it. UPDATE Here is the text: I want you to use your imagination this week and use it to answer a question that I have for you to think about during the week ahead. – It is this…

  • Myers-Briggs Blog Analysis

    Here is a wheeze. Type a blog url into this webpage and it will attempt to analyse the style of the writing in terms of the Myers-Briggs typology. It gets me bang on. Although I used to identify as an introvert in the first half of life, I think that those days are long gone.…