What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Francistide at St Mary’s

    Today is St Francis’s Day – love and blessings to all Franciscans out there and a special thanksgiving for the ministry of the new Pope.

    Last year I was in St Francis’s own city – not Assisi, but San Francisco and was blessing animals on the labyrinth of Grace Cathedral with Gene Robinson. (No, really, there’s a lovely macaw out there somewhere who can tell you it is all true).

    The focus at St Mary’s this year for Francistide is tomorrow (Saturday).

    We’ve an animal blessing service at 11 am tomorrow. All pets and their humans are welcome.

    Then in the afternoon, we’ve got a Choir Concert – free entry, donations at the end. This will include a performance of Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo starring the Young Church as the animals.

    They’ve been working on this, I gather:

    noah

One response to “Eid, Pride and Abraham’s Sacrifice”

  1. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    As one who grew up(?) in churches leaning toward the view “it’s a tough story for a tough world, how else would God be just?” in varying degrees, I agree the face-value-narrative understanding of the story is repellant.

    One thing stood out for the first time during Sunday’s reading: the plurality in Abraham’s line – “…and we will return to you”. I’ve been idly wondering about that since.
    It doesn’t make the story wholly acceptable as Abraham still ploughs on ever closer.
    But if one’s goal is to find a “by faith, Abraham” in there, better to say it’s the prior confidence that things will somehow work out well (which I thought was how Hebrews was trying to define it), than to locate the commendable quality in violence (which, by rabbiting on about resurrection, Hebrews does).

    In the absence of other clear & wholly mitigating contexts in which to place the story, certainly it’s simplest, easiest and probably best to file it under “that’s how they saw God back then” and move swiftly on.

    Oofft.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.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

Previous Posts

  • One line TV Reviews

    More a shame than shameless Shilpa to win Right in the thick of it

  • If you want to get ahead roll a hat

    I’ve been wearing a hat rather a lot recently, though the day began with the wind whipping it off my head and rolling it down Great Western Road. I rolled after it at great western speed and eventually caught up with it, thus allowing the following snippet of conversation later in the day: Diocesan Secretary:…