Here’s the video from a special Provost’s Forum that I held after the Eucharist today. The topic was my recent sabbatical trip to Canada and the USA. Cedric Blakey was interviewing me and passing on questions from members of the congregation.
Good fun to do and a great set of questions.
Sorry the audio is not better. Anyone who wants to help found a Guild of Geeks to help me do this kind of thing better is very welcome to get in touch.
I think that I’m with you Father K, there is a time and place for everything and a service where the problems of a problematic passage can’t be addressed easily is not the place to read it, lectionary be hanged.
My favourite bits of the Bible are the Song of Songs (which, in the medieval period, was interpreted by both Jews and Christians as an allegory of the soul’s relationship with God); the book of Ruth; the book of Esther; the story of David and Jonathan; Amos & Micah. Most of the New Testament leaves me completely cold, and some of it is actually offensive, especially the account of the silver-smiths of Ephesus, and the way that Paul appropriates pagan poetry in the marketplace of Athens.
I think the solution to your problem is not to read the “difficult” bits without some sort of homily about a better way to understand them, and how to read the Bible in general as a collection of texts situated in a particular historical situation.
This Sunday is one of the strangest of days in Bridge of Allan, being the day of the Strathallan Games – one of the larger Highland Games meets that there is. It is a day when the skirl, yes the skirl, of the pipes can be heard throughout the village as the many pipe bands…
OK – so I wrote a cheeky review of a new edition of the Bible. Then I submitted it for publication. Then my computer gets struck by lightning. Good job I don’t believe …
There is something particularly apposite about reading the story of Abraham at this time of the year. For this is the time of so many journeyings. Holiday pilgrimages to worship the sun have their roots in the great quest – the journey of faith – the search for God. And that all begins, in our…
The good news is that no data was lost during the lightening strike last night. I have managed to extract the hard drive and am currently transferring data from it to the laptop. This is being done with a new gadget – a hard drive to usb caddy. Obtaining one of these meant two trips…
Leave a Reply