New Kid on the Blog

Here's the second article I wrote for our local Times Colonist newspaper. I think I'll reproduce the whole thing here - but do go have a look at the site, there's lots of interesting and stimulating pieces on the Spiritually Speaking Blog from a variety of contributors. Link here . Over the weekend it was, as always, my privilege to publish some thoughts in Faith Forum under the title ‘Finding God is not as hard as you might think”. I’ve been grateful to those in my own faith community of The Anglican Church of St John the Divine who responded with encouragement to the ‘thinking out loud’ that makes up such articles, as well as those who on social media have shared, replied, and offered thoughtful reflection on what I wrote. One response, however, has particularly stuck with me, asked at the social time following our Church service on Sunday – “I really liked what you said about finding God, but what I really want to know is how to have a relationship with God....

Here's an article I wrote last week for the local paper, the Times Colonist. Rather than putting the full text here I'm going to put the link up and invite y'all to go visit! https://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/blogs/spiritually-speaking/finding-god-is-not-as-hard-as-you-think-1.23939156

As the wind whistles around my blog and the tumbleweeds blow up the street you may be forgiven for thinking that I have given up on blogging altogether. I haven't, honest, and I do try and get around and visit as many of the blogs I link to as possible as frequently as possible! I still value the insight and food for thought I get from my blog buddies, I like the challenges I read from those who see things differently to me and I wish I had more time to offer my own reflections here for those who are kind enough to respond and react. It comes down to time - blogging takes thought and time (though you may not think so looking at the quality of some of my previous posts!). I have discovered that the time I have for blogs and twitter and Facebook, all of which I enjoy and appreciate, has had to take a back seat to the other things which fill my life - particularly my Ministry, my family and my friends. I am sure you'll all be pleased at my attempts to have some kind of work/li...

Yep, as previous mentioned, once I get going I do tend to say a lot! Firstly I have discovered I am in the top twenty twitterers in the Twurch of England - not sure it means much, except that I have never been in a top twenty of anything before, so am pleased about that - am also in good company, with the Archbishop of York at number one, Bishop Alan Wilson at number two and number three the informative, intelligent and grace-full Maggi Dawn... You can find the list here . Next another 'thought for the week' - don't be anxious about them coming out at one a day at the moment, I have only been doing it a few weeks for the Midweek Herald, so I will run out in a couple of days... Then I will post them as they are published once a week. This one was published just after the New Year; here goes... “Time flies”, “running out of time”, “don’t have enough time”, “too many jobs too little time”, “if only there were more hours in the day”. In our world today we so often find ours...

Might as well get these passed on... Feedback allowed, too late to change them now as they have all been published, but what the hey.... This was printed at the New Year New Year – New you? It’s that time of year when resolutions are made to be broken! Advertisers go into top gear trying to get us to diet, give up smoking, drinking or whatever or to take up something new. We all feel the need to improve and do better and New Year gives us a time to make a new start; remember though whatever you decide to do God loves you as you are. There is always room for improvement, but as St Paul writes in the letter to the Romans “God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us”. The life of faith seeks to lead us to perfection, which admittedly might not happen this side of heaven, but God’s love for us is there no matter who or what we are. God loves you, love yourself, love others.

This was the first of my thoughts for the week, you may be overwhelmed by these for the next few days then very rarely hear from me! These appear in a local East Devon newspaper called the Midweek Herald . It's a rather good local paper, though admittedly I have a vested interest in it! This appeared in the week before Christmas: God with us. When people ask me about what Christmas means I can easily start spouting about a hundred thoughts a minute to do with the often complicated ideas that we Clergy are prone to spout. But being a Devon boy reminds me that some of the most powerful truths in life are the most simple and straightforward, or as advertising companies say “K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple, Stupid”. The one simple truth that stands out at Christmas is that God loved us, and loves us, so much that he sent his son to be one of us. Jesus is God with us – not up on a cloud, who can’t understand what it is like to laugh, weep, hunger, thirst, get angry or suffer. God with us, o...

In a supreme irony, it only seems like yesterday when I resolved to keep blogging! And here I am two months later wondering why I stopped for so long... and wondering why, at nearly quarter to two in the morning I am here now. The truth is that I have thought often about things to say but not been sure how to say them. A few things have hit me in the past couple of months and I've not been sure about what to say about them. First of all was the death of George, one of those who was always so enthusiastic and supportive about me keeping up a blog, George died of the cancer he had been fighting for some years, long before I was privileged to meet him. I feel guilty that the weeks before he died were so busy that I didn't get to see him, and the end came (mercifully) quickly, and surprised us all. George's death was surrounded and followed by a number of other funerals, some of which were quite difficult. Death is never easy, but some circumstances compound the pain and hu...

I have continued my series of articles on 'Demystifying the Church' and think it's time to catch up with what has gone into the local 'Parishes Paper' which serves these five villages. The first one is from February, sorry for delay in posting. Anyway, the link to the posting is to my New Kid Deep Stuff sister blog.... Demystifying Church parts two & three!

I've done it again, I've signed up again with NaNoWriMo in an effort to kickstart my writing by trying to put together a novel in a month, now how that fits with everything else is a bit of a mystery to me at the moment, but it might happen! Alongside that, as November is obviously going to be some kind of miraculous time-stretching kind of month I've also committed to post daily in November. NaBloPoMo is the name of this new experiment I've been daft enough to sign up to...click on the button on the right hand side to see what that's about... And in December I plan to have a nice lie down, though something tells me it might not be the quietest month to try that.... Oh, having messed up the Cindra competition I have submitted another entry - though I'm not going to say which one this time! They're all here , read through and vote for one, go on, you know you want to... And now for one last set of full stops...

This one is for the local magazine for this village, part of a whole load of 'demystifying' articles I have done... Perhaps I will post some of the others if things stay busy like they are for a bit. More of the Easter Mystery Last year, around this time, I tried to say a little bit about what happens in Church around Good Friday and Easter. Rather than going over the same ground again, this year I want to talk about Palm Sunday and the days which follow it, though it will be leading up to Easter Day again! Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter. On that day we remember that Jesus entered into the city of Jerusalem not as a King would be expected to do, with an entourage, chariots and great white horses, but humbly and riding on a donkey. The people who knew who he was still proclaimed him to be a great person and laid their cloaks and branches from Palm trees down on the ground in front of him , as there was no ‘red carpet’ available, which is why we call it ‘Palm Sunday’....

Heading says it all really. But this is not just with regards to putting a post up, but concerning a funeral talk i have to prepare for tomorrow. It has been quite a wait (nearly two weeks) but we have the funeral of the lad killed in a road incident tomorrow and having spent the morning putting the shape of the service together i am now trying to get some thoughts together. It isn't often i suffer from writers/speakers block on such an occasion but today the thoughts aren't flowing. It's not that i have nothing to say, but almost that i have too much... Will have some breakfast (not got around to that yet) then go and visit the family, perhaps that will help. Is it just me or does the word 'siezing' not look quite right in my post heading a couple of days ago? Seizing doesn't look right either, but my spell check tells me this is correct. Perhaps i should have checked before posting! Can't be bothered to change it, to be honest. Comment, if you like.....

So much for getting a Novel written in November! Everything went pear-shaped at the start of the month and i never really recovered, so i am stuck with 1500 words going nowhere and the month is over, c'est la vie. Expressions of sympathy and/or berations will be accepted...

Thanks to melodrameric for the comment on my last post - asking what the novel is all about. What can I say? I couldn't do deep (as offered by melodrameric in my last request for ideas) in a month, and the advice for us beginners is 'write what you know' so, guess what, its about a Vicar, who's a biker, and who writes. It's meant to be funny, bit of romance perhaps, bit of a reflection about this odd life that ministers are called to, but who knows, it's all coming out at random at the moment and like most things in my life it is unplanned and pretty well unprepared, i just want to have a go at it. Still stuck at 1000 words, not because of any kind of block, but because time is limited at the moment. Got an hour now, though, so need to get on with it... here we go

National Novel Writing Month has begun and i have made a start, a pitiful, vague and almost unreadable start, but a start nonetheless... so 1000 words down and 49000 to go - er um Don't expect to see a huge amount of me over the coming weeks... You can always email me, or leave a comment (which will then be emailed to me) or go and visit pointlessdrivelchurch.org and hear my dulcet tones as i spout about all sorts of things but don't make much sense on our podcast over there... see ya

Yes, I am still in my office and still trying to get all my tidying and admin done before going out visiting later this afternoon! So, the obvious bit in the title is about me continuing with the avoidance tactics and adding another blog post. Was amazed by the speed and depth of the response from melodrameric to my slightly flippant post about novel writing, now that is a good idea! Not sure i have the chutzpah to pull something like that off, though, i was thinking in terms of the riotous adventures of a hairy biker clergyman - perhaps too autobiographical? Well, it wouldn't be that autobiographical as i don't tend to have riotous adventures. Except of course that life itself is the greatest adventure, or some other greetings card schmaltz like that :-) Now melodrameric has really got me thinking....

NaNoWriMo is looming and having signed up i am experiecing my first ever case of writer's block. So any ideas for a theme, plot, characters gratefully recieved. We could write a shared novel, with me getting the credit, obviously! Ummm, there's probably something in the rules about that.... So, that's me, how are you today?

Have been going over and over the idea of a book for ages now - writing, not reading one, i do plenty of that! On trawling the net i see the title i was thinking of has been taken 'radical orthodoxy' and it exists as a sort of movement which claims not to be a movement already. In some ways i am really pleased, because it combines my own love of patristics and Christian basics with a desire to re-state such Christian foundations for the contemporary world (which is, arguably the role of the Church through history) but in other ways i feel that i rather missed the boat not writing this in 2003 when i first thought of it! Having said this, apparently a collection of essays which kick-started this non-movement called (inventively enough 'radical orthodoxy') came out in 1999, which means my talks at Greenbelt in 2000 & 2001 were on the cutting edge back then! It also means the actual process of putting this onto paper (or rather, commiting it to disc) started well after...

Have i mentioned that i write? I write for a magazine called eChurch active ( www.echurchactive.net ) and have written various bits of poetry and prose for special events and one off magazines. I am still very much clambering up a steep learning curve on this, but it is fun and gets the old creative juices going. When i get around to setting up my website i will post my articles there, but for now here is my latest submission - before publication no less - for 'McCollum's musings' I am a blogger! This is very new and very exciting for me. I have a weblog page which contains my thoughts and grumbles and perhaps even a few profound thoughts. It was the result of a friend called Steve www.svfoster.blogspot.com/ recommending to me the Holy Joes weblog http://holyjoes.blogspot.com/ and inviting me to become a part of this particular online community. I don’t visit it or update it very much, I haven’t quite decided what I should be doing with it or whether it should have some k...