Well, you know what they say about good intentions and the infernal paving scheme. I have decided that much as I encourage people to be kind to one another AND themselves, I am going to give myself a break and much as I would love to be creating content here regularly and see something of a renewal of this blog, I tend to have many other ways in which I share my thoughts, devotions, and considerations - including the blog at St John the Divine , and on the St John's social media accounts, as well as on my own Socials, and on our Y ouTube Channel . That said, when I have a moment, I will try to drop by here and share whatever is going on in my brain and heart... And here's a link to s omething I wrote today for our local newspaper about our faith evolving as we go.
So, I'm not a theological conservative. That probably comes across in pretty much everything I write, but I thought I should say it. I believe myself to be orthodox, however, and hold to those things which the Church expresses in the catholic creeds. I also have a relatively 'high' theology regarding the inspiration of Scripture. But I am not a Biblical literalist, nor do I hold to a doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture. I can't. The Bible is too rich, too deep, too difficult, too flawed for that. And by flawed I mean I understand it to be the record of human beings trying to make sense of God at work. It has the breath of the Spirit blowing through it's words and on every page, but when we try and make sense of God there is a chance we will go awry.... 'Hey lets condemn (and or murder) pretty much everyone who isn't in our tribe, that's obviously what God wants' kind of awry. And if we study this book carefully then we see that ideas ...
On return from holiday I had lots to deal with, a pile of mail that was nearly as tall as me, various calls to respond to, and an update on all that had been going on in my absence. All good, or rather everything went well, though it had been extremely busy and very well covered by my colleagues. In the week since I've got back though I have had a number of conversations where people have expressed disappointment that 'The Vicar' didn't do X or Y, or that Clergy haven't visited certain folk - despite the fact that I know I have extremely competent colleagues and very good lay pastoral visitors from all of the Churches who have handled things as well, if not better, than I ever could. It boils down to the erroneous belief that things are somehow more 'kosher' if a man (preferably a man in many cases, but that's another issue which I am not going to rant about today) with a 'dog collar' does it, be it opening fetes, visiting people or services in...
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