Three year old's Easter Hymn (Category: faith)

This is good, really very good. And not just the tongue-in-cheek-ness.

I just wish LM would even be clear enough in her diction for me to achieve a 100% success rate, let alone practical hymnody.

Thanks to Andy for this.  ¶ 2:07 pm 1 comments

  Spiritual Disturbance? (Category: faith)

While LMP is just that, I do have a question of a different kind for my dear readers. Let me preface it with my usual self-description as "vaguely charismatic" (or "closet charismatic").

You may know something about the difficulties we had when we moved in, you may not, but in the last week there have been two cases of glasswear falling off/out of the dresser, resulting in noise and damage. Nothing particularly valuable, but disturbing in their own way.

In both cases a rational explanation can be found, but in neither is it entirely convincing. Yes, the vase was pretty unstable, but there was nobody nearby to cause the dresser to wobble enough to disturb it. Similarly the bowls could have shifted, and are rather dense (being crystal) but, could they really have moved enough to doslodge the glasses?

Yes, micro-tremors are a possibiliy... although I don't know whether you could find records anywhere...

You see what I mean?

I will willingly admit to being as "spiritually perceptive" as a breezeblock, (i.e not not very!)

Do any of my (slowly growing number of) readers, have any similar experiences in clergy houses? (For what it's worth this has not been a "traditional" vicarage, being a private house previously, and the building is no more than 15 years old..)

And, yes, we did pray through the house, and yes we shall be doing so again...
  ¶ 11:00 am 1 comments

  Where would you like to sleep today? (Category: life)

A certain computer company asks us about our preferred activities for the day (and the presumption that it can help us to do so - in which case I'd like my Premium Bonds to come up please). However, with Becky Moose, henceforth to be known as LMP (Little Miss Placid) the question really, simply has to be:

Where would you like to sleep today?

We really still cannot believe it!  ¶ 10:53 am 0 comments

  Open Source in Action
(Category: life, computers)

I don't think that I'm too much of a technogeek, but this I had to share.

The real question is: are my readers a techno-savvy bunch, understanding the value of Open Source software and the nuisance of Microsoft, or is this representatitve of UK blogdom?

(Thanks to www.sitemeter.com for the graphic)  ¶ 10:00 pm 0 comments

  Extreme Prevarication (or the Price of Life) (Category: life, faith)

There has been a trend of late to find stories in the national press about the availability and cost of anti-cancer drugs.

So here's another one. A man (from Kent, but not MLPK) wants the NHS to pay for his anti-cancer treatment- a single tablet at £70 a day. The drug has not yet been cleared for this, and he is concerned about having to lose his house to pay for it.

So, I'll ask for the first time: what price a life?

But the story continues. The man is suffering from lung cancer, and not a young man. He was diagnosed two years ago.

So, I'll ask for the second time: what price a life?

But this is the part that got me thinking. A spokesman for the drug manufacturer is quoted as saying "Tarceva can slow the progression of cancer, but cannot stop it. It can increase life expectancy by two months or longer."

Now, without trying to be too polemical, you're telling me that a man (who by implication is retired), is trying to get state funding to prolong his life by, at a minimum, two months?

I know that we will all die, and that for many this is a cause of tremendous fear, but even so.

So, I'll ask for the third time: what price a life?

And, of course, what would each one of us do if we were in his shoes? And what would Jesus have us do, too?

  ¶ 10:25 am 2 comments

  At the font (Category: faith, poetry)

No we haven't baptised BM yet, even the GLW would think that a bit soon. Instead I have another of David Grieve's wonderful poems.

*At the Font*

A child crosses herself before a holy Icon

and runs back to her mother, her face glowing.

We step out of the ancient Cathedral church

into a downpour and hurry on

to hear a Theologian speak of prayer and the Fathers,

of asceticism and contemplation,

and the Orthodox path.

In a place of echoes and resonances

we listen and question and absorb,

and question and wonder,

and wonder whether we understand

and how we can know.

‘If you pray truly you are a theologian,

and if you are a theologian you pray truly’.

This both alarms and encourages us.

Our erudite teacher, Academic but no monk,

who looks and sounds the part,

guides us skilfully through the foothills of Evagrius Ponticus,

but we still get lost.

Which, partly, is the point and the hope and the end of it all.

Heartened by the serried ranks of the heavenly host,

the need to get home propels us

out into Haymarket

and the rush of Newcastle

and the fun of an hour’s chitchat in the car.

© David Grieve 2006

Please contact me (Dr Moose) for further details.  ¶ 3:19 pm 0 comments

  What a wonderful world! (cue Louis Armstrong) (Category: life)

...and no I'm not doing the smitten father bit!

Simply a pleasing reminder, here, that not all stories concerning the natural world are full of doom, gloom and disaster.

Possibly the sort of news stories that we need to see more of.

After all it is arguable that the reason most published news is bad news is simply because the basic supposition remains that evil and "dark" things are the exceptions to the human lot, rather than the rule. Of course die-hard Calvinists and serious students of Augustine might disagree, yelling "Pelagianism", but I'm not sure I would like to live in a world that really saw good news as the exception to the rule (and a world that would, by the very nature of the world, probably decry it!)

How often do we hark on about Original Sin, sinful humanity and the effects of the Fall, and quietly forget that humanity is part of a creation that God proclaimed good? Yes, we need redemption, no doubt about it, but there is a road back, and back towards Original Sinlessness.

And I find it cheering that even in the midst of the scientists' joy their language also harks back to those stories of that start...

"It's as close to the Garden of Eden as you're going to find on Earth"

  ¶ 4:13 pm 0 comments