Dear Brothers and Sisters, I don’t feel very inspired to write today, so instead I will tell you about my recent trip to Wales to take my mother for her covid injection. My dad gave me a bag of runner beans to plant – they were from his last year’s crop and I that moment…
Dear Church Family, As I walk around Ashford, there is something in the air of a season opening up, of a new spaciousness, colour, movement and tentative plans. One can hear the birds loudly at dawn and dusk, hear the sounds of DIY and lawn mowers, indicating a season of activity, growth, and busyness after…
Dear Brothers and Sisters, In this Easter period of 50 days till Pentecost, our hearts are warmed by new life, new beginnings and the love of God which has been poured out into our hearts by the holy spirit, overflowing generously. I love this challenging 16th century prayer of St Ignatius of Loyola, called the principle…
Hello Everyone and a very blessed Easter, As we journey today through the darkness of Good Friday into the silence of Easter Saturday and the hope of Easter day, we are being accompanied by Jesus whose hands still bear the scars of the cross-hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nail surrendered hands that…
Dear Brothers and Sisters, Well, we are approaching the end of Lent, where we are encouraged to accompany Jesus in the desert with the wild animals and angels [Marks’s gospel 1:13]. I wonder if it’s been more angels or wild animals or both for you – for me it’s been the latter, and I am…
Dear Brothers and Sisters, As we have been waiting for a new season on the earth, for spring to give us hope of darkness and winter gone for another year, with the blossom beginning to emerge, flowers and the lambs, all give us a new feel to life, we too can also wait expectantly for…
Dear Brothers and Sisters, This week I heard of a beautiful invitation that someone felt God was offering them from Mark 4 – it was an invitation to come and settle down with Jesus in the storm in the stern of the boat, to abide, make themselves at home with Jesus, to budge up and…
Dear Brothers and Sisters, How are we doing in this third Sunday of Lent? In our wilderness wanderings with God who calls us close .. it’s a tough season with pulls, choices and discoveries about ourselves. I have been encouraged to think about the wilderness as a place of letting go, of relinquishment, and then…
Dear Brothers and Sisters, How are we doing in this second Sunday of Lent? Do we feel driven out into the wilderness/desert with Jesus, or invited, or called – how about allured, or wooed? In Hosea 2: 14-15 God draws, allures, woos us in his love into the desert, like he did in the OT…
Dear Brothers and Sisters, I wanted to remind us of a prayer I shared with you a year or so ago. It’s a prayer of St Aiden of Lindisfarne, on the island opposite the Northumberland coast, that many pilgrims visit and was the end of my pilgrimage trek in 2019 – when the waters make…