There is a Larsen cartoon that depicts the creator as a heavenly master-chef who has the world in a pan and is thinking ‘And just to make it interesting’ as he sprinkles seasoning on the world from a condiments jar labelled ‘jerks’.

In today’s parable it was an enemy who sows weeds amongst the wheat, and we might well consider an enemy to be a jerk.  We might also wish our world to be jerk free.  But the message from the cartoon and the parable is the same, the world contains both good and evil and it is in such a world that God acts, and the divine realm comes into being. Continue reading Good and Evil →

The president of the United States has suggested that the reason his nation has more cases of Corvid 19 is because they do more tests than anyone else.  He even suggested that if they did less tests, they would have less cases.

That is similar thinking to philosopher George Berkeley who asked, ‘if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’  it is also as silly as asking ‘If a man speaks in a forest and there is no woman around to hear him is he still wrong?’ Continue reading Responding to the Message →

St Ninians. June28 2020

The two readings I have chosen to go with chime with the times we are living through in a peculiar way. We have Jeremiah, who almost seems to be issuing a warning about fake news, and we have Jesus, talking about hospitality but not at all in the sense that our current news media mean! These are voices for our times. Continue reading For These Times →

There are some people you just can’t please! Some people are never satisfied. I’ve  heard that – or words like it – many times, and I’ll bet you have too. And when I’ve said it myself, the unspoken bit is ‘but I’m not one of those people.’ It’s one of those sayings that reflects a very common trait in our human nature – and one that we seem to be able to see more easily in others than in ourselves. We are often ready to make judgements about other people grumbling about what we see as perfectly acceptable conditions. We’re also inclined to think that the opinions we have about what makes a good environment to live in are reasonable – everyone should be able to see that! And when someone bursts onto our horizon making off the wall statements or suggestions about how we could do, or be,  better, our hackles go up. Continue reading Never Satisfied →