Thought for the Day
A one-minute read to inspire or challenge. Written by members of the church and updated every few days.
1st May 2024
Have you watched “Saving Lives at Sea”? Stories of RNLI rescues round the coast of Britain, many very moving. Why do people volunteer for this (and mountain and cave rescue)? Not just for the adrenaline rush, but to feel they have helped people in danger. But they also cope with the down-side. The commonest call-out for Portishead RNLI is to search for suicides from the Severn bridges. Loyalty to each other and the feeling of doing something good keeps them together and helps on the bad days.
Ever since the days of Paul Christians have met together for worship in various forms and in times of good and ill. It had always been thought necessary to gather for worship with others and to work together for God not just alone.
But what about medieval anchorites? These were men and often women who chose a solitary life of prayer walled into a cell attached to a church, never leaving it. To do this they had to have permission from the bishop and show they had a true call and had the capacity to cope. (They had a servant to bring food and often a shuttered window to the street through which they could give spiritual counsel and receive requests for prayer.) They ALWAYS had a small window looking to the altar of the church so that they could take part in worship – say prayers and sing. They could only see those leading worship, not the others present.
Does this sound like medieval Zoom worship?
Well, may be, but their prayers were valued and they were still, in some sense, part of the community.
Margaret Clements
26th April 2024
The preacher at my ordination service was my College Principal, Revd Dr Barrie White. In a section of his sermon aimed specifically at me, he warned that ministry wouldn’t always be easy. There’d be times when I might feel completely out of my depth, worn out by the responsibility, empty of anything useful to give […]
24th April 2024
This week I received emails suggesting a response to “Earth Day” – I should book train tickets to limit my carbon footprint, or a holiday to go walking in nature! Consume more to help the planet … hmmm? I prefer Sam’s Sunday sermon challenge to us, to get out and look around us at the […]
19th April 2024
Margaret and I recently found ourselves in Little Gidding, a tiny village deep in the Cambridgeshire countryside. It’s where in 1629 Nicholas Ferrar, a high church Anglican layman, founded a small religious community for prayer and meditation. Today Little Gidding owes much of its reputation to the poet T. S. Eliot who visited there in […]
17th April 2024
Peter Higgs, professor of physics at the University of Edinburgh, died this last week. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013 for the discovery of a fundamental particle whose existence he had predicted fifty years earlier. I met Peter when I was a physics student at Edinburgh in the 1990s. He taught me […]
12th April 2024
Now above the sky he’s King. Many of us sang those words recently on Easter Day – the climax of one of the best-known of the Easter hymns: Jesus Christ is risen today with its repeated Alleluias. Really? Above the sky? Then in a few days on Ascension Day we will celebrate Christ’s ascension to […]
10th April 2024
THROW AWAY OR REPAIR Two contrasting forces – first the idea of built-in obsolescence and making something for today which will not last until tomorrow, essential aspects of what Pope Francis has described as our ‘Throw-away Culture’. Contrasted with this there is the old war-time slogan of ‘Make do and mend’, or the work of […]
5th April 2024
Jesus’ resurrection is a pivotal event in our faith. It symbolizes triumph over darkness, hope over despair, and life over death. In an age characterized by scepticism and doubt, the concept of faith may seem antiquated or irrelevant to some. Yet, Easter invites us to reconsider our perceptions and explore the transformative potential of faith […]
Good Friday, 29th March 2024
I find Good Friday an overwhelming event to write on, so I am borrowing a reflection on Psalm 22 from John van de Laar which I have found helpful. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? Ps 22:1 In the […]
27th March 2024
Today, 27th March, is a day of memories for me, as it is my Dad’s birthday. Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne just before WW1, he left school at 14 and went straight down the pit, looking after the ponies hauling tubs from coal face to pit bottom. Searching for work in the late 1930s, he came to […]