Perspectives

  Hardwick Wood is the nearest area of old woodland to us and reachable along the long distance footpath that runs near our house.  We cycled there today in the hope of seeing bluebells and we were in luck. The footpaths are chewed up and very rough because of the recent heavy rain but it's all now dry.     It is well maintained by a volunteer group with clearly a lot of work being done to make it accessible but also to keep it wild for the animals and birds that live there. 

On a rather quiet and sleepy day, spending all the time at home with no thought of doing anything very social I decided to advertise the fact that our pond was full of tadpoles on the village email network to see what would happen. The first result was a visit from a lady at the other end of the village who's tadpoles had all died in the frost a few weeks ago.  We'd never met before and had a very pleasant chat and disccovered that we both have the same make of campervan, a MURVI (Multiple Use Recreational Vehicle - Ivybridge).  So that was one good contact made. The second visit was from three young boys who had caught some tadpoles and newts somewhere else and wanted to give them a better home as they were simply living in a large dish. So they released them in the pond and we had a long conversation about tadpoles, frogs, newts and ponds in general.  It was so encouraging to see how excited and interested they were, even to admiring the swimming style of one of our frogs whi

Receptive Ecumenism is one of the new movements within the ecumenical scene but hardly a new phenomena. When I was 19 I was invited to be part of a World Council of Churches discussion group in Bristol on the theme of 'Giving account of the hope that is in us'. The experience of hearing what other Christians understood by hope started a process of seeing how I could incorporate into my spirituality the insights of others that I experienced as being of value. Many others have had similar experiences and it is that fact that has been taken up in recent years and turned into a project. That project has been largely led by Durham University and the work of Professor Paul Murray. It has been adopted with some enthusiasm by the Roman Catholic Church as well as other ecumenical partners. The project in Durham has had three specific areas of focus including, for example, looking at what different traditions in the North East of England have done in the area of leadership and wh

The following is the text (slightly adapted) of a paper I gave at the meeting of the URC's Peace Fellowship in October. I have placed it in the ecumenical blog simply because there are ecumenical questions and implications for what we decide to do.   "The concern I have developed regarding the forthcoming commemoration of the start of World War 1 was triggered by a letter from the government to faith communities inviting them to be involved. The letter specifically referred to a proposed event on August 4th in Westminster Abbey but of course by extension invited faith communities to be involved with the whole period of commemoration. This was placed on the agenda of the Free Churches Group meeting in April 2013 just after the letter was received.   Government initiatives have developed since then but the focus remains on encouraging as many parts of society as possible to join in the commemoration, including making it possible for school children to visit the battl

Perhaps the first question one asks oneself at a gathering such as the World Council Assembly is, 'What can I compare it with?' and the second is 'What use is it?'.   One inevitably garners the answer to the first question from one's own experience and my answer is therefore that it feels like a cross between a URC General Assembly, or perhaps a Methodist Conference and the German Kirchentag. The answer to the second question can only really be found after some deeper reflection on the experience as a whole.   There were numerous strands to the event which lasted from October 29th to November 8th and drew in the region of 5,000 people in the Bexco conference Centre in Busan, South Korea. Not all were official delegates and in fact they were in the minority. Many others came as observers, delegated representatives from non-member churches or because of their engagement with one or other of the themes that made up the wider agenda of the assembly. Some

We knew before we came that there were going to be people protesting against the WCC outside the Assembly. These protests started even before the day began with quite a large scale gathering which was heavily policed and even resulted in a hoax bomb call that brought in the local SWAT team. The protests have continued right throught the Assembly with one man sitting outside the halls with a large placard in English indicating that he has been fasting and praying against the heresy of the WCC for the whole period of the gathering. On day 12 he was looking decidedly thin and drawn. I took one of their leaflets on the first day and found it contained a mix of political opposition and conservative theology that used the langauge of serving satan, communism, heresy and the need for repentance. A car has been circling the assembly halls for several days with loudspeakers through which the driver has endlessly announced that 'Jesus is coming now, repent!'. It's easy