“When he was thrown into a stable, and placed in a manger, and a lodging refused him among men, it was that heaven might be opened to us, not as a temporary lodging, but as our eternal country and inheritance, and that angels might receive us into their abode.”
John Calvin, Harmony of the Evangelists, on Luke 2:1-7

David Cameron has declared that "Britain is a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so", in a speech to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/16/cameron-king-james-bible-anniversary?newsfeed=true). Britain - in my memory of growing up in the 60s and 70s - certainly WAS a country where we seemed to live by a kind of sub-Christian moral code: there was a grester feeling that people cared about other people, and an expectation that such an attitude was valued and correct. To this day I'm grateful for a number of people who helped me and showed an interest when they really didn't have to. On the other hand, many fear that an attempt to talk about morality would be a disguise for an ecclesiastical power-grab (http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/nelson-jones/2011/12/religion-christmas-dawkins). But, after riots, under a regime that seems to encourage hopelessness, in a week when an official report highlighted the lack of care for dementia sufferers, can we doubt that something is lacking in the way we nurture expectations in contemporary Britain (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8960735/Dementia-care-quality-report-is-shocking.html)? And might not taking some more informed notice of Jesus - with or without the trappings of institutionalised religion - be a rational response?

Generation A by Douglas Coupland

I only borrowed this book on chance sight at the library, but it hooked me and I've read it in 4 days. Connects five people through the power of their stories in a world where bees are extinct... does this say something about the power of the parable?Certainly it wants to speak of the power of imaginatiuon to change lives and the world. In a very Coupland way. Of course!

Anyway, well worth a read.

A Poem

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


Wendell Berry

and a photo from Littlestone beach:

Death of Bin Laden

I pretty much agree with Nick Baines. Follow this link.

Nothing really deals with the outrage of watching nearly 3000 murders on live TV.  One man's death doesn't seem like the definition of justice, in any case I am opposed to the death penalty.Capture and  trial would have been preferable.

None of this seems likely to bring peace - that has to be based on love and respect.

Finishing things

Having had an active Easter weekend with many moments to reflect on the stupendous marvel of God's love in the life of Jesus, as well as enjoy family gatherings and long hours in the sunshine on the patio -

I notice I have finished reading three books simultaneously, and each one is worthy of a recommendation.
1. Brighton Rock - an old favourite - Catholic noir of noir, with those wonderful images scattered as allegory: of the sea shifting under the piles of the pier in the thunderstorm, "hell lay about him in his infancy", and the darkest of endings - truly a parable of religious despair in Greeneland.

2. A Visit from the Good Squad (Jennifer Egan) - newly published and ( can I also recommend this) borrowed via Kent Libraries brilliant computer system. Follows my continuing love affair with the American novel that Richard Ford reignited a couple of years ago - dark, touching, funny: I'd buy it if I had the shelf-space and I probably will buy it and reread it some time.

3. Love Wins by Rob Bell - lent to me by a new colleague - riveting, refreshing, controversial, skating on some thin ice about universalism but I was happy to be caught in the slipstream - says some necessary things, I guess even more necessary in the US context - in the end I think he does maintain a case for the essential need to make a response of trust to Christ, but many will be uncomfortable with it.

And did those feet...

Sometimes you finish a book, having been careful to read it thoroughly, and immediately know you could start again and find something fresh on every page. So it is with Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Jerusalem". Immense research, judicious wit, thought-provoking: a hugely enjoyable history. In some ways partial, in others trying a little too hard to lean to the other side, but in every way worth reading. I saw a middle-eastern businessman reading a copy on the Tube, we chanced to walk together to the escalator, and I said 'it's a good book'. 'A tremendous book', he replied. I wish I knew who he was.