by Nick
Today is Whitsunday, or Pentecost, to give it its biblical name. It commemorates that moment when the Holy Spirit descended on the first followers of Jesus, turning them from a group of somewhat bewildered disciples into the movement that was to change the world. This, then, is the birthday of ‘the church’. So here’s a […]
Categories: Bible, God, Kingdom of Fools
by Nick
So wipe your tears. Death will be no more;Mourning, crying, pain – no more;The old, granite door is shattered;Despair’s huge boulder rolled away. And look! The storm has cleared. Tombs become dancehalls;Stone doors serve as picnic tables;Graveyards become gardens;Uncork the wine, break the bread;For hope and joy and justice have started singing.
Categories: God, Longest Week, Stuff
by Nick
Spent the last week in France, teaching at Le Pas Opton – one of my favourite weeks of the year. A lot of the time was spent talking about the early church and the way in which they sought to put Jesus’ teaching into action. The following comes from the Epistle to Diognetus, an anonymous […]
by Nick
The movement is gathering pace! We have had literally single units of people joining the new Extraordinariate. (Which is at least as good as the Ordinariate can claim.) But we’re not resting on our laurels. Oh no. Now it gets even better. Because, what if you want to do church differently? What if you want […]
by Nick
Are you bored with being boring? Want to be part of a church that is interesting? Do you want a life less ordinariate? Then join the Extraordinariate. You might have heard of the Ordinariate – being set up for the masses of Anglican clergy who want to ‘defect’ to Rome (around 50 last count.) But […]
by Nick
There are many days when you wonder about the future of the Anglican church. And then there are days when the Anglican church does something so mind-numbingly asinine that you wonder if it deserves a future at all. Pete made a big mistake in some of his language. Looked at in context the post wasn’t […]
by Nick
‘He was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures’ When it comes to the resurrection accounts, there is a tendency to look down on the first Christians, to dismiss them as superstitious, credulous, simple folk who didn’t know any better. But they were far better acquainted with […]
Categories: God, Longest Week
by Nick
One of my favourite artists is Jordi Savall, the Catalan viol player, who compiles wonderful CDs around historic themes, and packages them with gorgeous, fascinating books. (I’ve just got his new one – The Forgotten Kingdom – about the Cathars in the south of France) His album Jerusalem is a wonderful evocation of the history […]
Categories: God, Longest Week, Stuff
by Nick
Chagall: White Crucifixion. Chagall painted this astonishing picture in 1938. The Nazi pogroms had started, two years before Guernica had been bombed. Although he was Jewish, Chagall frequently painted the crucifixion. Indeed, the Jewishness is what is remarkable here: Christ is clad, not in a loincloth, but in a Jewish prayer shawl; surrounded by images […]
Categories: God, Longest Week
by Nick
The Grauniad has a photo gallery of Holy Week processions around the world, including a huge number of Spanish pentitents wearing large pointy hoods.(There’s an older set of pictures here.) There’s another fascinating gallery here. Some of the penitent/flagellant stuff is on the morbid side of extreme, but we do well to remind ourselves that […]
by Nick
I’m a big fan of maps. Maps don’t just tell you where places are, they tell you where it’s possible to go. They can give you the direction, in all sorts of ways. On the Thursday and Friday of the last week of his life, Jesus, according to the accounts in the gospels, made several […]
Categories: God, Longest Week
by Nick
Today I chipped a tooth on a hot cross bun. It was, admittedly, a bit old, a bit hard and stale, but even so, it’s not the kind of thing you expect to happen with a bun. Perhaps I should have gone for the creme egg option. Or one of the many other treats that […]
Categories: God, Longest Week, Stuff
by Nick
Download a day by day guide to Holy Week, with the relevant passages from the gospels, and a suggested timetable for reading them. Follow the events of the Longest Week by ‘reading along’ day by day. The Longest Week Live: walk through Easter using the superimposable map of first century Jerusalem and a suggested timetable. […]
Categories: God, Longest Week
by Nick
There’s a good story here of the development of Haystacks, a piece of software which was used to smuggle information out of Iran, by hiding it in other processes. It’s info-smuggling if you like. I’m writing about the seventeenth-century version of info-smuggling at the moment. I’m working on a history of the Bible, and one […]
Categories: God, Stuff, Writing & writers
by Nick
It’s Saint Patrick’s Day – the day when the Irish celebrate their Irishness by drinking and… er… well, that’s about it really. The truth about Patrick is intriguing. He wasn’t Irish. Nor was he Catholic or Protestant. He was English. Or Welsh. Or, at least a Romano-Briton. The only real information we have about him […]
by Nick
You either love it or hate it, they say. But now even the bands of those who love it will be split into two, by the release of Marmite XO (it stands for eXtra Old). This is mature Marmite, aged Marmite, the Marmite equivalent of vielles vignes. But now which Marmite should we Marmite lovers […]
by Nick
History is always being rewritten. This is, I think, one of the things that always frustrates me when I listen to militant evolutionists or scientists talking about the big bang – they always talk as though the thing were set in stone, as though the timeline had all been sorted. Yet new discoveries keep punching […]
by Nick
I was once approached by a TV producer to ask me if I would feature on his new programme about books. The idea was that viewers would vote for books which I would then burned. But even in jest I couldn’t do it (so I never heard from him again.) I don’t care what the […]
Categories: God, Stuff, Writing & writers
by Nick
After the sale of Wesley Owen, where do Christian bookshops go from here?
Categories: God, Stuff, Writing & writers
by Nick
We’re approaching Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. The day is traditionally observed with fasting and prayer, and abstaining from any activity. There was an excellent Radio 4 Thought for the Day this morning on the subject by the Chief Rabbi. This is a solemn feast, unlike the other festivals in Judaism, which he […]
Categories: God