St Mary the Virgin Church

“Vladimir Putin knows the power of stories. With a better one, we can beat him”, reads a newspaper article headline today. With propaganda and fake news, the Russian president has woven a powerful false story about Ukraine for the Russian people. The Ukrainian people are experiencing an entirely different story. So against a backdrop of world events and our own conflicted lives, a topical story for Lent through which we currently travel.   “Welcome!” rasped the Devil. “Welcome to the Wilderness Trial of ‘I’m a Celebrity!’ And a special, special welcome today to you, Jesus. What a trial we have […]

I’ve just finished putting together a digital photo album for 2021. It’s now with Snapfish, and next week a beautifully printed hard-back album should drop through the letter-box. 2020 was my first of these – lockdown year needed its unique memories preserved. 2021 felt like a diluted version: horizons broadened but not much – what photos of interest would I have? And yet so many memories surfaced when I looked back, many of them seemingly insignificant, yet miniature treasures. A butterfly. The Feniton train emerging from mist. A Zoom celebration with distant friends. The Tour of Britain. The Archbishop! Dawn’s […]

“Hang on, folks – please!” It’s the Wise Men. “You’ve packed us away with your tinsel and crib, and we haven’t even got to Bethlehem yet! Caspar – how long does the SatNav say?” “Just recalculating, Melchior… here it comes, 3 months – that’s on Camel Setting”. “See what I mean, you good people of the future? You hurtle into the Christmas Sales like there’s no tomorrow and barrel into 2022, leaving us for dust (well, desert sand). S-l-o-w d-o-w-n! We didn’t get to our famed place in the Christmas story by rushing. No, we s-l-o-w-e-d, we looked at the […]

The steaming Christmas pudding is placed ceremoniously on your dinner table. The brandy is sloshed over it (an extra one for luck). The lights are flicked off. A match is struck – and in the darkness the pudding flames dance with beautiful blue light. The last day of last December, and I’m on Hembury Fort to bid farewell in the closing daylight to an extraordinary year. A surprise snow-shower sweeps in. The light turns momentarily magical and mysterious, vivid brightness battling the dark clouds. December is a battleground. Light and dark – which will win? The Christmas lights go up […]

Climate change challenges my faith. It would perhaps be surprising if it didn’t – our Planet’s problems seem overwhelming. As Government leaders gather in Glasgow for the pivotal COP26 climate conference, I find I have to go back to basics. Sometimes that’s the best way. The reality of global warming has long been evident. Working in climate research 30 years ago made that clear – the basic physics is not ‘rocket science’. The global graphs of temperature would go up. A lot. How far and how fast, that was the question. Covid-19 brought graphs into our living-rooms. Graphs went up […]

There is quiet celebration in the Carrington household this summer. Our house-moves over recent years fell strangely into a 3-year rhythm. This month we mark our 3rd anniversary of moving here – and we’ve no intention of going anywhere else. We are delighted at this more settled prospect. For you this may be for-better-or-for-worse! In some walks of life, regular moves are of course the norm. In my former training life at the Met Office, we liaised with the Navy’s meteorological training centre in Plymouth; a strong relationship with my opposite number would be building, only for them to be […]