As I sit to write this article, we are in the throes of exam revision and preparation in our house. Those of you who are parents of older children I’m sure can relate to the conversations revolving around the quality and quantity of revision!!
And as you read this now, we are well and truly in the thick of the exam period. Whether GCSEs, A Levels, Finals or end of year exams, 1,000s of children up and down the country are taking exams. I’m sure each of us can think of family or friends who are currently in this situation. For some, these will …
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Rectory-ish Notes – June 2022
22 June 2022 By
Reverend David’s May 2022 Message – Sea, Sand and Sabbaticals
28 April 2022 By
On May 1st, I will set my Out-of-Office and answer-machine, press the Pause button on my parish life, and step into a 3-month sabbatical. It will feel strange. “We’ve got rid of the vicar for 3 months!” you may think.
In the summer of 2006 I stepped into a Waterstones bookshop in Brighton. We were holidaying in Sussex. My eyes were drawn to a vividly pink book, engagingly titled “Everything Bad is Good for You”. It was a wonderfully positive book about contemporary media culture, and reading it reawakened something in me, a fresh love for life …
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Revered David’s April 2022 Message – “I’m a Celebrity …….! “
28 March 2022 By
“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, …
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Reverend Davids March 2022 Message – Wind, Earth and Fire
28 February 2022 By
Storm Eunice rages outside right now. The trees sway madly. Pigeons cluster for shelter on the limbs of the horse chestnut sheltered by the neighbour’s towering, dancing conifer. Down the lane a tree lies prostrate, roots skyward. The recycling bins hide wisely in the garage.
On an ancient mountain top, a man hears the wind scream around the rocky summit. Drained and depressed from life’s triumphs and tragedies, he stumbles from his cave to stand and take the full force. He feels nothing, just more numbness. As he did in the violent earthquake …
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Reverend David’s February 2022 Message – Pictures, Memory & Stories
28 January 2022 By
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 …
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Reverend David’s January 2022 Message – Guiding Light
4 January 2022 By
“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 …
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Reverend David’s December 2021 Message – Light Wins
28 November 2021 By
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 – …
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Reverend David’s November 2021 Message – Hope in a climate crisis
28 October 2021 By
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 …
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Reverend David’s September 2021 Message – Journeys, Archbishops and Planets
17 October 2021 By
“A single ticket from Feniton, please. To errr… the South Pacific.” “The Pacific, sir?” checks the man at the counter, “that’s very adventurous, if I may be bold enough to say. Is that business, sir, or are we on holiday?” “Mmmm, you could call it God’s business, I suppose”. “My apologies, sir, I see you’re a man of the cloth. So I’m sure He will bring you back safely to us, sir. A Return ticket, then.” “I’m not so sure! Let’s stick with One-way.” “Well, have a nice trip, sir.”
It’s 1855, and John Coleridge Patteson leaves the Feniton family …
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Reverend David’s August 2021 Message – Becoming our true selves
17 October 2021 By
I sat down last week at a low table in Feniton school hall. Nervously yet excitedly, individual children showed me in turn a portfolio they had compiled. It contained their evidence of activities they’d completed: active citizenship in the school, citizenship in the community, an active hobby and a non-active hobby, adventure training and charity work. This was their assessment for the Torbay and Devon Civic Award, rather like a Primary school Duke of Edinburgh Award. Us adults, socially-distanced across the hall, were their assessors. The …
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