Rectory Notes—These times are a journey
Here’s a puzzle. We are more stationary at the moment than we’ve probably ever been: our time is corralled within our home’s boundaries. If we are permitted out, a trip to the supermarket is now an adventure to the horizon of the known world. Cross-country travel is as what inter-planetary travel once seemed.
Yet we are also on an extraordinary journey together. Like Columbus and his friends, we have bade farewell to familiar shores. The land of assumed good health (more or less), of ample supply of …
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Reverend David’s May Message
Reverend David’s April Message
On Boxing Day in 2004 we watched our TVs in horror, as a tsumani engulfed coastal communities. People, boats, homes, livelihoods, lives – all tossed in the air as if they were nothing.
A tsunami has engulfed our world. Not just health and lives have been overwhelmed by the coronavirus, but livelihoods and incomes, families and connections, stability and security. So much of what was normal has fled, at least temporarily. We are learning a new way of living. I write this in ‘self-isolation’ (one of so many words that have gate-crashed our …
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Reverend David’s March Message
Rectory notes This is the strangest ‘Rectory notes’ I have written. It is still January, and I’ve only just written February’s notes, yet I’m now writing March’s. I start a month’s mini-sabbatical tomorrow. I will be back by March, but the magazine deadline will be gone. ‘Why didn’t I delegate this one to someone else?’ I ponder.
Yet it offers a chance to reflect. The mini-sabbatical is a gift, for which I am deeply thankful. In my ten-plus ordained years, I have glimpsed the dark side of the institutional Church; this is its caring side: a …
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Reverend David’s February Message
Love, I’ve concluded, is like a boat. A sailing boat. It’s February, Valentine’s month, so yes, that type of love included – but wider too, the full huge reach of love.
We don’t have to step on board this boat. “Love woos – it does not compel”, as one writer puts it. But it draws us in, and if we are brave we step gingerly in, the boat rocking unnervingly as we try to keep our balance. “Love isn't something that weak people do,” as the priest in feisty comedy series Fleabag said, “being a romantic takes a hell of a lot of hope.”
We feel …
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Reverend David’s January Message
January: we turn over the page of our life story to a new chapter. What was 2019’s story for you? Who entered your story for the first time – new friends? a family baby? a close relationship? What were the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows, the moments you’ll treasure – and those you’d rather forget? And so to 2020…
A short while ago I penned twelve creative stories about people’s lives. They’re written from the perspective of characters in the Old Testament: What was Noah’s experience of the flood like, when he lost his community, his …
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Rev David’s December Message
An early very happy Christmas!
Some years ago we had the opportunity as a family to spend Christmas with friends living in Peru. Christmas in Tropical temperatures – a wonderful prospect! But would we miss the seasonal darkness with its twinkling Christmas lights, the cosy fug of a living-room with curtains drawn, the chink of glasses fending off the winter gloom? Funnily enough, no! We soaked up the heat and savoured wearing sandals and T-shirts. We loved the Spanish-style Christmas Night celebrations which only got into full swing after …
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Reverend David’s November Message
Does God have a Brexit mast that he nails his colours to? While you ponder this, I will nail mine. By the time the Referendum came I reckoned I was 70% Remain and 30% Leave. Only one vote though...
I share this not to argue a position, more the opposite. Where we were living at the time of the Referendum turned out to be part of the experience for me. Coastal North Devon is ‘purple’ on the political map – solid UKIP territory (back then), and a large Leave majority. My instincts are pro-European. (If of interest, mainly because of the …
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Rev David’s July Message
A whirlwind passed through our house last week. A delightful one, the energy and buzz of six of our son’s friends, enjoying that idyllic time after exams, their final university exams no less. The household was lifted for a few days by this wave of young adult joy – East Devon eagerly explored, Feniton Spar getting good business – before reverting to its more sedate middle-aged character.
Beginnings and endings. July begins for our family with Matthew’s graduation. A final trip North to Durham; the last scenic drive home over the Pennines on …
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May Message from Rev David
‘You can’t please all the people all of the time,’ sighed God, as the sports results came in on another Saturday afternoon. Not everyone’s prayers for victory could be answered. Not that so many prayers are uttered these days – though desperate times bring desperate measures.
A sporting theme this month, only slightly apologetically. For it’s the time of year again when those who devotedly follow a football team, or of other sport, can have their hopes of a title or a promotion teetering on fulfilment, or they may be staring into the jaws of …
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