St Mary the Virgin Church

Rectory Notes—July 2020 – ‘Rock and wind’ For the first time in an age, I stepped with delight out of the car last week onto Dartmoor soil. In each place we’ve lived in Devon, I have found a ‘spiritual landscape home’ – here it’s up at Hembury Fort. But Dartmoor remains my home-of-homes. The springy turf sunk familiarly under my boots, and the granite stones in the path were like old friends, as I walked unhurriedly between tors. Just five minutes’ drive beyond the ice-creams of Haytor Rocks, and the space was my own. A lightness of spirit lifted me. […]

Are we in control? I was 19 when I managed to turn a car on its side. I was doing voluntary work in rural South Africa at the time. I was following my boss’s van down a straight road, when the pick-up truck I was driving started swerving uncontrollably from side to side due to the ruts on the dry mud road. One moment I was careering out of control at speed towards the dense trees bordering the road, the next the car was stationary on the grass verge facing the opposite direction, as if perfectly parked only on its […]

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 our favourite nibbles, of trips to the […]

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 vocabulary), due to a member of the […]

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 country and […]

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 midnight, needing to slip away in the early hours to carry […]

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 […]