Gilo explores where the Church is and what kind of person is needed to begin to repair the damage. He says “almost every senior bishop who might be considered for the role of Archbishop of Canterbury is likely to have legacy ghosts trailing in their wake and waiting to haunt them. Any senior bishops being considered for the role will need to have searing honesty with regard to their safeguarding history. Deep elder wisdom required. Someone who has not necessarily been in much position of power to bury anything. Someone from the edge. Someone with a deep understanding, heart of compassion, and… Read more »
I try to explore my own possible belief in the possibility of god in my hymnwriting. A rueful smile just appeared … should the word ‘belief’ or the word ‘god’ be ascribed italics or perhaps quotation marks? Nothing is certain. Neither of these heavily coded words are straightforward for me, as I do not necessarily believe in belief. Anyway, this hymn is an attempt to picture a different kind of god than the one the Church presents which is generally an off-putting model for me. The fragile absolute (Slavoj Zizek reference) requires no altar and paradoxically no hymn. It is… Read more »
FrDavid H
1 hour ago
Fr Colin cites Richard Holloway’s Stories We Tell Ourselves in his desire to discover a credible belief in God. Since the dawn of humankind, people have expressed in stories fables and myths a search for purpose in a ‘meaningless universe’. In the CofE this long quest has culminated in a set of easy Alpha booklets to be read in conjunction with a quiche salad supper which helps explain the nature of the kindly, middle-class deity. He is welcoming to all respectable heterosexuals who are prepared to eat and sing together and listen to a casually-dressed minister who will explain the… Read more »
I am sure all you theologians and thinkers understand the question is not the existence of God, it is the nature of God. The difficulty is when we try to describe the nature of God within our human world. God is, if anything, extra, or outwith, human and our human experience, but at the same time deeply embedded in our world and experience. We don’t even have the verbal language. No doubt there are some words in the creed describing this, which nobody understands. But one thing is clear – God cannot be put into a little box. That is… Read more »
God has been put in a little box. Nicky Gumbel and his followers do it every week and the box has cost millions of pounds from the Church Commissioners.
Gilo explores where the Church is and what kind of person is needed to begin to repair the damage. He says “almost every senior bishop who might be considered for the role of Archbishop of Canterbury is likely to have legacy ghosts trailing in their wake and waiting to haunt them. Any senior bishops being considered for the role will need to have searing honesty with regard to their safeguarding history. Deep elder wisdom required. Someone who has not necessarily been in much position of power to bury anything. Someone from the edge. Someone with a deep understanding, heart of compassion, and… Read more »
I try to explore my own possible belief in the possibility of god in my hymnwriting. A rueful smile just appeared … should the word ‘belief’ or the word ‘god’ be ascribed italics or perhaps quotation marks? Nothing is certain. Neither of these heavily coded words are straightforward for me, as I do not necessarily believe in belief. Anyway, this hymn is an attempt to picture a different kind of god than the one the Church presents which is generally an off-putting model for me. The fragile absolute (Slavoj Zizek reference) requires no altar and paradoxically no hymn. It is… Read more »
Fr Colin cites Richard Holloway’s Stories We Tell Ourselves in his desire to discover a credible belief in God. Since the dawn of humankind, people have expressed in stories fables and myths a search for purpose in a ‘meaningless universe’. In the CofE this long quest has culminated in a set of easy Alpha booklets to be read in conjunction with a quiche salad supper which helps explain the nature of the kindly, middle-class deity. He is welcoming to all respectable heterosexuals who are prepared to eat and sing together and listen to a casually-dressed minister who will explain the… Read more »
I am sure all you theologians and thinkers understand the question is not the existence of God, it is the nature of God. The difficulty is when we try to describe the nature of God within our human world. God is, if anything, extra, or outwith, human and our human experience, but at the same time deeply embedded in our world and experience. We don’t even have the verbal language. No doubt there are some words in the creed describing this, which nobody understands. But one thing is clear – God cannot be put into a little box. That is… Read more »
God has been put in a little box. Nicky Gumbel and his followers do it every week and the box has cost millions of pounds from the Church Commissioners.