‘Mum, please send me my Bible!’ This was Sam’s recent urgent appeal from University to home, illustrating young people discovering new life and faith in Christianity. Bible Society’s ‘A Quiet Revival’, reports that young people are reversing some of the trends of the 20th century – drink, sex, social life and even atheism.  […]

  Beauty and Love I came across these lines by Goethe this week: What rosebuds are, we first may learn Now, when the flow’ring season ends. Late on its stalk one bloom still shines, And, lone, fulfils the flower world. We are used to some roses and other flowers producing blossoms at this otherwise autumnal […]

  Teresa of Avila On Wednesday this week (15 October) the saint for the day is Teresa of Avila (1515-1582). In 1970, together with Catherine of Siena she was made officially a ‘Doctor of the Church’, meaning a theologian.  She responded to the crisis of the Reformation not by persecuting protestants, but by reforming her […]

Most of the great and ancient festivals in the old Testament have their origin in celebrating the HARVEST.  A good harvest was what communities had worked hard for, but of course it was in no way guaranteed.  Something else was needed other than hard work to make a harvest ‘good’.  And it was this ‘something […]

  William Blake When he was just nine years old, the poet and artist, William Blake, was surprised by a vision of angels in, of all places, East Dulwich. He later described “A tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars”. This mystical experience influenced both his poetry and his art […]