THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH
personal observations on life and faith
Latest Article
Slow Motion Summer
In the summer of 2024 I took a sabbatical. It was my first since 2009 and will be my last in stipendiary ministry as, being 61, retirement will come next.
It’s inevitable people ask: how was your sabbatical? Yet the true answer is more complicated than a simple: great. It has been great, but life’s challenges are not suspended when we rest. My time began with a deeply traumatic death in the wider family, whose implications will be lived with for years to come.There has been plenty of time to think about those I love who have been most affected
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Recent Topics You May Have Missed
The Stroll To Emmaus, Those who Have Eyes To See, A Life More Ordinary, The Wisdom Deficit, Giving Our Lives Away, The Gift Of Gratitude
Recent Topics You May Have Missed
Pop Idols, Kicking The Darkness Until It Bleeds Light, Logos, Breaking Point, Here's looking At You, Kid, Words Made Flesh,
When You Still Haven't Found
Having championed the cause of introverts in her book Quiet, Susan Cain has taken up the frequently related state of poignancy. Words like melancholy
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Disrupting Death
Death is nothing at all, writes Henry Scott-Holland. It does not count…Nothing has happened…Everything remains exactly as it was.
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What Is Love
It’s a great word, and you’d have to be Hannibal Lecter not to sign up to it, but we only really have one word for love in English and so use it to cover
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Most Viewed
The Bubble first published Feb 2011
The Bubble
We live in a little personal bubble in the busyness of urban life and need God to pop it to see what he has in store for us outside
One advert that makes me smile is the cosmetics pitch to 'get the London look'. In this case the London look is Kate Moss after three hours in makeup. In my experience, the London look is a pasty and puffy white face, nicely set off by black bags around bloodshot eyes. There is another dimension to the London look too: the vacant look gaze which is fixed in the middle distance. It tells everyone around that they are not relevant because whatever is in your mind is not here but somewhere else. Mobiles, blackberries and the iPod touch -- among others -- enable us to keep our focus other than where we are, ensuring that those demands, which would have waited for us in the recent past, are now brought right into the present, squeezing our attention. It is like a perverse form of eschatology, where the future is brought into the present to transform our experience of it, only for the worse and not for the better.. - Read More
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SIMON's VIDEOS
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PAST SEPTEMBER TOPICS
- BIG MOUTH OR BIG EAR SEPT 2009
- LOWERING OUR DEFENCES SEPT 2009
- MANAGING ANGER-SEPT 2010
- THE LEVELLING SPIRIT-SEPT 2010
- THE NEW ORTHODOXY-SEPT 2010
- MANAGING ANGER-SEPT 2010
- WHO OR WHAT IS TO BLAME SEPT 2011
- BRAND BULLYING AND THE MARKETING OF YOUTH SEPT 2011
- EVEN AS I AM FULLY KNOWN SEPT 2011
- THE SECRET PRAYER LIFE SEPT 2011
- WHAT ST PAUL MIGHT SAY TO THE MIDDLE CLASSES SEPT 2012
- STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS SEPT 2013
- THE ROCK SEPT 2013
Popular Reads
SOUL EROSION
Most of the ways in which we provide guidance, training and support for discipleship is predicated on having time and energy to think and pray.
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ROUTE TWO
What do we make of the road not taken? The romance that does not lead to marriage; the job we don’t get; the house that falls through; the career that doesn’t materialise.
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THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
The first Gulf War in 1991 did not take place. This was the judgment of the philosopher Jean Baudrillard at the time and how people laughed at him for it.
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ARTICLES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
Live Aid's Legacy
The generosity which inspired July 13, 1985 is still present in the British public ....
Debating Immigration
What are the values we should hold to in tackling today's big policy question?
Are We In A Muddle Over Our Discipleship?
Have we become so protective of personal autonomy in following Christ that we no longer submit to external discipline?
Is Willpower Enough To Win?
There are risks in suggesting that success in our chosen field is merely a function of wanting it more than the next person.