shotleyfieldsforever

We are always open to change, chance and challenge ...... Exploring new ways of being or becoming church ........ Give us a Tent and God's Tent is pitched and folk are invited ...... Give us a Forest (wood, spinney) and we build a Chapel and a Woodland Sunday School ........ Sometimes we call this new way's of being church, sometimes we call it repossessing the empty space that we used to know as Church. It is a fact that over the Fifty years since my Ordination I seem to have lost at least three generations, that is three generations who might, once, have attended Christian Worship on a Sunday and who now don't. I try not to take it personally. I always hope that we haven't lost them permanently and that their absence is temporary but it does beg the question of the value of the remnant in the Bible simply because it seems the remnant is what we have become. There is some consolation to be had in the words of Isaiah, (46:3-4) Listen to Me, O house of J...

There is a favourite story of mine which concerns a man who is dyslexic, an insomniac and an agnostic. The story claims that he lay awake all night wondering if there was a dog? This is a diversion but an important one insofar that dogs have played an important part in my life and that of my family. As a child my family had dogs.  My first dog was a mongrel called Mickey. He was a shocker, forever running away and often rolling in other  dog’s  droppings and returning his coat a sticky mess and smelling to the high heavens. Eventually my Mother could stand it no longer and I returned home to find that Mickey was no longer there. There had been dogs before Mickey and dogs after Mickey. There had been my grandparent’s greyhound  that we looked after when they were on holiday and my best of memory from my childhood was the Dalmatian in my Grandfathers office in the Council Refuse Yard in Droylsden. The bin men had been out on their round when they found the ...

Speaking and writing and about the weather is a very English thing to do but in this era of increased attention to and awareness of global warming and its denial, the weather is definitely on most peoples agenda. As Crowded House sang in 1991: Walking 'round the room singing Stormy Weather At 57 Mount Pleasant Street Now it's the same room but every thing's different You can fight the sleep but not the dream The question of Global Warming is fraught with contradictions. On any given day it seems there can be a wide range of weather events, too hot to garden in the morning followed by a need to don a sweater by early afternoon. Weather that is simply windier and wetter than can be remembered with winters increasingly milder. But, as with Brexit (about which we try not to speak) Global warming is part of a wider political debate. Things ain't cookin' in my kitchen Strange affliction wash over me Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire Couldn'...

Phone call from Parcel Force I can't locate your house ...... I collect the parcel at the gate, the driver is parked directly opposite ....... Am I so difficult to find ....... Received an email from an Australian in France ........ So much of what is claimed to be new is old hat ......... I left the room thirty + years ago but  I have returned to the same conversation ....... It seems that progress is an illusion ....... A catchy name doesn't make things new ......... Haven't seen my Grandson in over a year  ........ When we opened the hive the Bees had swarmed ...... There are so many flies in this humidity ........... The Cockerel attacked me again this morning ......  the last time I was attacked by a Cockerel I was five years old and terrified ......... Picked the Landrover up from the Garage, new prop shaft and rebushed differential ......  The Sweetheart Bakery is excellent ......  Steak Pies...