Category Archives: Uncategorized

As we move towards our 15th week of lock-down, I wouldn’t want anyone to think that my reading consisted solely of academic history and German theology. After lunch and before going to sleep I have turned the pages of a number of thrillers. I started with Colin Dexter’s Morse books. There is no doubt thatContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 13”

Wishing and Hoping It is easy to think that wishing and hoping are synonyms. The two words often go together.  Wishin’ and Hopin’ is a Hal David and Burt Bacharach song from the 1960s.  It was released by Dionne Warwick in 1963, and was subsequently a hit for Dusty Springfield in the summer of 1964.Continue reading “Through a glass darkly – 12”

The Scottish Episcopal Church It is a curious fact that when I was ordained into the Scottish Episcopal Church, by Bishop Richard Holloway in St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, in June 1988, I had scarcely ever been in an Episcopalian church service. I was born in London, had lived all my life in England or inContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 11”

Life in lock-down We are back from Normandy. Except that we didn’t go there. This is the twelfth week of lock-down for us here in Edinburgh. It is the longest that I have been in the same city for as long as I can remember. Perhaps for ever. Since March 15th I haven’t been anywhereContinue reading “Though a glass darkly – 10”

Postcards from Normandy We are in Normandy. Except that we’re not. We had rented a house at St Floxel, a small village in the Manche. It would have been half term week, and we were to have been sharing it with the children and grand-children. Getting there from Edinburgh was an interesting challenge. We hadContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 8”

The missing centuries I only have two recurrent nightmares. One is about revisiting History Finals at Oxford. [I might share the other another time.] I am sitting in  a cafe or a pub with growing awareness that final exams are only a week or two away. And to my mounting horror, and initial disbelief, itContinue reading “Through a glass darkly – 8”

Spotlight on dark happenings I fear that I have something of a blindspot as regards child abuse. So anyone reading this who was abused as a child has all my sympathies, but may want to stop reading now. I spent nearly seven years at an English single-sex, boarding school in the 1950s and the 1960s,Continue reading “Through a glass darkly – 7”

The problem of suffering and evil Exposure to too much COVID-19 stuff can induce compassion fatigue. Too many people dying, unevenly distributed here in the UK in terms of class and ethnicity. And too many deaths among people working in the NHS. The stories raise once again the age-long question of how we square ourContinue reading “Through a glass darkly”

Bouquets and Brickbats A friend wrote to Susie to say that she heard I was blogging ‘to make sense of this COVID pandemic’. That’s not true. I am not able to offer a synoptic view. But, as we move into Week Five of the great lock-down, inspired by Piers Moron of the Daily Mail {probablyContinue reading “Through a glass darkly”

Dem bones, dem bones: the Easter message My first ‘grown up’ Easter was in Paris in the mid-1970s. We went to church on Easter Day in the Eglise Réformée in the rue de l’Ouest in the 14th arrondissement and heard a visiting African choir sing A Toi la gloire, words by Edmond de Budry, musicContinue reading “Though a glass darkly”