Latest Thought for the Week

Thinking about today’s gospel passage reminded me that God wants us to use the gifts we have.

When I read the words, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’, I usually start to think about how I myself connect to the vine. Later on, Jesus says, ‘just as the father has loved me, so have I loved you’- and I feel comforted by those words.

This weekend, Ali Lyon and I are leading a session at the Parish Away Day entitled ‘Healing, Wholeness and Holiness: many branches: one vine?’

My dad’s death at only 73 was very sudden. In a warm condolence letter, one of his medical colleagues reflected on the countless deaths he’d witnessed and admitted that he still couldn’t say which type of death and associated grief he would choose.

Wednesday is US Independence Day, celebrated with barbecues, (cold) beer, fireworks and Thomas Jefferson’s stirring words about ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’

It’s always a tense experience watching England play football. This year everyone has tried to play down the hype and stress the unity and youth of the team and a realistic optimism. But you can still sense the readiness for national soul searching and despair just beneath the surface should they fail.

Like much of the country, I have been transfixed by the opening stages of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. I was struck by one report in particular last week – an account by a BBC journalist of an impromptu encounter between an unnamed victim of the fire and the inquiry’s chairman, Sir Martin Moore-Bick.

Last week we had the privilege of hearing the legendary folk singer and human rights campaigner Joan Baez at the Royal Albert Hall.

Let me recommend a US public radio program: ‘On Being’. Created by journalist and theologian, Krista Tippett, it offers ‘intelligent conversation about religion, meaning, and moral imagination’.