Temple Cloud

‘It’s all right; I’ve got used to Temple saying, “I love you,” to random people.’ At the point where PDB11 said that, we were round at Doom Metal Singer’s caravan, and she had been telling us about the troubles she had been facing recently.   I was worried by the facts that she hadn’t told us before, and that she had a cracked rib which had been healing more slowly than necessary because she couldn’t avoid bending and lifting in gathering firewood, fetching shopping, and so on, when we would have been happy to help if she had only asked us.   I just wanted her to know that she had friends who cared about her. I hadn’t realised how freely I use the words, ‘I love you,’ and even hug people if they give me permission, as it's not fair to inflict hugs on people when they're not in the mood. Doom Metal Singer had given me permission, so I gave her a sort of shoulder-hug, trying to avoid her ribs (and with heads facing over each other’s shoulders to avoid Covid transmission – we...

Let’s be honest: if I take up long walks in Lent, or even from shortly after Christmas, this is in no way a penitential (related to pain , punch , punish , repine , and subpoena ) exercise.   It isn’t an attempt to atone for the Christmas cake I ate in December or the chocolate I’m going to eat in April.   It isn’t because I think God is going to love me more if I come home with blistered feet and stiff joints, or because I hope that inflicting weariness and mild discomfort on myself will help me to empathise with Jesus’s experience of being tortured to death. What it may be, however, is a pensive (related to pendant , depend , expensive , pansy , pendulum , pension , perpendicular , poise, ponder, recompense , and many more words relating to hanging, weighing, and thus, mentally weighing up ideas – if you were wondering, pansies bear that name because they are the flowers that symbolise thoughts and remembrance, not because they are so often found in hanging baskets) journe...

“ Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass. ”  This quotation (which has been attributed to various people including Confucius, George Herbert and Thomas Fuller) always makes me wonder about the different groups of people who feel unable to forgive. Firstly, obviously, are people who have been victims of horrific abuse.   Perhaps you are deeply traumatised by having been raped as a child by an adult you were supposed to trust and respect.   Perhaps you never dared tell anyone, or perhaps you told and no-one believed you.   So when you finally talk to a counsellor who does believe you, then if the counsellor says, ‘Well, you’ll have to forgive your abuser, otherwise you’ll go to hell,’ then this can be as traumatic as the original abuse.   Sometimes, counsellors have even argued that if you truly forgive your abuser, you won’t go to the police and give evidence to get them imprisoned to stop them from abusing other...

Candlemas has come (okay, it was 2 nd February, which was last Wednesday), and Christmas is definitely over.   The last holly leaves are in the compost bin (reminding me that it’s high time I scrape up the dead deciduous leaves that are all over the garden and decide whether I’m actually going to do any gardening this year).   The Christmas tree, of course, went back into the garden on Twelfth Night, as twelve days inside a warm dry house is as much as a little spruce tree can be expected to put up with.   This one has managed to survive four Christmases so far – and, more importantly, survived the summers between them. The Christmas cards have gone to the recycling bin, except one from a friend in Wales that didn’t arrive until 1 st February, and which I’m going to keep.   Apart from anything else, you don’t often get a Christmas card with a dragon on it. The wooden cross that the holly wreath came wrapped around is standing proudly on the mantelpiece.   Ev...

Today’s sermon opened with three Bible passages which touched on the theme of feeling unworthy.   Isaiah , on seeing a vision of seraphim , exclaimed, ‘Woe to me!   I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’   Peter, on first meeting Jesus , echoes Isaiah’s words: ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’   And Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians , admits that ‘I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.’ In each story, the pattern was the same: we may feel guilty or ashamed or unworthy, but God loves and affirms us, frees us from sin, and calls us to be his witnesses. So, the vicar asked, did we know anyone who felt unworthy of God’s love because of some sin they had committed, which they felt was so terrible that God could not possibly accept them?   What would we say to such...