I’m 45 today. I’m not young; I’m not old. And I’m not middle-aged either. Ok!

For most of my life I have been very angry; mostly at myself but also towards those nearest to me. I’ve never hit anyone or anything. But I have shouted and screamed; gone very red in the face; paced up and down rooms like a raging bull; and probably caused a few people to be quite scared. The inward anger caused the depression; the outward caused a marriage to fail.

It has taken a few prayer ministry sessions but much of ...

I’m an ‘inspector’ apparently. It’s a description of my personality according to the system devised by a Professor David Keirsey (Please Understand Me II). I’ve always shied away from such personality tests fearing the tester at the end of the process would say something like, ‘Get out of here – you’re an absolute monster’!

So being an ‘inspector’ doesn’t seem too bad. Here’s a sentence from the lon...

I thought I’d start a ‘Monday celebrity column’ … No not really – but I couldn’t let the news about Catherine Zeta Jones’ illness pass without some comment. She announced last week that she is being treated for type 2 bipolar condition – a kind of depressive illness.

The stigma that still comes with depression or any kind of mental health issue is immense and CZJ is to be commended for coming out publicly wit...

The Welsh Revival of 1904-05 has to be counted as one of the greatest historical events in Wales’ religious history. In this country alone some 100,000 people were saved – most of them in pretty dramatic fashion, with many swooning on the floor under the power of the Spirit and others were wailing their repentance.

Around the world – in countries like India, Korea etc. – the numbers stack up even higher. It became ...

Japan’s tragedy keeps on unfolding before our eyes. By now it is the threat of nuclear contamination that fills us with fear and the original earthquake and tsunami have had to take a back seat. But in a fascinating film on BBC 2 last night a geologist explained a little about how earthquakes happen and how devastating they can be.

Possibly the most remarkable fact was that Japan suffers about a third of the world’s qu...

We’re off down south for the weekend. There we’ll meet up with our friends from Antioch Church in Llanelli – who must be among the closest connections we have. There’s nothing like being accepted for who you are – so this will one relaxed weekend.

It was the US president so beloved by the Christian Right who labelled Gaddaffi ‘mad dog’ as he sent in American planes to bomb Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986. Ronald Regan decided to strike because of Gaddaffi’s support of terrorist organisations like the IRA.

Just a couple of short thoughts today about this label:

• Whenever we choose to refer to another human being in a de-humanising way we are making it far easi...

A train-crash was how many have described Martin Bashir’s interview with Rob Bell, suggesting that Bell came out quite badly. I’ve watched it twice now and have to disagree. Bashir is a professional TV journalist with some heavyweight interviews under his belt (Princess Di and ‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson being the most famous) and in my view Bell came out really well.

When Bashir went in hard (which, let’s be h...

I’m probably going to be pretty lonely in my stance, but I’m against the military intervention currently ongoing in Libya. Here are a few reasons why:

• Innocent people will be killed. The usual mantra about weapons with pin-point accuracy is once again being repeated but experience tells us that catastrophic mistakes are made.
• In the days leading to the passing of the UN resolution all talk was of a no-fly zone....

Two quotes today – both of which I found through the social media input of two friends.

First: Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner – Lao Tzu, via Derek Bond on Facebook.

Second: When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure – Rudolph Bahro, via Martin Scott on his blog.

It’s not difficult to get people’s approval ...

A jumble of thoughts this morning. Sorry.

Yesterday Helen was due to continue her teaching series on spiritual disciplines (prayer, Bible reading etc.) and her theme for the morning was going to be ‘simplicity’. It didn’t happen. We had also invited Rosey to share about the work she is involved in (actually, for ‘involved in’ read ‘set up’) in Bangladesh – giving an education to some of the poorest street c...

Brian Cox has to be the coolest physics professor in the UK. I watched the first part of his new series on the BBC last night and found what he had to say fascinating. He has such an engaging style and is able to make some very difficult concepts far easier to grasp (or, for a non-science person like me, a little easier to understand – but that’s not his fault, I should have paid more attention at school).

One quote that str...

You probably thought they sold furniture whereas in actual fact they sell happiness. I’m talking about Ikea – a shop I’ve had occasion to visit recently. I enjoy shopping there – though not as much as my wife.

During our latest visit we picked up their 2011 catalogue, on the front cover of which is their catchy little phrase: ‘Live a happier life at home’.

It’s the culture we live in and I think the Old Testam...

Does sexism bear any comparison with racism? Are they both equally bad or is judging a person based on the colour of his or her skin far worse than judging a person based on his or her gender?

I ask in the light of what has happened yesterday to Andy Gray, the Sky TV football pundit: he lost his job because he had made a number of ill-judged comments about women. His comment was that there was no way a woman could understand...

After what proved to be a rather controversial post yesterday I’m going to play it safe today and write about the film we went to see last night. The King’s Voice tells the story of King George VI’s battle with a speech impediment and the help he got from a self-taught, Australian speech therapist. It is such a brilliant film.

At its heart is redemption – a life blighted by a stammer faces the ultimate c...

Is a literalist interpretation of the Bible creating ‘schizophrenic’ Christians? A provocative question to ask on a Monday morning to be sure, but I ask it following a comment I heard over the weekend. Let me put the comment in its context before I tell you what it was: this person was emphasising the need for believing truth if we are to have a strong, healthy, and intimate relationship with God as Father. I have no disa...

With yet more snow falling this morning (though thankfully not here) I’ve been thinking about the word ‘treacherous’ which has been used often during the bad weather in relation to the condition of the roads and pavements. Someone on Twitter said that roads can’t be treacherous because ‘they weren’t on our side in the first place’. Good point, I think!

Over the holiday we watched a BBC series on DVD called â€...

Just a short post on this Christmas Eve to wish you well over the holidays. In so many ways this will be a traditional Western Christmas for us: we have a tree (of sorts); a turkey; a home-made Christmas pudding; we have presents to open and there will be those who open our presents to them; goodness, we even have deep snow-cover on the ground.

But among the traditional – and yes, pagan – festivities we are ...

Wait till your Father gets Home was a cartoon about a guy called Harry Boyle and his family I used to enjoy when I was young. Harry had a right-wing Christian neighbour, Ralph, who used to receive brown-paper packages under the guise of ‘you’ve gotta know your enemy, Harry’. The suggestion, of course, was that Ralph was no more than a hypocrite â...

It may be the season to be jolly but the good people of Glastonbury are in mourning. For them, this Christmas holds little joy; tears are closer than turkey; and the figgy pudding will have a bitter taste. And what, you ask, vexes them so? Their holly tree has been cut down. And this was no ordinary holly tree for its roots (no pun intended) go right back to Joseph of Arimathea. You’ll find the AP story written up here an...

If the Pharisees had a video camera would their films look like this?

Now I know that even writing the above introduction puts me in the judges’ camp but I can’t help but think of what the Pharisees thought of Jesus’ drinking habits.

Any thoughts?

Thanks to Lesley Fellows for the original link.

Pastor Terry Jones and the English Defence League have one very important thing in common – fear. As they perceive Islam to be a major threat to their freedom both here and in the US their natural and very human reaction is to be fearful. And of itself there is nothing wrong with being fearful. Indeed it is a necessary reaction in the face of a threat and can keep us safe where otherwise we would be in danger.

The questi...

Is ‘anarchy’ a pejorative term devised by those who want to keep their hands on power? A bit like the word ‘heresy’ maybe – a term which came to be a handy little tool in the hands of those who wanted to control the church’s teaching.

But this is turning into a far deeper post than I had intended. All I wanted to do today was to point out how impotent the state appears to be in the face of current events. In Ir...

21 May 2011 – the date when Jesus returns. Or so claim a group called Family Radio Inc., a national Christian radio station in the US. They have paid for posters on 40 billboards in 8 cities proclaiming Jesus’ imminent return.

On their website they claim to know the year when the world was created – 11,013 BC – the year of Noah’s flood – 4990 BC – and the year of the exodus from Egypt – 1447 BC. All of this...

Lust, pornography and masturbation. Now that I’ve got your attention let me tell you where I spent last weekend – at a men’s conference organised by Antioch church down in Llanelli. And the themes discussed were … lust, pornography and masturbation. See – I wasn’t just using those words for the sake of drawing you in!

Now I have to be honest I wouldn’t normally be dragged by a Challenger tank and a humvee to ...

Johnny Nash - who, for the record, has no connections to Christian fundamentalism

‘There are more questions than answers … And the more I find out, the less I know.’ Remember it? It’s a song that reminds me of that great BBC quiz I used to watch as a child, A Question of Sport, and the ‘guess the sport star’ round. I don’t really do popular culture on th...

Iris was five days old when I held her – a healthy 8lbs plus baby girl. As you can see from the photograph, she’s beautiful. But she is more than beautiful, she is also blessed. Born to a loving couple she will be so well cared for within her immediate home environment. Living as she does in the midst of some of the most amazing countryside in Wales, her young life will be full of fascinating sights...

I was young – primary school age; it was the 1970s; flares and platform shoes were in fashion. Our village, however, tucked away as it was and still is in the north-east corner of Anglesey, took a long time to receive the modern world into its bosom. It was a shock, therefore, to notice one Sunday morning that the signpost in the village square had been vandalised. Not badly; it was still standing and still pointing towards Neb...

I’m not a fundamentalist but two fundamentals I (still) believe in is that all human beings have been created in the image of God and that even though that image has been shattered each person has an opportunity for redemption through Jesus. And that really does mean everybody – no matter who they are, where they’re from, what their current beliefs are, what they’ve done to shatter the image, who they hate etc., etc. ...

The issue of some prisoners voting in the UK has caused a lot of controversy over the past week or so. In a European court ruling it has been decided to give prisoners voting rights under article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1988. Some of what has been said about the issue has been total tosh. But below is a quote from a blog I found last week. It is written by Craig Lawrence Roters and though not specifically on prisoners vot...

A baby dies as the family throw themselves out of a second story flat in an attempt to ‘flee the devil’. You can read the full story here but it seems that the family, located in a town west of Paris, mistook the baby’s father as the devil and were so frightened they made their escape through a window and the result was a horrific tragedy.

Here in the UK we have heard stories of churches ending up abusing children in...

A little more on getting sorted today. Yesterday I suggested that one good reason for seeking healing was that we need it. We are broken, we are imperfect and the best thing would be for us to seek out God’s healing touch. Today I want to suggest another good reason – you can decide for yourself whether it’s better than yesterday’s – and that is we need to get whole for creation’s sake.

There are a couple of majo...

Blogging was light last week mainly because we were away on the Isle of Wight for the second half. I go there to get some sorting done, for – and this will shock you – I am not perfect and God hasn’t quite finished his work in me yet. Maybe I’m a bit like you.

The funny thing is we’re not very good at owning up to it as Christians, are we – especially Christian leaders. We like to maintain this venee...

Controversy has been building up over the selling of unlabelled halal meat in British supermarkets. According to the Mail on Sunday many hundreds of schools, pubs and restaurants are serving meat that has been slaughtered according to Islamic law and the public are completely unaware that it is happening. Reaction to the story has come from two different directions: the animal welfare lobby are concerned about the pain and ...

Anyone who has lived through the 1970s and 80s in the UK knows well what picketing is – indeed a pop band was named after the practice. But could you imagine picketing a funeral? Could you take your placards and stand outside a cemetery shouting your protest at the family of the bereaved? Well this is what one Baptist church in the US has been doing for some time now outside the funerals of American troops killed in actio...

I had my first ever visit to prison on Monday as part of my ongoing JP training. HMP Altcourse is a 1,300 bed private prison in Liverpool. It is relatively new complex and does not share the oppressive nature of some of our Victorian jails as typified on the BBC comedy series Porridge. It is, of course, a secure environment, with high walls, double locked doors, and lots of razor wire (for which the government pays a fine e...

How easy cultural norms blind us to the truth! Yesterday’s sermon at Emmanuel was partly based on Luke 24 and the story of the two friends leaving Jerusalem after the crucifixion. They were so obviously disappointed in the events of ‘Good Friday’ but had not realised what had happened on the third day and so they leave for Emmaus.

As I read the passage I realised that their lack of understanding about what had happe...

Yesterday the news from Iran was grim if a little confused, especially for one person in particular, namely Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43 year old mother of two who has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery and death by hanging for murdering her husband. She denies both charges and there remains much doubt as to what exactly has happened in the courts but the stoning sentence remains and she faces death. Her ...

House to Home, Woman & Home, Ideal Home, Livingetc, Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, Nuts. Ok, not Nuts. But all the rest are magazines currently on sale in the UK published to help us turn the houses we live in into the perfect home of our dreams. And the homes featured in their pages are perfect in every way. All the colours match – from soft furnishings to wall paper. All the fires are real. All the bed...

This is the last post in a short series on the Pope’s visit this week.

Lets be honest, having a pop at the Pope has been pretty easy during his visit to Scotland and England this week and plenty of us have taken ample opportunity to do so. With so many open goals to aim at, who can blame us! And yet … Some of the attacks coming from the secularists have had an edge to them that needs to be addressed. I found Church Mou...

This post is the third in a short series this week to mark the Pope’s visit to England and Scotland.

Can a church be renewed or do those who seek renewal ultimately have to accept that the only option is to either leave for another church or set up a brand new church? I ask the question since the Pope is to beatify someone who was part of a renewal movement in the Church of England in the mid 19^th century but ...

This is the second post in a series on the Pope’s visit to the UK this week.

You’re a Catholic and the Pope’s coming for a visit. You’re excited, aren’t you? And you want to note the visit in some way; you want to celebrate. But how to do that? Well fear not, faithful flock, for the Church has set up a special online shop just for you. ‘The Pope Benedict XVI in the United Kingdom Official Online Stor...

I hope he’s wearing his trademark red shoes – how cool are they! He arrives on Thursday and for four days he will visit four cities in Scotland and England encouraging his flock as he goes. I’m referring about Pope Benedict XVI’s visit. Despite the papal visit occurring during very trying times for the Roman Catholic Church, we should surely welcome him to our shores. (I say ‘our shores’ but of course...

Forgive the tired saying, but responding to the Quran burning event in Florida is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. I often use mild sarcasm in this blog to make my point and I could so easily spread it as thick as butter on toast in addressing this issue. But as many are now warning, this is a serious issue and will almost undoubtedly draw violent reprisals in many parts of the world.

You’re probably aware of the st...

A few thoughts on resurrection today as I have a funeral to take tomorrow and I’ve been asked to preach. One of the readings chosen is the final section of the 15^th chapter in 1 Corinthians – it’s the chapter on resurrection and includes these powerful words, ‘O death, where is your victory’. I once challenged an atheist to say what hope he could provide a family in bereavement apart from the fact that the deceased had li...

It’s ‘Back to Church Sunday’ on 26 September – an initiative that aims to get those of us who are regulars in Sunday services to invite a friend who has not been to ‘church’ for a while to return to the fold. On the face of it, it’s an excellent idea.

I was present at a congregation yesterday where one of the resources prepared for the initiative was handed out to the regulars and there is no doubting the genui...

It’s nearly over. Autumn is cautiously creeping in and another mixed summer slips away. And with it goes Big Brother – that infuriatingly fascinating Channel 4 phenomenon. I think it would have been the second series that I watched all the way through but as the contestants became ever more weird I had given it a wide berth. Until this year that is when big Dave Vaughn, pseudo monk and rattler of religious cages, got installed ...

In a shock finding it seems that only 13% of the British population believe that politicians tell the truth. Well I never – I’m surprised the figure is so high! The poll was taken last October after the publishing of MP’s accounts by the Telegraph newspaper. More surprising, maybe, is that even in 1983 the figure only stood at 18% - though it had been as high as 23% in 1999.

71% find the clergy truthful – though this...

Twenty seven percent of British people believe that the Church of England should not have gay bishops and ten percent believe that they should not have female bishops. Whether the church should have gay women bishops was not asked but you and I could make a fair guess how the numbers would fall, right?

The Church, of course, has just had a rather tormented weekend away in York to discuss the issue of women bisho...

The news from Syria is interesting this week (oh yes it is!), for according to AsiaNews.it the government there has banned the wearing of the niqab by students and teachers in schools and colleges. They have done so, apparently, in order to counter the spread of ‘extremist ideas’.

Syria, of course, is ruled by a secular government that is keen to keep religious radicalism away from their young people. This o...

The temple in Jerusalem represented the six days of creation, with the Holy of Holies representing the first day, the veil representing the second and so on. This is one of the many new things I’ve learned from Margaret Barker in a book of hers that I’m reading at the moment – Temple Theology: An introduction (London, 2004).

She also says that there are basically two streams of thought in the Old Testament...

The story emerging from Afghanistan about three of our soldiers being killed by a ‘renegade’ Afghan soldier is tragic indeed. We are told that we are there in order to bring stability to the country and save our streets from terrorist attacks. To see an Afghan turn on British soldiers like this is therefore quite shocking.

Like many, I feel it is high time we brought our troops home. They have been there far too long. ...

Putting someone in prison can be an upsetting business but it can also feed the power-grabbing side of one’s personality. I faced these two contrasting emotions a couple of weeks back when I made a decision – with two other magistrates – to detain a 20 year old for 9 weeks.

The circumstances were simple enough – this young man had caused criminal damage to a number of cars and had been sentenced to a community order ...

Depending on what your poison may be, the Church of England’s General Synod starting today could the most interesting or the most boring event in York this weekend. If you’re an Anglican you’ll probably be following quite closely because the whole thorny issue of women bishops is to be discussed and the meetings are held in the context of the gay priest, Jeffrey John, once again being rejected as a potential bishop. T...

A quick update from the Big Brother House – Dave was not nominated by the housemates last night, so he’s probably safe for another week. In fact, not a single person chose him for eviction. This is such a reversal from previous weeks when he’s been up for eviction every time and clearly held in considerable suspicion by some. For those who haven’t followed the series or the fuss surrounding it, Dave is a charismatic Chris...

With Wimbledon over and the football world cup drawing to close, let me pose this question at the beginning of the week – will there be sport in ‘heaven’? Or to put it more precisely, will there be any competitive sport in ‘heaven’? I put the word heaven in quotation marks, of course, because I don’t believe that heaven will be our final destination; rather there will be a new heaven and a new earth and it is on...

It’s not a programme you would usually recommend Christians to follow but with Sloshfest’s Dave Vaughn being one of the housemates, Big Brother has become compulsive viewing in our house. Yes, the language is terrible; yes, the sight of scantily clad women is unhelpful; yes, the culture-meter is very low – but the interaction between the housemates makes this series fascinating.

In this post I want to reflect on how ...

Never have so many parrots been sickened for so little pleasure by so few inept footballers – or so Churchill may have said were he still alive today. The poor man must be spinning. But before we blame the players – maybe even instead of blaming them – we should consider the role inflexible leadership had in yesterday’s poor performance.

As the leader directly responsible for the England team, we should begin with ...

So the plans for securing the reestablishment of ancient Britain under Welsh rule are progressing well these days – though seeing a Barry born woman become the Aussies’ first female prime minister was a bit unexpected. She used to be minister for education – thus proving her Welsh origin – but she’s also described as a straight talker, so obviously her many years down under have given her extra skills. Being a rep...

Yesterday I was sent an email by some friends forwarding an email doing the rounds about a petition in the US calling for Christian broadcasting on television to be banned. The petition was, apparently, gaining much support with nearly 300,000 signatories and was calling for people like Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen to be silenced on the airwaves. The email encouraged recipients to sign a counter petition in order ...

Check out this excellent link on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It gives you an opportunity to ‘move’ the spill on Google maps and place it over a region you know well. I typed in Anglesey only to see that the spill would actually cover the whole of Wales and more. If one wasn’t aware of the enormity of the situation beforehand, then this map certainly presses the point home.

The thing that strikes m...

Taking offence is big business in this country. It would seem that someone somewhere can’t live a full life without taking offence at something. This is why the Advertising Standards Authority was set up many years ago because some advertisements apparently cause offence and the ASA exists so that concerned citizens can complain. Its’ annual report has just been released and makes fascinating reading. (Ok, â€...

I spent the weekend with some of the men from Pioneer People, Pensby, on their weekend away in the Conwy Valley. With the sun scorching hot and great landscape looking its best there was no doubt that we would have a very relaxing time together, and so it proved to be. What a great bunch of people they are and really going for something different as a church.

I was invited to join them in order to offer some teac...

Apologies for being such a lightweight on the blogging front recently. It’s been a busy period and this week is gearing up quite nicely too! Our trip to the US was cancelled due to the volcanic ash. (What is going on with this ash thing then?!) We did, however, manage some time away: a great week in a cottage in Dorset with the sun shining most days. Once we were back I was straight into the election campaign â...

On Monday night I watched the start of a short new series on ITV 1 called 'Wormwood Scrubs'. The Scrubs is one of the UK’s most infamous prisons with room for some 1,300 men. It was first built in the Victorian era and still has many of the original buildings – making it a striking feature in the urban landscape of London.

To critique a series after only one programme is surely a mistake, but critiquing the ...

Tomorrow we fly off to the United States (depending on the ash cloud!) to spend two weeks with our friends Ron and Lisa Fess. Though blogging may well be sporadic while we’re away, it will not disappear altogether. I have been fascinated by the US since my school days when I studied Geography for A level and that country was part of the curriculum. The other country outside the UK that was part of the study was...

Dealing with difficult memories must be one of the most challenging things we have to do as human beings. It can be really tough when past pain enters our present and affects the way we function today. On the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning there was a fascinating piece about this issue where two researchers presented their findings.

The first was a scientist from Oxford University who had come to the co...

I have to start today’s post with an apology for the ads that appeared with yesterday’s post about power and abuse in the church. They were wholly inappropriate for a Christian blog and especially for that particular post. I am very sorry it happened.

Regular readers will have noticed the ads supplied by Google – and the search engine to the right – that have appeared on my blog in the past couple of wee...

Were Jamie Bulger’s killers too young at 10 years to fully understand what they did? Maggie Atkinson, the Children’s Commissioner of England, believes they were and has called for the age of criminal responsibility to be set at 12 rather than 10. Her words – expressed in an interview with The Times at the weekend – come during a particularly difficult time for the family of Jamie Bulger, as Jon Venables h...

I was trawling through Facebook updates this morning when I came across the ‘Justice for James Bulger’ group and an application that invited me to ‘release a balloon’ in the child’s memory (if you don’t do Facebook, then you’re probably lost by now, but keep with me anyway). The introductory blurb to the application claims that the boy’s killers should never have been released from prison and that...

I see the Church of England is getting into a bit of a stew over gender issues again – the gender of its leaders that is, and whether women should be consecrated as bishops. Years have now passed since women were accepted into the ordained priesthood in the C of E – something I disagreed with then, since I don’t think men should be ordained into the priesthood either. We’re all priests in God’s eyes –...

There aren’t many Welsh speaking people in the world. There must be even fewer Welsh speakers who are blind. And we probably could count the number of blind Welsh speakers who are also Christians on the fingers of the hands of a typical Sunday afternoon Baptist chapel congregation in Llanfflewin. But however small that number they should still be able to read the Bible in their first language. This is why Cytun, the ecumenical body in Wales, has launched an appeal for the translation of the...