“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to […]
Sermon Topic: Darkness
"Illuminating Darkness"
The Great Historian, Herodotus, gave an account of a stalemate of war east Asia, taking place between the Medes (pron. meeds) and the Lydians. A feud had grown into a senseless full-fledged war that dragged on for years. Unlike most ancient history, we know the exact date when the war ended, May 28, 585 B.C., […]
A light shines in the darkness.
Are you feeling SAD today? I don’t mean melancholy, I mean SAD? According to the Associate Professor of neurology and psychiatry and director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the School of Medicine at Boston University, 10 million Americans are affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, bringing on mood changes, symptoms of depression, lethargy, […]
Lighten our Darkness
The narrative of the Holy Scriptures begins in darkness and silence. In the beginning of the Bible, as in the beginning of creation, the whole universe “was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” The narrative of the Holy Scriptures ends in eternal light and endless music. At the […]
Stepping Back into the Darkness
If you travel to the middle of Wales in the United Kingdom you will find a landscape both beautiful and ancient, with the echoes of the Celtic Church and the legends of St David, that great missionary of the sixth century. You will also find there a place unique and for a particular reason that […]
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
I wonder how many of you are afraid of the dark. There is something about being awake in the night and not being able to sleep; somehow worries and concerns become amplified in the middle of the night. When I was younger, I would listen intently to the noises of the night and sometimes they […]
Hard to Love
In our evening services recently, we have been reading from the first epistle of John. It is a text that grounds the present moment simultaneously both deep in the ancient tradition and in the future hope of the world to come. John begins the epistle with bold rhetorical language along these lines, writing that he […]
In the darkness of faith, we shall see stars.
Abraham was old, really old, and God’s promise that he would be the father of a great nation was a real paradox for him. How could he become a great nation if he still had no children? Yet he lived faithful to God and this faithfulness is the subject of the reading we heard from […]
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Why is it that the night-time is so very different from the day-time? And why is it that worries and concerns always seem worse at night? I am sure, like me, when something is on your mind you have had those terrible moments in the middle of the night with the same thoughts going round […]
