Humpty Dumpty

Nineteenth-century Englishmen were happy to conclude with Wordsworth that ‘trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home.’...

WOWs and OMGs have secured a recognised place in our speech. We have to ask how we managed to get along without them. There were always...

Something everybody knows is that Socrates got people thinking by asking silly questions. I don’t mean absurd questions, like: can two...

Worship, being celebration, is a near neighbour of the wedding breakfast, the birthday party or even the wake. But that can be...

Words change their meaning. That applies to words used by Christians and to words used in worship. We have to be wary. ‘Bubble’ was once...

I asked Humpty to find me a church customer (i.e. worshipper) with a mind of his or her own. He did me proud. There may be other readers...

Don’t believe anybody who tells you that there are no such things as fashion in the theology industry. Topics come and go. So do great...

‘Down on your knees,’ said Shakespeare’s Rosalind. She knew that what’s important best comes in monosyllables. She also had a fair amount...

Curt, abrupt, call it what you will, Emily Dickinson’s poetry is anything but bland. It is best read alongside one of Pure Cremation’s...

‘The large crowd enjoyed listening to Jesus teach.’ (Mark 12.37 CEV) Is that a better rendering than the KJV: ‘The common people heard...

‘The scum of the earth, the dregs of humanity’: whoever can Paul be talking about? (1 Corinthians 4.13) Perhaps the money-makers who had...

‘Welcome!’ we hear when the front door opens and our friends invite us in. ‘Welcome’ says the airport as we turn up to catch our plane....

Nowadays you have to go to Australia to see a camel – though on a small scale Whipsnade or Woburn might serve as well. In the ancient...

If a flying machine without an engine is a glider, a service of worship without a sermon is a balloon. We worship by giving praise to God...

When a blizzard or craze sweeps through a somnolent community, rural or urban, what change there is! Apathy becomes activism....

We like companionship. But it has to be the right sort. We find this longing showing itself in Paul’s letters. ‘Have no fellowship with...

Advertisers and politicians – for whom I have to say, I have due respect – sometimes find themselves offering jam tomorrow. It is an...