START STOP - Going green - what’s the bloody point?

Exiles by Matilde Damele on show at St Stephen Walbrook in September 2019

Each year the period between September 1st and the Feast of St Francis of Assisi on October 4th is set aside by the church as the Season of Creation, when we are called to focus our prayers and actions on our stewardship of the earth. Today marks the middle of a week-long series of protests which are aiming to draw international attention to the climate emergency. These 'Climate Strikes', which have been led by young people, were started by the Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thurnburg who has said “This is the moment in history we need to be wide awake. Dreams cannot stand in the way of telling it like it is, especially not now.”

I think in the Bible it is especially the Books of Wisdom that “tell it like it is” - with frank assessments of the difficulty of living faithfully in the here and now. I have chosen a reading today from one of these - the Book of Ecclesiastes;

Turning Good King Wenceslas upside down

In the foyer of the Lucerna Palace in Prague – an Art Nouveau building housing a concert hall, shopping centre and café, hangs a statute of St Wenceslaus. Unlike the figure on the monumental plinth which stands at the top of Wenceslaus Square, this depiction of the saint, by the sculptor David Černý, sits rather uncomfortably on a dead horse which is suspended upside-down, its lifeless tongue hangs limp, pointing at the shoppers below.

Start:Stop-Start your day the Salesian way

The Sun, Edvard Munch, 1910-1911

Good morning and welcome to Start Stop. This time of year is one of new beginnings for many - back to school or university, or back to work after the holidays. For some this is an exciting time, but for others it can be daunting. It is all to easy to become distracted from the present moment and spend time worrying about the future - to wince at the number of unopened emails or feel anxious about the size of our seemingly never-shrinking to-do lists - and Christmas is only around the corner! How! are we going to fit it all in? How! will we cope?

BOOK REVIEW - Four Ministries, One Jesus : Exploring your vocation with the four gospels by Richard A. Burridge

I was given this excellent book by Fr Chrichton, my last vicar in Southgate. I think it helped (but was not essential) that I had read “Four Gospels : One Jesus” (by the same author and considered to be a modern classic) before reading this book.
‘Four Ministries’ draws on the theme of the earlier (1994) text, using the four symbols now associated with the evangelists to describe a different area of mission and ministry. As in the earlier book, in which Richard Burridge makes clear that the four portraits of Jesus offered by each gospel help to provide a different picture of the same man (in the same way that at Chartwell, different photographs on the walls in different rooms show different aspects of the life of Churchill), so this text, divided into sections examining each gospel, describe different aspects of the one mission and ministry of the church.