Curate Conundrums

  What I’d like you to do is, if you’re able take a moment to look at your hands. Observe them. If you’re not able to see your hands perhaps touch one to another and feel them. What do they feel like? Our hands are the way we interact with the world. Through them we feel what’s going on, and our sense of touch is often the first to appear and the last to leave us as we die. They say should hold the hand of a dying person because they will know you are there. Hands are meant for touching, for grasping for caring. If you’ve ever put your finger in the palm of a newborn baby they will cling on to it, as if they are clinging on to you for dear life. It’s called the Palmar Grasp Reflex. Like many of the involuntary movements babies are born with, the grasp reflex probably developed to help her in some way — for example, to grab a nearby object or prepare to feed herself.  The palmar reflex is similar to another type of movement called the plantar reflex (or Babinski reflex), ...

  Let’s talk about fairness. What does fairness mean? What does it look like? When I was growing up we had enough, but not a lot, or at least not a lot by the standards of other people, and perhaps quite a lot by other people’s standards. We didn’t starve, but our house was small. Although we did own our house, which made us better off than many. However, I remember going one winter without heating and hot water because we couldn’t afford to get the boiler fixed. Life is unfair and one of the things we try to do as humans is something called ‘causality’, where we try to seek meaning in everything that happens to us. ‘It all happens for a reason’. I’m not sure I believe in that, I think there are some things that just happen, because that’s the nature of life. Someone stubbing their toe, or winning the lottery, I don’t think God, or some kind of force guides that. Some things are just part of existence and creation. Other things are not just facts of life, they are created and m...

  Writing this sermon the term ‘stumbling block’ kept coming into my mind so I’m going to run with it. Can you think of something that’s been a stumbling block to you? Something or someone that’s stood in your way? As someone who is blessed with the hand eye co-ordination of a blind sloth, stumbling blocks are something that I regularly have to deal with. In fact if you chopped off one of my hands when I stumble, I doubt it would make much difference. I have a hand-eye co-ordination disability called ‘Dyspraxia’ or as it was called when my dad was little ‘clumsy child syndrome.’ It affects my hand-eye co-ordination, my speech, and my fine and gross motor skills. I don’t mean the difference between a BMW and a Nissan Micra, I mean small and large movements. So stumbling is something I’m used to. But also other people’s attitudes have been a stumbling block for me too, and I’m sure all of us can think of examples, and here’s one from my experience. A long long time ago, i...

  I’ve always been a bit of a sensitive soul. I love spending time with people. I love seeing my friends, one of the things that drew me most into ordained ministry was the community side of it. Being with people in their time of need, in their joys and their sorrows. The worst part of any relationship for me is saying goodbye. I’ve always hated saying goodbye. Often when I leave my friends or family, I have to go quickly, shoot off, and not say too much, because if I do I find myself starting to sob. When someone visits me from far away, I just can’t do the thing when you stand on the doorstep and wave them off, it upsets me too much.   When I was a boy, we used to go and visit my grandparents who lived near Whitby, and when it came to saying goodbye it was awful. I tell you it made the wailing and gnashing of teeth scenes from revelation look like a holiday picnic. I would get into the car and start crying because I didn’t want to go. Grandma would start because she didn...

  I was speaking to my neighbour the other day, at an appropriate social distance of course, and we got into an unusually long conversation about our lockdown experiences. She spoke of hope, dreams, disappointments ups and downs, and one particular well known phrase kept cropping up; “There’s light at the end of the tunnel.” She reflected perhaps the way many of us might be feeling. Weary but slightly hopeful that things are going to change relatively soon. That hopefully we’re over the worst of it. That soon she would be able to see her grandchildren again. I was speaking to Paul the other day and he asked ‘How are you?’ I responded, ‘Oh you know, not too bad.’ Paul then asked ‘why do people always say oh you know. I don’t know that’s why I’m asking.’ He has a good point. We don’t know. We don’t know how other people are feeling, or what’s going on. Today our Gospel reading shows Jesus doing a similar thing. What do I mean? Well, the people gathered there don’t know wh...

Hark the glad sound! The Saviour comes, The Saviour promised long; Let every heart prepare a throne, And every voice a song. Happy Christmas! So now what? We’re now headed into what I call ‘the slump time’. That weird period between Christmas and New Year, when many people are off work, we’re all full of rich food, or a bit hungover, and nobody has any idea what day of the week it is. Although to be honest, for some people, perhaps we should call 2020 the year of the slump. Though of course our hardworking Key Workers have been doing anything but slumping. This year has been very tough emotionally, physically and financially for many. For Christians the joy of Christmas continues as we celebrate Christmas Season, which carries on until at least the 3 rd of January when we celebrate the feast of ‘The Epiphany’, otherwise known as when the Wise Men visited Jesus. Or for some Christmas continues until the 10 th of January when the baptism of Christ is celebrated. For us this should b...

I’m going to let you in on a little secret, something that only priests know. Now this is serious, hidden, deep secret knowledge. Promise to keep it to yourself? Sometimes people are difficult. I know right? I bet you’re really surprised to hear that. People are also complicated, which is why they’re sometimes difficult. We’re all a mixture of our past, our present. Our memories make us who we are. We are a bundle of experiences wrapped up in a case. Our experience of life, our values are often all that we have. When something scary comes along that challenges our values, our experience, most of us shut down. Try as we might, when something is deeply challenging, we can often just go, nope, that’s not true, because that’s not my experience. It’s the mental equivalent of putting our fingers in our ears and going la la la la. I can’t hear you. I wonder how many of us have done this? When we come across something challenging? I know I have. That’s not my view, it isn’t true, it’...

Have you ever been up a mountain? I once climbed Snowdon with my Dad when I was a teenager. No, we didn’t take the train. We walked up it, well, we did take the train back down. When we got to the top it was a bit of a disappointment as it was a cloudy day and we couldn’t see anything, there was no view, our vision was blocked, blinded by the water vapour around us, a great grey mist. Mountains are a place of encounter with God. It fits in with our almost primeval idea that God is up there, in the sky, and we’re down here. Churches are often built at the top of hills. One reason is practical, that everyone else can see it. Another is it’s higher, closer to God. Now of course we know as Christians that God isn’t up there. God is all around us, and Christ is all, and in all. Modern science has shown us that heaven isn’t above the clouds. Oh and by the way, the earth is round, regardless of what some people think. Yet still I find myself looking upwards when I want to speak ...