Curate Conundrums

  Families are funny things aren’t they? There are some families that are very close, and others that are not. There are some people who we would call chosen family aren’t there. Friends who aren’t blood relations but we would consider like family. My Uncle Jim and Auntie Jane are my Godparents, but they’re not related to me. But, I called them Auntie and Uncle growing up. I’ve got friends who I’m much closer to than my own family, mostly because of geography. Lots of my family live very far away, and to be honest I haven’t seen that much of them. I think families are good, but I wonder what automatically comes into our minds when we think about family? What’s fundamental to a good family relationship? I think it’s nurture. Nurturing one another, our partners, our cousins, our brothers and sisters, even sometimes our own parents. Encouragement is the foundation of family life. Sometimes though, I struggle with the word ‘family.’ As a Gay man and as a single person I often wat...

  What does water mean to you? Water, we use it all the time don’t we. To bathe, to cook, to clean our clothes, to look after the plants in our garden, to flush away our nasties, to put cucumber and ice in and have a refreshing drink on the patio after a particularly stressful Sunday. Just water by the way. We are so reliant on water aren’t we? It’s not something that we often think about in this country, as usually there’s a lot of it about. Although this year has been very different. We just expect it to come out of the tap don’t we? That is until a drought comes along. I’ve been thinking a lot about water. I often walk by the River Wensum here in Norwich, and was shocked at how low it was the other day. Now you all know that I’m an anxious person. I didn’t hear any gasps of surprise there. Bit insulted actually… Anyway. My anxiety manifests itself in lots of ways. Every year during the summer I get fixated on running out of water. I develop something I call ‘water guilt’...

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’...

Sheep are part of a flock, they’re social animals, a bit like us. I suppose that’s where the similarities end, I mean I don’t have hooves, at least not yet. What does being a sheep have to do with abundant life? Abundant life, I think is about being part of the flock. Now back to sheep, what images come into your mind when you think about sheep? Do you count them to go to sleep? Let’s talk about sheep. What are they like? Docile, mostly. They’re white and fluffy, they chew the cud, hang around together. We use their flocks to make our clothes. They’re not threatening. They baa loudly and make noise. Maybe, they’re a bit stupid. So then, why does Jesus call us sheep? It’s a bit of a mixed metaphor isn’t it? I mean if you want to attract people surely, you’d call them a strong animal like a lion, or something beautiful and mystic like a unicorn. Nope, we are plain old sheep. Thanks Jesus! There’s a lot of bad connotations with sheep, if you’re a sheep you blindly ...

Aha! I thought to myself, pulling into Asda carpark, there’s a space here, but what’s that, the person in the other bay hasn’t parked properly. You know the type of thing, when they’re not in the lines. We all come across it, and it’s one of my pet peeves. Right then! I thought, I’m going to teach them a thing or two, I’m going to park in the bay next to them to teach them a lesson. Or so I thought. Arrogantly, I know best. And lo, as I did pull into that space something went terribly wrong, I scratched that car, and mine in the process. Afterwards it was like an opera singer singing MISTAKE! Behind me, and a few choice words shall we say were uttered from my mouth. They weren’t darn it, or blast I can assure you. There are times in life when we respond in the wrong way, and we can feel bad about ourselves, but the question I want to ask you today is who does Jesus call? And How do we respond to that? I believe that Jesus calls the flawed and we need to respond to G...

There are times in our lives when separation is needed. Separation though sometimes painful is often a time of great growth. Cast your minds back to when you first left home, if indeed you have left home yet. Or if you haven’t think of a time when you were away from your parents for an extended period of time for the first time. Did it fill you with exhilaration or dread? Was it a wonderful occasion or a time of  immense sadness for you? I’ll never forget when I left home for the first time. My Dad turned up and we packed the car up with all the things I’d need. The journey from the small Norfolk village I grew up in, to Sheffield was a long one. Initially I was excited, I couldn’t wait to start my independent life, and I enthusiastically loaded the car up, almost bouncing along, like Super Mario. Until, the moment of separation, the moment when it was time to leave, and suddenly the emotions welled up inside me. This was the end of one way of living, the end of my ...

‘Acts of the Apostles’ is a bit of an unfair name for the book our sermon series is on at the moment. Most of the apostles only get a passing mention, and most of the book focuses on the story of Paul, but I suppose ‘Acts of some of the apostles and quite a lot of what Paul did after he was converted’ is not a very catchy title. Poor old Philip barely gets a mention. But still It’s a great book, that weaves together a narrative about what happened after Jesus, and how the early church started. It’s a funny sort of book, not funny in a ha ha sort of way, but funny in terms of what it is, what is it? Well a mixture of things, It’s often referred to as a History, but it’s not written like a dry Greek history book of the time would’ve been, so kind of, it is. Some scholars think that it’s a biblical history book, because Luke, the writer, who you might remember from such hits as ‘the gospel of Luke’, must have had excellent knowledge of the Greek Septuagint (that’s the Greek Old Testa...