Word in the Hand

The blessing of Peter and Paul May your ego be upended by the hand of the Lord  May your certainties be silenced by his Word May ambition become desire to be Servant of all May your life become aflame with his Love In Jesus' name Peter 'I do not know the man' I know who I am. Or rather I thought I did. A simple man, even by my own admission: and proud to be. I know what I need to know; the stars, the wind, the sails, the nets. I can smell a storm and be in the tavern before the first drop of rain; I can look at cloud shadows on the waves and find the shoals hidden in deep water. I know the price of fish… But I don’t know the man. I’m no Temple man; my brother is the one for that: knows his letters and his Scripture; prays enough for the both of us. Has to… the fish don’t keep the Sabbath; feeding the family is my job, my living. I know what I am good at. But I don’t know the man. And I still don’t know what happened, when Andrew brou...

Superman - Man of Steel For longer than any normal pregnancy the birth of the new Man of Steel film has been awaited with baited breath and the fevent prayer that it would be the worthy successor in the legacy that is Superman.  The fact that the film was received with a round of applause, and I can't remember the last film I was at when that happened, says it all. It seems that the film community has found its saviour. Superman as saviour is, like most superheroes, what he is all about. He is part of the original band of superheroes including Batman and Wonderwoman who entered the world through the comic imagination in a response to the tensions of the early 20th Century. The world had survived one World War and was fast tracking towards another when the blue, red and yellow streak of light first flashed across the storyboard. What the western world psyche needed was someone who could handle the 'bad guy' on a planetary scale. In a time of miltary escalation, th...

Gospel Luke 7:11-17  Jesus went to a town called Nain, accompanied by his disciples and a great number of people. When he was near the gate of the town it happened that a dead man was being carried out for burial, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a considerable number of the townspeople were with her. When the Lord saw her he felt sorry for her. ‘Do not cry’ he said. Then he went up and put his hand on the bier and the bearers stood still, and he said, ‘Young man, I tell you to get up.’ And the dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Everyone was filled with awe and praised God saying, ‘A great prophet has appeared among us; God has visited his people.’ And this opinion of him spread throughout Judaea and all over the countryside. The Gospel of Luke plays with time, just as we so often do. Written in a theatrical way it plays with flashbacks and portents like an epic story where the audience is in on all the acts. Jesus ...

Gospel Luke 9:11-17 Jesus made the crowds welcome and talked to them about the kingdom of God; and he cured those who were in need of healing.   It was late afternoon when the Twelve came to him and said, ‘Send the people away, and they can go to the villages and farms round about to find lodging and food; for we are in a lonely place here.’ He replied, ‘Give them something to eat yourselves.’ But they said, ‘We have no more than five loaves and two fish, unless we are to go ourselves and buy food for all these people’ For there were about five thousand men. But he said to his disciples, ‘Get them to sit down in parties of about fifty.’ They did so and made them all sit down. Then he took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven, and said the blessing over them; then he broke them and handed them to his disciples to distribute among the crowd. They all ate as much as they wanted, and when the scraps remaining were collected they filled twelve bas...