Below are the monthly 'View From The Vicarage' blog posts. If you'd like to receive these directly into your inbox, please submit your address below.
As you read this we’ll either be drawing towards the end of or in the aftermath of a General Election Campaign. I’m not certain how prescient you are but I’d be quite prepared to wager that very few of us had been expecting to be paying a visit to the polls to elect a new Westminster Parliament quite this soon; I understand that Teresa May made the decision while staying in Dolgellau over Easter, I can’t claim to have done anything similar while I was there a week later!!
Read More
As I write this, it’s Easter Week and I feel that I must begin by expressing my sincere gratitude to everybody who participated in any way with our Lent and Holy Week Services this year, I’d particularly like to thank our musicians and choirs for their invaluable support.
Read More
As you read this, our long Lenten journey is gradually drawing to a close and the emotional and theological rollercoaster ride that is Holy Week and Easter will be upon us. In Welsh Holy Week is “Yr Wythnos Fawr” the Great Week. It seems to me that that is an extremely appropriate description of the events of those tumultuous days in Jerusalem so many centuries ago.
Read MoreAs you read this, we’ll just be embarking on the season of Lent, one of the most significant periods in the Christian calendar, preparing us as it does for Easter and the greatest of all Christian festivals.
For many of us I’m sure we connect Lent with the idea of giving things up and indeed this has long been regarded as a significant part of this season. But the idea of “giving up for Lent” is designed to help us to focus on fundamentals and I wonder to what extent we actually do that.
Read More
By the time that you read this, Donald Trump will have been inaugurated as the 45th President of the USA and the moment when the UK Government will instigate Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and with it the formal process by which the UK will cease to be a member of the European Union will almost be upon us.
Read MoreI do hope that as you read this, you’re still enjoying your Christmas celebrations. I’ve lost count of the number of people over the years, who have asked me after Boxing I had a good Christmas Day. For me, and I’m sure for you as well Christmas doesn’t end until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th, so do keep enjoying Christmas up until January, 6th.
Read More“Two young boys were spending the night at their grandparents’ house, the week before Christmas. At bedtime, as the two boys knelt beside their beds to say their prayers, the younger one began praying at the top of his voice: “I pray for a new bicycle, I pray for a new Nintendo PS2, I pray for a new smartphone!”...
Read MoreAs the longer and colder nights of November begin to embrace us, we also embark upon the season of remembrance beginning with All Saints and All Souls Days at the beginning of the month through, Guy Fawkes, Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day before concluding with the relatively modern feast of Christ the King...
Read MoreI wonder if you’ve been watching, as we have, the latest instalments of the BBC’s current dramatization of Winston Graham’s “Poldark” novels.I have to admit that despite having vague memories of the original BBC production from the 1970s and thoroughly enjoying the latest production, I’ve yet to read the novels themselves.
One recent episode which I watched the other night included some wonderful and bucolic scenes of the gathering and later the celebration of the harvest. Such images, combined with the writing of Victorian novelists such as Thomas Hardy remind us of a time in our not very distant past when a successful harvest meant for many rural families the very real difference between starvation and survival during the lean winter months ahead...
Read More“Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete but only one wins the prize? Run the race in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable garland but we an imperishable one.” (2 Cor 9: 24-5)
Read MoreAs I write this, the whole of the British Isles is basking or is it baking? in what will doubtless be an all too short heatwave. After all I was always taught that the definition of a British summer is “two bright days and a thunderstorm!” it seems to me, however, that the storm clouds gathering over the United Kingdom at present are not merely the meteorological ones that we’re so accustomed to. For many people in the UK and well beyond its borders, the decision made in the European Referendum in June presages a protracted period of global doubt and uncertainty...
Read More
