Richard's Ramblings

After living here for 24 years, I’m finally a real Australian   -   we bought a Victa mower.   The church council know this, I told them so that they can stop worrying that the manse yard is bringing the church into disrepute. It’s a groovy battery cordless thing. It’s rained pretty well ever since we bought it, so I’ve only been able to do the back yard and the side strip down to the bus shelter. But, early days, I’m very pleased with it. The bible has a bit to say about grass, most of it gloomy, like it withers. Weeds, on the other hand, seem to grow prolifically. Pity they didn’t have brushcutters in the bible. A cordless one of those is on my wishlist. We have a petrol Stihl down south which would demolish a State Forest in half an hour but (a) it’s overkill for the manse yard and (b) it’s in Cedar Creek. Here’s St Peter (1 Peter 1) quoting Isaiah 40:   “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass ...

“Our holy and glorious temple, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned with fire, and all that we treasured lies in ruins.”  (Isaiah 64:11) Just a few weeks ago, I rambled about light pouring into a sacred space through stained glass windows, and particularly mentioned the Rose Windows at Notre Dame de Paris, Chartres and Reims. And now Notre Dame’s windows, North, South and West, are incinerated.  Some of you (of us) are old enough to remember the 1969 BBC series, “Civilisation”. The art historian Kenneth Clark famously kicked it off, standing in front of Notre Dame, asking “What is civilisation?” His answer was: “I don’t know. I can’t define it. But I think I can recognise it when I see it, and in fact I’m looking at it now.” The sadness, bordering on grief even for non-French people, at the destruction of an icon of Western, Christian civilisation, might be a metaphor this Holy Week of the utter despair felt by Christ’s disciples, earthly family and fr...

Some of you are my Friends on Facebook. I always vowed that I wouldn’t make my Wall visible to a congregation or Presbytery Ministers or the Moderator (The Wall is a Facebook term, the space where you post stuff, carefully considered and researched earnest threads, or off the top of your head thoughts about the weather or footy or whatever, or -  and this is why I vowed not to let it be widely seen - in my case, ill-considered rants).  But this afternoon I let my Facebook Friends know the perfectly innocuous (unintended pun coming up, hadn’t though of this) that I had a flu jab, an inoculation. Extra strength for old geezers, at that. You have a flu jab to reduce the chances of catching flu, or for it to be a milder case if you do catch it, and to help with “Herd Immunity”; the more people who are jabbed, the greater the community’s resistance to the virus and the less it is likely to spread within the community.  (“Where’s he going with this … ?”)  Well, there...

I came back to Townsville last week on the Spirit of Queensland train. I had considered blogging about the adventure, I still might. Leisa says I should call it Richard’s Railings. It wasn’t unalloyed joy, there were some annoying aspects to the trip, the odd thing to rail against. But it was cheaper than flying, probably more environmentally sound (diesel power cars notwithstanding) and I love trains anyway, real or model. It was much slower than flying, of course, 19 hours (an hour late) against 2 hours on a plane. But I did a couple of things which I can’t, or don’t, do on a plane. I caught up with reading during that enforced almost day long journey, and I just sat and looked out of the window. There is a quotation from an old Maine fisherman in 1905, often misattributed to Winnie the Pooh, “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and other times I just sits”. In this mad world we have lost that happy knack of just sitting - and sometimes thinking. Job had led a hectic business life unti...

Stained glass windows in cathedrals and churches are lovely. Sometimes they tell a story, with holy characters, perhaps from the Holy Family, or angels, or representations of the Trinity. Other times they appear just to be beautiful works of art, although the artists may have a story in their mind to which we’re not privy.  Among the loveliest are the North End Rose Windows in the three great, matching cathedrals of Notre Dame, Chartres and  Reims (the latter city is the home of famous Champagne houses, too, another work of art although of a different sort  😊 🍾 )  You might have visited one or all of them. Jesus said that his disciples, you and me included, I hope, are the light of the world.  That phrase, “The World”, was pejorative when I was a child and teenager. Pretty well anything enjoyable was “Worldly”, as distinct from church activities which were said to be sanctified. But you know what? That light which you see streaming in through the R...

Over a mug of tea and raisin toast at House of Jonah on Monday morning, discussion turned to the esoteric subject of when does the soul leave the body after death. We didn’t come up with an answer, the bible is a bit contradictory on the topic, but considering eternal life prompted me to wonder how some of us (OK, me) will cope with sharing eternity with people who get on our (OK, my) nerves. Because I do get a teeny impatient with some people. Other drivers, for example, people who don’t vote like me, or who watch reality TV, or use Microsoft and PCs instead of Macs, or who have (to my mind) weird tastes in music, or are vegetarian. We’re all guilty to a degree of separating the world into people like us, and those unlike us, and the traits of people unlike us get on our nerves. But the apostle John points out (1 John 4:20) that “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love G...

The problem with extrapolating a parish newsletter article to the Web, is that folk will read it who haven't got the foggiest whom I'm talking about when I reference local people or events. So just let your imagination conjure up the context. For example: Young Hugo Palu-Shepperson came along to the Friday evening youth activity at the manse last Friday, replete with rugby ball.  If you don’t know Hugo, he’s a very lovely 2yo. who has brought much joy to KUC. A lot of that joy is his uninhibited habit of wandering around the church during a service, helping out the musos (especially Peter Ireland, whose guitar holds especial fascination). A couple of thoughts come to mind, one structured, the other not. Jesus says become like a little child, just taking for granted that you’re part of God’s family (Luke 18, vv15 - 17). And that everyone else is in the family, so everyone else is your family.  The unstructured thought (this is Ramblings, remember) is that we sit in our n...