Here goes...

Smoke was still rising from the ruins of Grenfell Tower. The day after the fire had been tense, full of shock and bewilderment. A great deal of anger was being directed at the local Council who were had overseen the refurbishment of the Tower, and now, they were felt to be absent. That rising tide of anger threatened to spill over in ugly ways, as a march on the offices of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea turned nasty, with angry protesters storming the building and terrified workers locking themselves in their offices inside.     Various political figures were quick to visit on the day after the fire, but those visits didn't go too well. Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Opposition and of course Theresa May, the Prime Minister, all visited. The Prime Minister, in particular, came into came in for criticism, when she visited the day after the fire, and only met the emergency services and officials, avoiding potentially uncomforta...

  The world feels quite a dark place at the moment. New atrocities are revealed daily in a war at the heart of Europe, something that few of us could have foreseen in recent times. Away from the headlines of Ukraine, the worst drought in a decade in Somalia threatens to kill hundreds of thousands of children in that poverty-stricken land. Meanwhile other wars continue, hardly noticed, such as the violence in the Congo which took another 30 lives this week. Add to that the hardship faced by many families in our own country with the cost of living increasing and it's hard to find much hope for the future.  We Christians are not people of optimism but of hope. Optimism is the vague aspiration that things will turn out OK, that we mustn't focus on the darkness, but instead keep our spirits up by positive thinking. Holy Week is when we are forced to look intently into the darkness. On Friday we will gaze again on Jesus on the cross – the realisation that when our Maker came to us, ...

This Christmas will feel very different, with masks, social distancing and household bubbles (if you have one) but at its heart, nothing has changed. The angels, stars, mangers and even the YouTube carol services are all traces of the same story that has shaped our civilisation for two thousand years. It’s a story that has inspired some of the most magnificent buildings the human race has ever produced, and framed the lives of countless people across the planet, marking their vital moments of birth, marriage and death, guiding them through disasters and delights, politics and pandemics. Today, Christianity is the world’s largest faith, with 2.3bn people, almost 30 per cent of the world’s population. So, despite the much-talked about decline of the church in the west, what is it about this particular birth, this person, that still haunts us so much?   No other books from the ancient world are read every week in every country across the world, studied as avidly, or quoted from so fre...

In the old days they would have seen this as a judgment. With a global death toll that has now passed 1 million, this plague would have been interpreted by our forebears as divine punishment or a sign of the end times. Not many people are seeing it that way these days, but maybe our elders had a point. The Greek word for judgment is Krisis – crisis. The great book of judgment in the Bible is called the Apocalypse – the book of Revelation. Judgment was not only seen as punishment, but more as a moment of crisis, a revelation of where we are heading, impressing the stakes of a crucial decision upon us. At the start of lockdown, in towns, villages and cities across the country, people of all faiths and none volunteered time and money, neighbours knocked on the door of elderly people to offer to do their shopping, family members arranged Zoom calls to keep up the spirits of isolated relatives. One of the churches in my patch began to think about how to respond to the needs that were quickl...

  When the year started back in January, few of us could have imagined how the coming months would play out. As the su mmer turns to autumn, it appear s that varying forms of the restrictions under which we have been living will continue for some time. As a nation we are heading into difficult times as the economy struggles, jobs are disappearing and we live with the fear of a spike of the virus in the coming months. We are also aware that church life as we have known it will be unlikely to return to ‘normal’ for some time.  In this context it is critical that we learn to drink deeply from the wells of our Christian faith more than ever. The God who made us and made the world, and who has come to us in Jesus Christ gives us   faith   to trust in his care for us,   hope   for the future however dark the days may be, and the inspiration to   love   our neighbours at a time when COVID-19 might make us view our neighbours as threats to health and well...

In recent days we have become aware of the pervasive presence of racism in our own hearts, our church and society. I asked Denis Adide, one of the younger clergy in the Kensington Area to offer a Guest Blog piece reflecting on his experience.  Perhaps it was the collective awareness of our mortality brought about by the global pandemic. The world was made sensitive to the simplicity of life ’ s light and how easy it is to extinguish. The numbers of those lost to Covid-19 being read out in the daily briefings starkly reminding us all of just how vulnerable we each are.  Perhaps, in addition, the stripping away of all the normal distractions gave some of us - for the first time - a long sight of the mirror. We were forced to confront who we were - apart from the normal  ‘ what we do for a living ’  answer.  Perhaps, the recently developed culture/habit of long, YouTube and TikTok spirals with videos li...