January 2017 Dear Friends, Nicola, Cameron and Ross join me in thanking you for all your good and kind wishes at Christmas and join me in sending you greetings for 2017. They didn’t put up blue plaques in Biblical times. If they did, there would have been one in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, ‘King […]
Russell’s New Year’s (2021) Newsletter
Dear Friends, Never, in my lifetime, have people longed for one year to end and a new one to begin. 2020 has been a year to forget, but a year we will never forget. So now our hopes are pinned on 2021. However, a new year merely marks an arbitrary way of measuring time that, […]
Russell’s Newsletter – February 2021
Dear Friends, You will all be familiar with the popular quiz question designed to catch you out: How many months have 28 days? The answer, of course, is all of them. February is unique in that it is the only month to have only 28 days (unless it is a leap year, when it has […]
Russell’s New Year’s (2021) Newsletter
Dear Friends, Never, in my lifetime, have people longed for one year to end and a new one to begin. 2020 has been a year to forget, but a year we will never forget. So now our hopes are pinned on 2021. However, a new year merely marks an arbitrary way of measuring time that, […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – December 2020
Dear Friends, I am tempted to misquote Mr Spock in Star Trek: “It’s Christmas, Jim, but not as we know it!” Most of this year has been unpredictable and abnormal. The next few weeks are going to be no different. Families are facing awkward conversations about who is going to be in whose ‘Christmas 3-household […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – November 2020. A season of Remembrance.
Dear Friends, In November the church moves into a season of remembrance: All Saint’s Day is swiftly followed by Remembrance Sunday. During a recent online meeting I was stirred into an early taste of remembrance when I found myself in the company of a couple of people I had the pleasure of spending time with […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – September 2020. A new academic year …..
Dear Friends, As a new academic year begins, under extraordinary conditions, I imagine teachers, not unlike church ministers, feel as though they are having to negotiatetheir way through regulations and guidelines with the skill of a tightrope walker. Never having a head for heights, I have always been puzzled why anyone wouldwant to place themselves […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – July 2020
Dear Friends, Like all of us, I have read much over recent weeks about the current crisis: the causes of it, the handling of it, particularly by governments around the world, and where God is in the midst of tears, isolation and fear. One of the most useful reflections was offered by Tom Wright (former […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – April 2020
Dear Friends, They used to say in times gone by (BC – Before Coronavirus) that a week was a long time in politics. As I look back to what I wrote for Reflections a month ago, it seems like a completely different world. I didn’t even refer to Covid-19. How naïve and short-sighted! Within the […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – March 2020
Dear Friends, ‘All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.’ In a single sentence our greatest playwright summed up the essential character and vocation of human beings. We are destined to perform on the public stage and play many parts. Whether we are natural or reluctant players, there’s no escaping […]
Russell’s Monthly Newsletter – January 2020
Dear Friends, Of all the images we have in our minds of Jesus, which dominate? The good shepherd? The healer? The crucified Christ? Christ risen from death? Traditionally at Christmas we’ve been encouraged to imagine Jesus as a plump baby surrounded by festive trimmings! If so, the Gospel reading we heard on the last Sunday […]