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 Newsletter – Christian Aid May 2021
Dear Friends, For more than a generation, Christian Aid Week has been a primary focus during May. In one of the largest mobilisations of a volunteer work force anywhere, people from so many different backgrounds delivered envelopes to as many households in the country as possible and then returned to collect donations to bring hope […]
Russell’s Newsletter – April 2021
Dear Friends, A new day is dawning – thank God – even though this is the second Easter in a row we are having to celebrate in ‘lockdown’, unable to sing our Easter ‘Alleluias’ in church together. However, as we reflected last year, a lockdown Easter gives us an opportunity to identify a little more […]
Russell’s Newsletter – March 2021
Dear Friends, A week is “a long time in politics”. If that is true, how long is a “year living with a pandemic? 12 months ago, Nicola and I had just returned from a wonderful week in Spain. We were a bit surprised there was no one at Gatwick checking our temperature as we passed […]
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 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 […]