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Showing posts from February, 2015

Bridging the religious gap with a trail of Jif lemon and batter mix.

Happy Jif Lemon Day - the official start of the Creme Egg Season! That climactic weekend of gorging ourselves stupid on our own body weight in chocolate, is now only 40 days away - Let the the countdown begin! Nobody really understands Pancake Day anymore, apart from a few of our more religious friends who also happen to go to church the following day to have ash crosses painted on their foreheads. There is a huge disconnect today between our ancient festivals which used to mark the pattern of the year and our modern mindset. Most of them we have happily buried in the past, (I include the idea of having an ash cross daubed on my head) but some we have kept. Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday to the real aficionados, incredibly made the cut. When you consider that we have quietly disposed of maypoles, harvest and most of the real meaning of Advent in our urban culture, it is amazing, downright extraordinary that millions will batter pancakes into submission around Britain tonight! The pre C

Jesus stories and the British Library....

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I love study days in the British Library! Over 170 million items are stored there from all over the world. Each year, every book published in the UK is added to the library, meaning that they grow their collection by three million books per annum, requiring a staggering six miles of extra shelf space - now that is the kind of library I would like to make room for! Sitting within the main atrium, dwarfed by the towering central shelving unit which rises up the middle of the building like a glass covered skyscraper, I was reminded of the words at the end of John's gospel.   'Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.' John 21.25 Is this just a bit of apostolic hyperbole at the end of an action packed gospel account? I don't think so, and even on this scale, the greatest collection of published works in the British nation can't keep up wi