I remember years ago, my children watching a cartoon character spinning plates. It looked such fun — rushing between the precarious plates balanced on the ends of improbably tall, thin, wobbly poles, keeping each one spinning fast enough to stay aloft while others were slowing down all around. …

There’s a fable that I find myself thinking of frequently, and that I often seem to refer to in conversations with my clients. The more I think about it, the more I see in its simple story. So here it is: ‘The sun and the wind got into an argument…

A New Way of Reading the Christmas Story — Part 12 Does the world need saving? It looks more and more like it these days, doesn’t it? My mum messaged me the other day with ‘I didn’t think things could get much worse, and then they just did.’ …

A New Way of Reading the Christmas Story — Part 11 Why did it have to be that month, Mary and Joseph must have wondered, that they had to travel across the country to take part in the census? …

A New Way of Reading the Christmas Story — Part 10 ‘And lo, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was.’ Matthew Ch 2 How amazing for those wise men from the East to…

A New Way of Reading the Christmas Story — Part 9 It’s what the angels said to the shepherds. It’s what Gabriel said to Mary. It’s one of the Bible’s favourite phrases. Why? At first it sounds simply like an instruction for the moment: ‘I know you’re shocked, but it’s…

A New Way of Reading the Christmas Story — Part 8 What would the Christmas story be without the shepherds? Generations of parents have dug out checked tea-towels and striped dressing gowns for small children’s nativity plays. …

A New Reading of the Christmas Story — Part 7 Christmas is, of course, a festival of light. Many religions, perhaps all, have a festival of light. There are lights springing up on every street, in every home, in every shopping centre! So what is it about the metaphor of…

A New Way of Reading the Christmas Story — Part 6 This is a line from the great modern hymn ‘In Christ alone’ that particularly strikes me: ‘fullness of God in helpless babe…’ Once as I was singing it, something suddenly occurred to me that I suspect the writer of…