The Hearth of Mopsus

'Everywhere the glint of brass', as Howard Carter didn't say. Brass polishing is a Holy Week job which is not my province alone ...

Holy Week at Swanvale Halt wouldn't happen without lots of people doing and arranging things, and discussions with colleagues makes the ...

I find my Lent Quiet Days in Simon and Clarissa's Garden Room at Bortley Mill  just as worthwhile as the more extended time I spent over...

… has offered a variety of experiences. Monday: I attend on my Spiritual Director and mention that the Bishop, for the first time ever, is...

Past healing masses at Swanvale Halt haven't gone all that well, but eight souls at last night's for Holy Week was all right. The pr...

Last Wednesday we finished the five sessions of the Lent course I’d put together, the first time in several years that we’d done anything of...

2022 was, I think, the last time I spent a Lenten retreat at Malling Abbey. For the last couple of years I've instead gone to Clarissa a...

The local secondary school, Widelake, isn't completely foreign territory to me, but I don't go there very often. I paid a visit back...

Holy Week at Swanvale Halt was bookended by syncope. Lillian, our former Lay Reader, keeled over during the Palm Sunday mass, and at 8am on ...

The annual task of veiling the church for Passiontide is something I normally look forward to as a sign that Lent is mostly past, even if th...

Yesterday evening our 'augmented' choir (all the singers we can muster from ourselves, plus the odd soul dragged in from other churc...

The fact that it was Ash Wednesday hadn't been mentioned at Church Club, but Etta spontaneously raised the subject. 'You didn't ...

The list of 'things that we must do differently next year' has grown and grown as this Holy  w eek has gone on, moving inexorably fo...

Fr Thesis points us all towards a series of talks Dr Robin w ard at our old alma mater St Stephen’s House, Oxford, has been giving over rec...

Unlike last year when it all went a bit wrong , we had a full Mothering Sunday posy-making team and the posies were pleasantly presentable. ...

One should not say this, but Lent is loathsome. It is supposed to be six weeks of deepened spiritual wrestling but for many clergy it involv...

The three hours of the Maundy Thursday vigil always seems to pass quicker than three hours should. By this time I was unaccountably weary an...

It may not look like it from this snapshot but there were nearly 60 souls (living ones) at our Palm Sunday mass this morning as we resumed p...

NB. I discover I'd only saved this post as a draft, not published it! -     -     -     -     -     - The PCC decided on Friday to resum...

"Shall we give out flowers for Mothering Sunday like usual?" Rick the verger asked. I reckoned we couldn't do it in person, as...