Magazine

Christmas followed the same pattern each year. My parents, my two brothers , myself and Gran, my maternal grandmother who lived with us and my paternal grandparents plus my Auntie Mabelle and Uncle Edmund who joined the family early because they brought vegetables ready prepared for Mother to cook. So it was to be at this particular Chri […]

Part of a sermon for Lent by my good friend and colleague, Michael Hopkins, Clerk to General Assembly.

I think this is the point where I am supposed to talk about Lent being a penitential time, and time for giving things up, but that seems patent nonsense in 2021. In the last eleven months we have given up more than we ever wished for […]

About ten years ago I discovered I had a Jewish heritage. Armed with that knowledge I had lunch with a Rabbi of my acquaintance who suggested I ‘look at’ several synagogues to get a better understanding of what they were about. As it happened I didn’t get further than my first – West London Reformed Synagogue at Marble Arch. The […]

This is a most remarkable puzzle. It was found by a gentleman in an airplane seat pocket on a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu, keeping him occupied for hours. He enjoyed it so much, he passed it on to some friends…One friend from Illinois worked on this while fishing from his john boat. Another friend studied it while playing his b […]

This past Christmas, I was invited to join a group of gay and bisexual men who were on their own over the festive period. There were about 30 to 35 of us, of all ages, who came along on Zoom. Most were struggling with depression or recovering from alcohol and/or drug use, a few simply lonely and one or two were logging in from a medical […]