A hotter day, but with a cooling wind. Much more off-road walking. Very pleasant. Lunch in Issoudun. Issoudun has lots of industry on its outskirts, and lots of retail businesses on its edge, but the impact on the town centre has been terrible. Shop after shop closed down, all looking dusty and abandoned, as if …
Continue reading Camino Stage 1: Day 8.2 Chârost to Neuvy-Pailloux 18 kms
I have been taking people’s funerals since I was twenty-five. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of funerals of all kinds, in all kinds of places, surrounded by a huge variety of rituals and customs that made the grieving manageable for the mourners. But I have never seen a time like this. Everything in us …
A propos the priesthood, Giles Fraser writes in praise of Incompetence in his latest Unherd blog. He talks movingly and rightly of the dangers of any priest ever pretending that they are “successful”. And of how the grace and love of God uses the unlikely, the odd, the incompetent to advance the cause of God’s …
Confined as I am to the pews these days I have to listen to a lot of sermons. What I can’t do is what I am called and trained to do, which is preach myself. My estimate of most preaching I hear is that it is of a very poor quality indeed. When I was …
Continue reading The Bible and the Newspaper – Thoughts on Preaching
From The Quire 