It’s summer and the icecream parlour beckons. If it’s available my choice will always be rum and raisin, and the first taste will bring me back to Killybegs and a taste memory from my childhood. My grandparents kept a tin of sweets on a shelf above the cooker and the only sweets that were everContinue reading “Sweet Memories”
Category Archives: Journal
A hermit, a lighthouse, a hidden garden
Saint Rotain. Apparently I spent a good chunk of my youth looking out at their hermitage. That is, if the saint ever existed for there simply is no real historical evidence. But if they did then the rock on which the saint lived was part of the view from my grandfather’s house for it wasContinue reading “A hermit, a lighthouse, a hidden garden”
Industrial Mission – thoughts on the 80th anniversary
2024 marks the eightieth anniversary of the founding of Sheffield Industrial Mission. There are many accounts of industrial mission’s history, and also some very good work appraising its impact, not least an article by David Price, chair of Industrial Mission in South Yorkshire, published in Crucible in 2004. At its pinnacle Industrial Mission was ecumenical,Continue reading “Industrial Mission – thoughts on the 80th anniversary”
Virginia Crawford on Catholic Social Teaching and Action
An online search for material related to Catholic social action in the early twentieth-century produces an article by Virginia M Crawford. Published in the September 1922 edition of Studies, the Irish quarterly review published by the Irish Jesuits since 1912 with a focus on Irish social, political, cultural and economic issues. Crawford’s article is aContinue reading “Virginia Crawford on Catholic Social Teaching and Action”
Bednarowska reads Bowen
I was looking for something else entirely in the basement of Oxford’s Campion Hall when I came upon a little Elizabeth Bowen collection. Opening each volume I noted that they had come from the library of Dorothy Bednarowska (1915-2003), a founding fellow along with Iris Murdoch and others, of St Anne’s College in Oxford. AContinue reading “Bednarowska reads Bowen”
Ostensions in Rochechouart, 2023
I’ve known Jean Yves, the undertaker of Rochechouart, for nearly twenty years, and as he is president of the town’s committee for the Ostensions I’ve heard stories about that great sacred pageant that takes place every seven years across the wider Limousin area, but other things intervened in 2009 and 2016 so a visit inContinue reading “Ostensions in Rochechouart, 2023”
Foodbanks 2004 to 2024
Ten years on from the foundation and expansion of the first Trussell Trust foodbank in Salisbury I shared this reflection with a group of community activists. As we now approach the twentieth anniversary it’s disheartening to look around the now massively-expanded foodbank network and see how things have become so much worse for people strugglingContinue reading “Foodbanks 2004 to 2024”
Monsignor Kneipp’s Water Cure
19th Century approaches to Soul Therapy Spas and sacred wells had long been part of the standard battery of cures and were prescribed by everyone from the wisest peasant to the most entrepreneurial physician. The spa was a source of water which had chemical properties deemed efficacious in treating specific illnesses. In the Nineteenth CenturyContinue reading “Monsignor Kneipp’s Water Cure”
Oskar Pfister, Pastor and Psychoanalyst
This is taken from an old dissertation on links between pastoral practice and pschoanalysis. At the time I thought that Oskar Pfister, a Lutheran pastor, psychoanalyst, and close friend of Sigmund Freud, would merit a concentrated piece of work in his own right. Oskar Pfister (1873-1956) was a Lutheran pastor in Zurich who had acquittedContinue reading “Oskar Pfister, Pastor and Psychoanalyst”
Nicolaï Greschny at Rochechouart
The parish church in the centre of the old town of Rochechouart in the Haute-Vienne, consecrated around 1060, boasts a distinctive twisted spire, and wonderful wall-paintings telling the story of salvation from Creation through to the Resurrection of Christ, and the last judgement. The frescoes were painted in 1969 by Nicolaï Greschny, an artist whoContinue reading “Nicolaï Greschny at Rochechouart”
Colin Brady 