To be a disciple we are asked to put our connection and relationship with the Divine first, put it before, even, our relationships with the people who we are closest to.

The mystic and the prophet. Each needs the other: without the prophet, the mystic becomes all too comfortable, religion becomes simply an escape from this world of trouble. But without the mystic, the prophet becomes judgemental, haranguing a world gone wrong, without any sense of why it matters, the grace that the world exists in.

Ed Bruce’s dramatic banners, cascading down from the bell-ringing chamber, are a visual representation of that joyful cacophony of sound and skill that is a peal of bells.

Today’s passage from Hosea, is a wonderful proclamation of the forgiving, loving nature of God within the Hebrew Bible. God is tender and gentle and just cannot stop loving the children of God, no matter how many times and how violently God is rejected and replaced by false idols.

Lord, teach us to pray. And in words that have shaped Christian prayer ever since, Jesus offers a few simple direct words to pray; words that can shape us, and form us.

Jesus invites all of us who are worried and distracted and pulled in many directions by the demands of life, to set aside time to rest in his presence, to hear his words of comfort and truth, and be renewed.

The first step on the path of healing is the offering and accepting of hospitality because in that encounter the Divine is both invited and expected to attend.

Peace is the opening word, the first word, the announcement, the message in relationships. The declaration of peace to this house, in words and actions, that’s how the Kin-dom of God comes so near and how names are written in heaven.

Freedom is not, in the Christian understanding, found in un-commitment, in having limitless choice, but in finding a ‘home’, a language to speak, a task to do, and a self discovered not through relentless acquisition, but discovered through relationship; in relationship to God and to one another.

The experience of being enveloped in God within the sheer silence

This morning’s baptism is the next step in Hugh's dance with God, the dance in which he, and we, waltz, jive, pirouette, stumble, and ceilidh dance through life, and are invited into the joy and intimacy of the Trinity, and of the Divine Trinitarian Dance.

The painting speaks to me of the transition from what was to what might be. From old certainties to new potential.