Showing everything tagged as Revd Dr Sam Wells

Anne would be the last person to want me to waste time today talking about her. She wasn’t an argumentative person, but she had a way of speaking that gave you the impression that she’d pronounced the last word on the subject.

On Monday the President of Mexico said, ‘I have sent a letter to the king of Spain and another to the Pope … urging them to apologise to the indigenous peoples for the violations of what we now call their human rights.’ He said there couldn’t be reconciliation until there was forgiveness.

‘Are you a Londoner?’ a journalist asked me last week. I found it a hard question to answer. I grew up in the West Country, although none of my family live there now. I was born in Canada, although my parents weren’t there very long.

I want you to imagine that you’re having a bad day. Not the kind of bad day where you lose your keys, leave your phone on the bus, forget to post the red-letter bill payment and spill coffee all over your clothes the moment you get to work. I mean the kind of bad day when the frailty of existence all crowds in on you

It was 1986, and I was in northern Israel. A few weeks before I’d asked my uncle where it was that my grandparents had lived when they were there in the early fifties. It was that address that I held in my hand as I wandered around Haifa one August morning.

Here’s a story I’m sure you know. Once when a Lion was asleep a little Mouse began running up and down upon him. This soon awakened the Lion, who placed his huge paw upon the Mouse and opened his big jaws to swallow him. ‘Pardon, O King,’ cried the little Mouse, ‘forgive me this time. I shall never forget it