Latest Thought for the Week

A soldier’s death, that ‘ultimate sacrifice’, deserves the elegance and beauty of ‘The Last Call’, that is bugled at military funerals and all around Britain this weekend.

St Martin’s is a special place.

Last Sunday, some of our St Martin’s groups reflected on God’s most important commandment, in the light of the war in Israel/Palestine.

As I write this piece for the Newsletter, over 4,000 people are known to have been killed in what the United Nations has described as the ‘unprecedented human catastrophe’ that is taking place in Israel and Gaza.

I’ve been thinking about three recent deaths.

Mel Adams’s evocative description of childhood Harvest celebrations in a mining village in last week’s newsletter looks back to a time when communities coalesced around the identity of shared occupations.

There was always a gigantic slab of coal, balanced on a plank of wood suspended between the corbels of the Romanesque arch carved with Norman lattice work and leading to the chancel.

Over the summer I read Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads.

As many of you will know, I had a scheduled hip replacement at the end of June.