Posts Tagged: christianity

  • Top left—@faithentwisle at Worcester Cathedral; bottom left @timentwisle at Tewkesbury Abbey; right is Worcester Cathedral.

    An English pilgrim

    The cathedral at Worcester My wife and I are in England to catch up with some family and are staying in Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. We went to the nearby city of Worcester for a half day trip. A nice lunch and a visit to the cathedral were the agenda. I always feel like a pilgrim […]

  • Four angel christmas decorations on a shelf.

    Angelology — what angel is that?

    At Christmas we are bombarded with images to evoke the traditions of Christmas. These images can be secular: images of Santa Claus, northern winters, and Christmas baubles; or religious: nativity scenes of Jesus’s birth, the Three Wise Men and angels announcing the birth of Jesus to some shepherds. Angels play a crucial role in the […]

  • Outside the chapel—Saint Martin of Tours cutting his cloak in two, miniature from the Grandes Heures of Anne of Brittany (1503-1508) by Jean Bourdichon

    How we get chapel from Saint Martin’s cape

    Here is a Christian story for Easter. It is about Saint Martin of Tours, the patron saint of the poor, soldiers, conscientious objectors, tailors, and winemakers. I will try to explain how this all came to be as we follow the story of this most interesting early Christian. His story gives us the word “chapel”. […]

  • My great- great-great-great-great grandfather, the Reverend Joseph EntwisleMy great- great-great-great-great grandfather, the Reverend Joseph Entwisle who was a yokefellow to John Wesley

    The true yokefellow

    Over the Christmas period I was re-reading my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s biography—the Memoir of the Rev. Joseph Entwisle, Fifty-four Years a Wesleyan Minister. In this reading of the book I came across the wonderful word, yokefellow. When I researched the word, I found it resonated strongly with the book in a way not quite intended. The first […]

  • Goth woman on some neo-gothic steps

    Roman revenge and gothic revival

    An introduction to the goths Being gothic seems to be a common thing. We have gothic and neo-gothic architecture; gothic fonts; gothic literature and even in my youth a Goth post-punk music sub-culture. I lived in London in the mid to late 1980s. I was persuaded to go out one Friday night, straight after work […]

  • Feasting at christmas

    Feasting and fasting

    Christian and other religions have commemorative days we know as festivals. A festival is a celebration or commemoration where participants rejoice and seek to find an elated state. Festivals are often celebrated by abundant eating and drinking. Therefore, festival days and feast days are the same thing. And, not surprisingly, the words feast and festival […]

  • ICON Jesus Christ, messiah, saviour, redeemer, Lord

    In the name of Christmas

    Christ Christmas is the mid-winter celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The meaning of Christmas is literally Christ’s mass. It is derived from the Middle English Cristemasse, from Old English Crīstesmæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038. Sometimes Christmas is abbreviated to Xmas, the X representing Christ. Although this irritates some people, it […]

  • Post apocalypse morning reading the paper while my daugher plays the trumpet.

    Post-apocalypse analysis

    Sunday morning and the world has not ended (22 May 2011). My hangover has gone which is a good post apocalypse result. There are no hoof prints in the garden, no open graves and there was no thundering in the night. The only trumpet to be heard is my daughter’s rather perfunctory practising, which for quite […]

  • Pope Benedict's homilies

    Homily tedious or uplifting?

    The pilgrims have packed up and the pope has gone home. The World Youth Day 2008 celebrations have finished and Sydney returns to normal. I followed it all through the media, shared the noise from the late night partying of German Pilgrims billeted next door and visited the city while some of the events were […]