Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

A little bit of chocolate is good for you – especially your heart. If you eat up to three bars a month, you could have a 13 per cent lower risk of heart failure than if you do not eat any chocolate. It seems that natural compounds in cocoa called flavonoids boost blood vessel health...

The Most Reverend Janani Luwum (d 1977) was the sitting Archbishop of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi and Boga Zaire when 35 years ago this month he was murdered by the dictator Idi Amin.   At the time the Church in Uganda was on the verge of centennial celebrations of its birth through the seed of the...

If you like birds, now is the time to help the next generation get started. And so this month will see thousands of us shakily climbing ladders against the sides of our houses, garages and trees, to install cosy nest boxes.  And soon our tenants will arrive:   blue tits, robins, nuthatches, pied wagtails, sparrows, to...

Plan your way out of personal debt How to get the best out of life in a village Technoference Why you should not keep your curtains closed What is happening to our pets? Eat your way out of depression Is the internet increasing your secret addictions? Self-harming A new kind of diet All the lonely...

The Rectory St James the Least My dear Nephew Darren We have just returned from our annual parish three-day silent retreat at St Epiphanius’ Priory.  We had the usual attendees: those husbands who see it as an opportunity to stop their wives talking, however briefly; those wives who can keep their husbands temporarily from the...

Did you have a miserable childhood?  Were your parents more absorbed in themselves than in you?   Later, looking for love, did you fall for the wrong man?  Perhaps you now have children of your own, and struggle to raise them.   If you feel your life has been ‘wrong-footed’ from the start, and that there is...

Saturday 9th February is National Pizza Day.  Seriously.  No surprises for guessing that it has come over to us from the USA, and started here just last year, in 2018.  Hundreds of pizza restaurants around the country cooked up special pizzas to celebrate the day. Our church is going to celebrate it for the first...

‘… making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.’ (Isaiah 43:19) The bills left over from Christmas are still coming through your letterbox with a thud. You can recognise which are bills before you open them, and your heart sinks. Many people have debts which they struggle with and which they cannot...

This month of February opens with the celebration of Candlemas. On the 2nd we recall that special moment of enlightenment when Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple. They meet Simeon, who represents the waiting people of Israel – a nation looking for a better world now that the holy city was in the...

Polycarp (c. 69 – c. 155) was one of the most important Christians in Roman Asia in the mid-2nd century, because of his link between the time of the Apostles and the earliest Christian Fathers.  This disciple of John the Apostle became bishop of Smyrna and defended orthodox Christian belief against the heresies of Marcion...

Have you recently moved, or are planning to move, to our village?  Villages can be beautiful, with pretty cottages and roses at their doors. But villages can also be lonely places.  So – here are some tips for how to survive – and enjoy village life! Make the most of your children. Children provide parents...

We’ve all seen them: mothers engrossed on their mobile phones and ignoring their children nearby.  But now research has found that children whose parents are addicted to their phones are significantly more likely to have behaviour problems. The problem is called ‘technoference’. It is when the everyday relationship between parent and child is constantly disrupted...