One of the many, many things I learned on the Camino is this: Sometimes you are wafting gently through a field of flowers, the wind at your back, and the prospect of a good lunch and good fellowship ahead of you. Sometimes you are trekking along a dirt track beside an airport perimeter fence in […]
I had a really interesting conversation yesterday, with a friend who comes from a very conservative Christian background, from which she has escaped. I have a lot of friends like this, but she put the issue in a very striking way: What has Christianity got to do with the real world? Out there in the […]
No matter how bad the future might be, the exact second now is OK. This has been my watchword for a number of years, but especially this week. I will spare you the details, but it has been a pretty stressful week chez Pate, waiting to hear whether I got a temporary developer job with […]
“You aren’t an emerging church until someone eats dessert while you are trying to have communion” – Cafechurch saying. It occurs to me that this blog is supposed to be about doing church in post-modernity, and I have been mainly blogging about culture, not church. The problem is, it is so hard to start – […]
I watched the new Disney take on the Lone Ranger on the weekend, and I must say I enjoyed it, even though I know this admission will remove any faint vestiges of cool that I might have once had (though after blogging about Midsomer Murders, I suspect that bridge has well and truly been crossed.) […]
On Sunday evening, Anne looked at me from her end of the sofa as I Facebooked whilst watching TV and drinking wine, and said: you use your smartphone all the time. It’s annoying. I think we should have a day off. Alright, I replied cockily, you’re on. Gauntlet taken up. On Monday, no smartphones, and […]
Alister Pate