James Varley Dearden 1922 -2014 Yesterday it was a privilege to attend the memorial service for Jim. vicar of Holt Trinity, Huddersfield from before I joined that congregation to 1987. Jim brought a failing church back from one with serious problems and in danger of being closed to one which was thriving. Jim's approach to …
Author: SteveP
I am married with one wife, three grown kids, one cat and no hair.
Scotland the brave?
Happy Together? I have kept away from commenting on Scottish Independence until after the vote because I feel that it is something for the Scots alone to decide. Scotland has decided not to split from the rest of the UK. And in some ways I'm glad. Like most English people I know we actually do …
Dumb crime of the day
News is just in of a couple of master criminals. Two men who robbed a Co-op store could have got way with it if they hadn't overlooked a couple of minor details. So in an attempt to help criminals get away with robbing a store do not make the mistakes Gavin Reilly and Michael Scanlon …
School’s out
All over the country children are about to go back to school. But not at my old school. School is not only out for summer, school is out for ever. No one will come back at all. The old village school where I went until almost 10 years old is no more, gone, demolished, razed …
The left hand of fellowship?
It is good to have a warm greeting when you enter a church. A warm smile, a cheerful hello and a good handshake all help someone feel at home. It's good to greet. But even churches which get that right have a problem: What to do when the person you are greeting is using a …
Pray for the persecuted
Today I led the intercessions at Holy Trinity Huddersfield. Instead of my usual scatter-gun approach (a little bit of this and a little bit of that) I concentrated on two areas, prayers for the persecuted church, and prayers for peace. This is what I prayed. The focus of a lot of my prayers today will …
Life after life?
I have just finished re-reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, a really good comedic read. Chapter 7 ends with one of my favourite cliffhangers: "Gordon Way's astonishment at being shot dead was nothing to his astonishment at what happened next." What happens after death is a question that fascinates even atheist authors …
Hold on
Bloop bloop beep bloop. I'm listening to music on hold. A strange sort of synthesised sound that says nothing except. "This is music on hold," sweeping me into a strange hypnotic state so that I begin to forget what it was I wanted to say or who I wanted to say it to. It is a strange …
I like it the way it is
Why change? Conservatism, that is the desire to keep things the same, not the British political party, is natural. We have tried things out and sometimes it has gone wrong, what we do is tried and tested. And safe. That people become more conservative as they get older is understandable. They have tried a lot …
Stirring it up
The Bishop of Leeds, Rt Rev Nicholas Baines has been stirring things up. His letter to the Prime minister has been reported on the front page of today's Observer. This is what the Observer said - Observer story. Before you make your minds up about this it would be best to read the full text …
Making an ass of myself 