Virtual Methodist

I've been offline for a few days... Partly holiday... partly the limitations of my computer having blown up... and partly due to illness... But I want to come out of purdah to make a brief comment in the wake of the lack of agreement in the Haass talks last night and what that means for Northern Ireland as we enter into 2014. I'm actually going to temper my reflections, first because I have long since learned that it is a bad idea to really let loose when I am as angry as I currently am, and second, I am telling myself that this was always an artificial deadline and it is not the end of this particular process... Indeed for a long time now the mood music suggested that the departure of Haass and O'Sullivan would not by any means be the end of the process, as the parties had booted the issue of flags further down the road in the form of yet another commission... But it now seems as if all three issues of flags, parades and the past "need more work." The cynic in...

I post this, in part, by way of a thank you to my mother in law, 20 years down the line.  It's an adaptation of something I wrote for the Methodist Newsletter for December and shared with our own congregation last Sunday as part of our Home Missions Service, but anyone who has been listening to me over the past 20 years or following this blog in more recent years, will have heard/seen bits of it before. I make no apology for that... It is too important to say once, and I will say it again... Twenty years ago, when I was a mere ministerial student helping out at Sydenham Methodist, my mother in law gave me an early Christmas present that not only helped me in an emergency, but has also helped shape my ministry from that day. She had arrived on the Friday before Christmas, but early the following Sunday morning I got a phone call  saying that Brian Fletcher, the minister at the time, had taken ill and asking me to speak at the two services that day… Since I was only a st...