Virtual Methodist

No Psalm this Sunday... Instead this is a dialogue that I'll be performing with another member of the congregation at our 11am communion service this morning... It started out life as an episode in a piece I wrote for New Irish Arts and the Centre For Contemporary Christianity in Ireland years ago, entitled "I Witness". It was based on the testimonies of various people that Jesus encounters in Luke's Gospel, with this piece being taken from Luke 7: 36-8: 3 . Man:      Although he insisted on associating with undesirables, we Pharisees didn’t wash our hands of him entirely… Various friends of mine invited him to their homes… But the rabble even followed him there… On one occasion a woman came into the banqueting room after the meal and knelt down at the bottom of his couch… She was bawling her eyes out… and with her kisses and her tears she washed his feet, before drying them with her hair and pouring perfume on them… It was disgusting… She was as good a...

In a few weeks time Sally and I are heading over to London for a bit of a break and while we’re there we hope to take in an exhibition in the British Museum on the Egyptian Book of the Dead … It may sound a bit dull or maybe even slightly creepy, but I am fascinated by Egyptian culture… I was particularly frustrated not to get to see the Tutankhamun exhibits at the O2 in London a couple of years ago… Maybe I’ll just have to arrange a wee trip to Egypt to see them… The name of Tutankhamun actually means “The living image of [the god] Amon” although it is thought that he actually changed his name from “Tutankhaten” meaning, The Living image of Aten” when there was a religious revolution which meant that Aten, the god of his father, the heretical monotheist Akhenaten, fell out of favour and the older deity Amon became the national god again… While he was said to be the image of one god or another, it is ironic that we only know what King Tut looks like insofar as his image is reflected i...