As time goes by so many ideas and beliefs are changing in our society. The ebb and flow of what is right and what is wrong pushes against traditions and changes them, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. I will leave you to come to your own conclusions about what you feel about the changes in our society.

One of the main things that I love about the Catholic Church is its slowness to embrace change. It steps back and thinks carefully about what society is demanding of it and doesn’t bow under pressure. This can mean people leave the church because they feel change is imperative for certain issues. However, it is right to be careful about what the church can allow and what it feels is not right to alter.

I have often felt frustrated about certain rules and do hope and pray that they can be changed: e.g. allowing women to become deacons and priests to marry are a couple of very important considerations to me and there is no sign at the moment that any movement in this direction will be made. Although I am frustrated at this, I feel it is necessary to be patient, keep going and wait until the church is ready to make these changes.

We have to accept, however, this unwillingness to change can have its positives and negatives and we can only wait and pray that the church will move in the direction we want and we must be patient. If it doesn’t then perhaps it just isn’t the right time yet.

I was thinking of Luke 5:36-39 – where Jesus talks about old and new wineskins. One sermon I listened to was about how just as old wineskins can’t be used for new wine (they would burst), people who are used to certain traditions can’t cope with big changes and new ideas. Sometimes we do have to move aside and let the changes take place without rebelling.

Fortunately, we aren’t moving too fast in the flow of modern thought and demands and I see our church as ‘holding the line’. I hope I’m not being too much of an ‘old wineskin’. Society is changing rapidly but we can’t go against what we believe or what we feel the Bible tells us is right from wrong in order to be popular. You can change and bring in new rules, but you shouldn’t compromise on what you know deep down is right.

Similarly, if there are changes that don’t suit you, do think carefully before you walk away from your church. Are they superficial – such as removing the pews (I don’t like this, it feels like architectural destruction and is destroying history but surely not enough to make you walk away from your church altogether); or are they deeper issues?

God bless you and help you to stay close to him and his path for you,

Luke 5:36-39

No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is better.’ 

A serious topic to deal with, but one that has been on my mind since hearing of the death of HRH Prince Philip here in the UK.

We never really can wholly understand death and it is particularly devastating when it happens to someone who is young and hasn’t managed to live their lives and reach their full potential. Or someone who suffers so much and then after battling illness for a long time, eventually dies.

I have tried to see it all from God’s point of view. We are his children and we are coming home to him. He knows the pain we suffer and the grief when we lose someone, but also he is welcoming back his children into his kingdom, safe, at peace and fully joyful in his presence.

I like what was said about Prince Philip, that he wanted to ‘go home’ and when he died it was as if someone came to gently take him by the hand and lead him on. How beautiful.

We are going home and although this may not comfort our relatives and friends as much as we would like, it is wonderful to think of those we have lost being somewhere they can be happy and free of pain and worries.

When my husband died, I sat with him for a while and imagined him being in paradise. I told him not to hang around but to get on with being happy and carefree and not to worry about us. I still miss him every day, but I am coping with it better and I have more time to reflect on the wonderful times we had together and hold them in my heart as a truly generous gift from God.

God bless you and I hope that if you are grieving you can take comfort knowing that those you grieve for are no longer suffering and are being wonderfully loved and cared for.

Some of the biggest questions we can have is why can’t we be happy all of the time, why do awful things happen and when God placed us on this earth, surely we were meant to live here happily and peacefully?

God’s plan to place us here on this beautiful planet was thwarted by our wilfulness. We decided we would do what we wanted and even in spite of wondrous miracles, we still rebelled and went our own way and are still doing it.

Sometimes it can be easy to fall into the trap of believing that once we become christians and are baptised we are going to have a smooth path through life. A lot of people fall away at the first hurdle when something happens that they struggle with. Why didn’t God protect them and allow this to happen?

There aren’t any easy answers. If you look at the lives of the saints they rarely had an easy, joy filled life. A lot were afflicted with illness and problems during their lives, and I know of many people who have gone through intense suffering who devote their lives to God.

You aren’t doing anything wrong when these troubles happen, and we need to stop thinking that we are here for an easy, happy life, centred on our own well being and happiness or we won’t stay faithful to God until the end. By God’s grace alone we can get through these things, share them with him and stay close to him.

When you feel low and life is a struggle, focus on God and share your burdens with him. He is listening.

God bless,

Psalm 61

In God alone is my soul at rest; my help comes from him. He alone is my rock, my stronghold, my fortress: I stand firm.

In God is my safety and glory, the rock of my strength. Take refuge in God, all you people. Trust him at all times. Pour out your hearts before him for God is our refuge.

I’ve just had a lovely walk with my dog in the sunshine here in the South Downs in England. When it is sunny there is nowhere I would rather be as it is home and I have made it so for the past 25 years. The birds are singing and I sunbathe on the benches while my dog pants gently at my side, waiting for me to throw her ball.

I started to reflect on how much I enjoy my new freedom of being retired. No rush and plenty of time to admire the scenery and just enjoy being alive. More than that though, I don’t have to brace myself for another day in the office.

Ever since I can remember, I have never enjoyed being with groups of people and feeling trapped in a building for a set amount of time. I didn’t enjoy school and it set a pattern for my life. That Sunday evening feeling when you feel so miserable because Monday is coming and another week of torture, followed me into my working life. I could never quite settle in a job, not because there was any problem with the work, but I felt like I was in prison and couldn’t get rid of that feeling.

Unfortunately not everyone fits into society neatly. We are all individuals and have unique needs and characteristics. People who do fit in can’t always understand this as they find it all so easy. It is understandable that you can’t always deal with the problems that arise through not fitting into a box as the way society is structured, demands. I believe it is getting easier as we are starting to embrace this idea of individuality more and hopefully will be able to accommodate the different needs of individuals better as time goes on.

As always, my relationship with God has helped me through very rough times and I know that I am never alone when I suffer. He embraces us just as we are and loves us just as we are, every nut and bolt of us.

There are some beautiful lines in psalm 139, one of my favourite psalms that I read when I need to remind myself of how much God loves me:

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
³ You search out my path and my lying down,
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue,
    O Lord, you know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is so high that I cannot attain it.

⁷ Where can I go from your spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
⁹ If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
    and the light around me become night,”
¹² even the darkness is not dark to you;
    the night is as bright as the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ For it was you who formed my inward parts;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
¹⁵     My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.
¹⁷ How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
    I come to the end—I am still with you.

God bless you and I hope that you find a way through the struggles you face in your life with God’s help.

During one of our prayer groups I remember saying that one of the best things about Heaven will be that we can drop our guard and be the people we are. We can take off this false front and become deeply real and open with each other. All of the damage that has happened to us to make us develop these extra layers will be healed and we can show our true selves.

I don’t know how many people manage to do this in their daily lives. I find myself adapting all of the time to the situation I am in and to the people I am talking to. It comes so naturally to me that I can’t control it, it seems to be part of me. I often think after a chat with someone: why did I say that? why couldn’t I tell them exactly what I thought? why do I let them make me feel like that? what are they really thinking and feeling?

We do have to adapt sometimes as that is what makes us ‘socially acceptable’ and it can also be about making the other person feel good about themselves even if we are not being honest in our opinions. The way that I most object to not being myself is when I am with family members or friends that make me feel a certain way and I have got this shell of a personality around me that I can’t seem to break out of. Fear can also be part of this. Fear of reactions, of hurting others, of losing their friendship. Although it is hard to change and be ourselves at all times, it is worth the struggle because it will become easier as we break out of our shells.

As I get older I still find it all very tiring and it is what led me to say that dropping this veneer will be one of the best things about being in heaven. All is known about us, no more hiding or pretending to be someone different. How relaxing and peaceful that will be. We just dwell together in perfect harmony and love.

God bless you and help you to be the real person he intended you to be,

I have a degree in Law and in Theology and I was on a training course to become a teacher at secondary school level, the subject being religious studies. We all had to present and lead a seminar. We were given the subjects to deal with; we didn’t choose them ourselves. I certainly wouldn’t have chosen my topic: The relationship between Ethics and Law. I feel it also came from the fact that in the past I had practised as a lawyer. This didn’t necessarily mean I was an expert in ethics. There is an ethics course, but if forms a small part of the overall qualifications you study for and only covers what you need to practise as a solicitor.

I therefore undertook the task of preparing for this seminar in great trepidation. I had a look at the vast variety of books that deal with ethics and felt overwhelmed. I prayed for help because I felt like I was going to fail and I did receive that help.

In a nutshell of what I presented, here is what I felt I was given as a fundamental basis for my seminar. It set out a guiding light for leading a life that follows what is legally required, but also has a conscientious eye to what ethically is right.

We need laws: to keep us safe, to establish a framework for commercial dealings with each other, to enable us to have an amount of certainty about what we are allowed to do and what we aren’t allowed to do and for many other reasons. Laws may not be perfect and you may not receive justice always as they can be manipulated, but we need them in order to be able to live peacefully together.

On the other hand we have ethics, what we believe to be right in the face of what is going on around us. We establish these ethical beliefs as we grow up; we are taught right from wrong and I also feel that we have an internal moral compass that guides us in our actions, a ‘natural law’. We don’t all have identical upbringings and of course some of us don’t have the benefit of a good moral teacher, possibly through bad parenting or bad associations when we are young. We don’t always listen to that moral compass and as we stray further away, it becomes weaker.

Overall this internal moral compass and teaching we receive guides us and we fundamentally know when we are doing wrong. In the same way that we know this, we cannot allow the law to tell us something is right if we believe it to be wrong. Laws can come into force that we thoroughly disagree with and it is difficult to obey those laws that do this. How we handle this is down to the individual but it is wrong to stay silent when we know something is wrong. Whatever we do to express this, however little, helps us not to condone these laws.

This leads me onto the idea of a ‘covering’. I believe we are forgiven for any actions we do in the belief that they are right and done for the best of reasons. Obviously the actions themselves cannot be evil as we would know that we shouldn’t be doing them.

To conclude, we need both law and ethics. Ethics can inform the law, but the law can’t form the whole basis of what we believe to be right. Law can only be a guideline of what the society we live in believes to be acceptable. It can go against our beliefs and this is where a line has to be drawn. We are not robots, we are thinking, feeling human beings with a right to freedom of thought and of speech and we ought to fight for that whenever it is threatened. When I say fight, I only mean peaceful protest by talking together, writing to those who make the law and making sure we express ourselves when we feel something is being condoned that is wrong.

This is a very wide topic and I have only covered a small part of what I dealt with in my seminar, but I hope that in some way it has helped explain how ethics and the law work together.

God bless,

Being able to forgive is very healing. People can and do hurt you as you go through life and that hurt can stay with you for a long time. It isn’t healthy to hang onto bad feelings and unforgiveness; it can be like an illness creeping through you until it changes you and can destroy your life.

God asks us to forgive each other and in the same way he will forgive us our wrongs; this is a challenge in the Our Father prayer. If we pray it at all, we are aware that we need to embrace forgiveness as part of our christian journey.

In Matthew 18:21,22 Jesus is asked how many times should a person forgive someone and he replies seventy-seven times meaning there should be no limits to our forgiving another person, just as God puts no limits on the number of times he will forgive us.

I always feel sad when I read a news story where something bad has happened to someone and they use the words: ‘I can never forgive them’. What is sad is that they are making something awful into something much worse. Not only do they have to recover from what has happened, they are adding to their spiritual and physical burden by keeping bitterness in their hearts.

When we forgive someone, it doesn’t mean they get away with whatever they have done as they too have to repent and ask God’s forgiveness. It will stay with them as when we commit sinful acts we cannot feel at peace and we draw further away from God. Whether they have faith or not, this is damaging.

Living a life free of unforgiveness is the only way we can grow spiritually and I do hope that you will put before the Lord anything that you have issues with in this respect. He is always listening and understands that you find it hard to forgive. He will help you and bring back the peace you comfort you had in the past.

God bless you and may you always find it in your hearts to forgive,

When you start to believe in God, to have taken that leap in faith, do work out what kind of God you believe in. We know from the Bible that he is trinitarian, but one God and we know aspects of his character from how he has dealt with us, his creatures, from the beginning.

From this outline, we can gain help with building this picture, but we also need to do it internally. I know what kind of God I believe in. He is kind, wise, all loving, faithful, patient, and has every positive attribute you can think of about him. He is the love in us and the good in us. We need to keep this picture of the God we believe in when nonsense is said about him. With our concrete picture of him, we can refute the untruths and know that they aren’t talking about our God.

God gave us free will. We aren’t an experiment and he doesn’t micromanage us. We are free to do as we want and choose what we want. This can lead us to have a good or a bad life in many senses. What we can’t do is blame God when it all goes wrong. Free will is a tremendous gift and if we abuse it, we have to be willing to face up to the consequences.

When something happens and you can’t understand it, refer back to this God you have in your heart and you will have all of the answers you need. I do believe that as long as we act in fairness and love that even if things go wrong, God knows that we are trying and above all he is very forgiving. His willingness to forgive has led to the offering of his Divine Mercy to all who request it. We are fallible and he knows this and has offered us a way to draw close to him again and be saved.

Do set this picture up in your hearts, you will need it for the tough things that happen in life and hold onto it through thick and thin.

God bless you and may you find peace in your friendship with God,

We all have phases in our life when we feel that things aren’t right: we’ve made wrong choices and this has led to us being in a place where we are unhappy and are unfulfilled. It is so easy to take a wrong turn and believe that life is never going to get better than this. We can also suffer from anxiety, fear, rejection and low self esteem and most of this is purely in our minds. Yes, our actions may have contributed to how we are feeling, but this needn’t be how we spend the rest of our lives.

I remember hearing a story once about a man who was talking to a priest and saying to that priest that he had lost everything, his job, his home and his family. The priest asked him if he still had his faith and when the man said that he did, then the priest said he had everything he needed.

This is all that we need, faith in our God. He will see us through every difficult situation and make sure that we come through it all. We aren’t guaranteed a trouble free life but what we are guaranteed is that he is walking with us in our lives, helping to carry us in troubled times and he will never let us down. We just need to ask for his help and it will be given. It might not be in the way we want it, but he will always give us what we need and he knows what is best for us.

My favourite bible passage that tells us all of this is copied below and I do recommend that you turn to God whenever you do feel low, he is there for you and in following him, you will have a ‘yoke’ that is much less overwhelming where you can rest from your troubles.

Matthew 11:28

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

God bless you and peace be with you,

As I was walking my dog this morning, I began to think about the meaning of friendship. In this modern era, this idea of friendship seems to have changed dramatically. Some of this is due to social media, but also some due to a constant moving between homes, areas and jobs.

I’m not good at social media as my site suggests, but I am joining Facebook, not to ‘connect’ but so that I can get into some sites that interest me as I am locked out if I am not a member. I don’t like this idea of messages and being sent friend requests by people you don’t know very well and who are subsequently made fully aware of a lot of things about you just by seeing your ‘wall’. Messages can be so easily misread and another meaning given to them. I get on so much better with people when I am face to face with them or on the phone. Virtual meetings have helped especially during this pandemic but they can never replace meeting up together.

There are so many different types of friends now: ones you have coffee with and might do something else with them occasionally; ones that live far away and you connect online and meet rarely; ones that you have kept for a very long time since college and always have a sense of connection with even if you don’t contact each other very often. The type of friend I miss is the one that I can rely on, no matter what my problem is or how needy I am. Ones that you know will never let you down or get fed up with you. You are invested in them for life and they are invested in you. We don’t seem to have this type of friendship or value it so much any more.

I watch programmes about moving homes and areas a lot – they are fascinating to me. Examples are Wanted Down Under, Escape to the Country, Place in the Sun etc. They interest me not just for looking at other people’s homes, but also the relationships of the couples/families involved and their reasons for the move. Some move to be nearer to family which is great, but some want to go ‘rural’ or have a better life with a bigger house and more money and place little value on being close to friends and family. They often want to be isolated so they are not ‘overlooked’.

What saddens me is the little value given to family and friends in some situations and I wonder if some of these people do finally realise it is not about the size of house you have or the money you can spend, but life is about love and connection and when you give that up you lose everything.

God bless you and I hope that you are always aware of what the greatest priority of all is in life: loving God and each other.