Anglican cleric ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ - a new chapter since the beginning of 2025 when a cyber bandit took down my old account. Rooted in the Garden of England.
This redefinition of safeguarding is a terrible overreach. Every priest deals, most weeks, with people want things from the Church. And will weaponise their claim to be vulnerable in order to target the clergy to get what they want. When everything is safeguarding, nothing is.
"For there's nothing as powerful or as great
As when a husband & wife, united by oneness of mind in their thinking,
Keep their home togetherโa great bane to their enemies,
A blessing to their friends, & their renown is on everyone's lips.โ
Odysseus' great praise of marriage.
I have been posting and writing about the Henry Nowak tragedy for three weeks, and have nothing new to say. Except one thing. That box-ticking phrase from the female officer when the murderer denies having stabbed Henry.
โI know, but we have to check, donโt we?โ
What we hear in those words is not just the madness of DEI, which has taught her automatically to believe the non-white assailant over the white victim. We hear, too, the obsession with procedure, the elevation of HR, the triumph of public-sector seminars over decency. A culture of compliance has displaced a culture of conscience.
๐ฌ๐ง On a Berkshire hillside there is a chalk horse 3,000 years old.
100 generations of British people have refused to let it fade.
Its name is the Uffington White Horse. It sits on the chalk of the Berkshire Downs. And it was cut around 1,000 BC by Britons of the Late Bronze Age.
They cut a trench into the turf. And filled it with crushed chalk. They cut a horse 110 metres long. Visible from miles.
Chalk hillside art does not last. Grass grows. Silt fills. Without care, a chalk figure disappears within a generation.
๐๏ธ The Uffington White Horse should have vanished by the Iron Age. It did not.
Because every generation that has lived near it has scoured it. Cleared the grass. Refilled the chalk. Kept the design alive.
The Iron Age tended it. Rome tended it. The Anglo-Saxons named the hill after it. A Welsh poem of 600 AD mentioned it as already ancient. Medieval villagers held a festival to scour it. Victorian villagers wrote songs about it. And every year, modern volunteers continue.
3,000 years of British people. Bronze Age carvers. Iron Age tribes. Roman Britons. Anglo-Saxon farmers. Medieval villagers. Victorian families. And the British still here today.
The carvers who cut the horse became Britons. Their descendants became the British. 100 generations have tended the same horse. 100 generations have refused to let it fade. The horse is alive because the people have stayed.
This is what continuity looks like. Not a memory. Not a museum. A horse kept alive by hand.
๐ฌ๐ง If you want to know whether the British are still here, look up.
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The chalk has been re-cut by hand for 3,000 years.
Most British kids have never been up the hill.
Our work is made in Britain, for Britain.
Take your kids up the hill. ๐
๐ https://t.co/rih7iKwnvf ๐
Be part of us. โ๏ธ๐ฌ๐ง
Be Proud Of Us. ๐๐ฌ๐ง
Anxiety was a way of life for many in the ancient pagan world. With so many gods and goddesses, all of them potentially out to get you for some offence you mightnโt even know about, you never knew whether something bad was waiting for you just round the corner. With the God who had now revealed himself in Jesus, there was no guarantee (as weโve seen) against suffering, but there was the certainty that this God was ultimately in control and that he would always hear and answer prayers on any topic whatever. People sometimes say today that one shouldnโt bother God about trivial requests (fine weather for the church picnic; a parking space in a busy street); but, though of course our intercessions should normally focus on serious and major matters, we note that Paul says we should ask God about every area of life. If it matters to you, it matters to God. Prayer like that will mean that Godโs peace โ not a Stoic lack of concern, but a deep peace in the middle of lifeโs problems and storms โ will keep guard around your heart and mind, like a squadron of soldiers looking after a treasure chest.
-Philippians for Everyone
๐๐๐๐ฆโ๐ฌ ๐ฎ๐ฉ ๐ฅ
It's derby day in BS3, as we travel to Ashton Gate to take on Bristol Bears.
As the penultimate game of the regular season, it's all to play for in the PREM Run-in.
Full story๐๏ธ๐ https://t.co/GClTqdDmq2
It's quite a lot lower than cathedrals (44%). Not that that's great! The big story is possibly the extent to which parishes with higher incomes are pulling away from the others