NOT MUCH WRITING!
Not much writing this month. What with seventeen days’ holiday and a five day long weekend for a family wedding, I only had six working days. Instead, Linda and I explored Northumberland and Somerset. I went to four different churches on the Sundays, at Lastingham (founded 635), Hexham (bishop’s chair 681), Newcastle and Wells cathedrals. We also discovered several completely unmissable places like the North York Moors, Hexham, the Farne islands and the Mendips. See photos below. Things you should see if you are up North are too many to fit on the page.
I set up a series of five Facebook posts on my page www.facebook.com bibleinbrief/revandybooks on Ancient North/Northumbria. Do check it out. Also https://www.northyorkmoors.org.uk, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northumbria
PREP TIME
During the odd days at work I managed to do a lot of prep stuff. I revised the text of ‘Discovering Psalms as Prayer’ to make the audio version. Speaking to Peter Walters, we decided that he would read all the book apart from the prayer sections which I will go up to Norwich to record.
I did a quick revision of what I had written so far of ‘The Church has a Past – Does it have a Future?’ I included several blogs I had already written such as “Is ‘God’ past its sell-by date?” I then sent a hard copy to a friend of mine for her comments. I think she will disagree with it but disagree intelligently!
I sent a list of amendments to ‘Journey through Lent with Jesus’ to Clare for her to put on the file. A major part of the changes is to make the book somewhat less Lent-specific so that people can read it (and buy it!) any time of the year. I can’t change the title; but it will now appear as ‘JOURNEY through Lent WITH JESUS’, instead of ‘JOURNEY through Lent with Jesus’.
While checking out what I could include in “Has the Church got a Future?”, I realised that I had another book virtually already written. During lockdown I had sent out daily prayers from various religions. I reckon I could relatively easily turn them into a short book “Daily Prayers from the World’s Faiths”. I shall do some work on that next month, part of which will mean learning about Sikhism.
TRONDHEIM
Last month Fr James, curate at St Cuthbert’s, told me about the Anglican-Lutheran conference in July in Trondheim, Norway. On Tuesday 24th May I decided to go! I phoned up the Anglican-Lutheran Society and a very nice woman Helen checked whether the hotel could have me (it could), got me to book my flights, and booked me into the conference. One big plus for me is that Michael Ipgrave, the bishop of Lichfield, is going. He is the person who wrote such good things about ‘Jesus the Troublemaker’. I hope to meet him properly at some point in the week. Also, I will be making a mini-presentation there on ‘Discovering the real Jesus through writing fiction’. That’s exciting!
Happy Platinum Jubilee Weekend!
Andy