Often, it is just one note that signals the start of the season. We recognise, in an instant, the opening chord of the 80’s Christmas hit or the first bar from the soundtrack of our favourite festive film and our Christmas present connects with Christmases past. I love the music and the looking back. I…

We all have a Christmas soundtrack. Maybe it’s Carols learned while at school, or singing along to Slade, Wham or the Darkness. The gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, also had a soundtrack in mind when they wrote their accounts of Jesus’ birth, and just as our Christmas season comes to life when we start to…

The children of Israel lived for 40 years in the wilderness. That is a long time! We call the journey this ancient people took from slavery in Egypt through this wilderness to the land that God promised The Exodus. A journey that should have taken only weeks, ended up taking years. Why did it take…

Tonight our home will be filled again with the hum of conversation and the clink of coffee cups. Something new is starting. God is moving and I am not sure what will happen next. God has always been at work in these northern Yorkshire Dales. After all, he is the one who created this land…

“What day is it today?” is often the first question on our mind when we wake and get out of bed, drowsy or disorientated, needing to reset our connection with reality and routine. When we know what day it is, we know what we are meant to be doing. It can only be one day…

Farmed fields, even those sown with mixed crops, sustain only a few species of plants and animals compared to their wild equivalent. Our heather-capped moors similarly support a shorter list of living things than the mixed forests that once covered these hills. Equally, the Biblical vision for the church was always for a community where…

If the idea of rewilding our countryside evokes emotive images, both positive and negative, with many of us who live and work in and around these Dales, then the notion of rewilding the church of the Dales is equally likely to elicit emotional responses. If you like to imagine how things might be in the…

First, a question for all you, who live in and around these Northern Yorkshire Dales, “When was the last time you saw a bear or perhaps a beaver from your back door step? Or what about a wildcat, or a golden eagle?” ‘Rewilding’ is a word that first appeared in the dictionary not much more…

Isn’t it amazing what you can see through an image formed in an artist’s imagination and the graphic crafted by the skill of their hands? My thanks go to Chris Bambrough for his skill and for allowing me to share the picture he created. The Jerusalem temple was certainly one of the ancient world’s most…

If asked what substance is of greatest value in this world most of us would come up with a list of rare gemstones and precious metals, valued because of their beauty, purity, and scarcity. Today we might think of lithium for batteries or plutonium for reactors alongside gold and diamonds. But I would imagine that…