Welcome to my website! There are various sections to the site; this homepage shows you the more recent / popular content in each area. Happy exploring!
Recent Blog Posts
Papal Funeral Mass and the Real Issue with Roman Theology
As the funeral of the late Pope Francis is held in the Vatican today, the liturgy has notable points of difference from the Anglican liturgies. Those differences expose some deep differences between Roman and Anglican theology, and the surprise is that the biggest problem is not actually transubstantiation.
Meeting Jesus "today", for ourselves, at Easter
I've been studying Deuteronomy chapters 5-7, preparing some notes for our small group leaders. As I've been doing that, I find myself approaching Easter freshly. Here are a couple of questions for us with chapters 5-6 particularly in mind.
A Time to Live ... and a Time to Die? Presentation on Assisted Dying
On 4th February, at Trinity Church Scarborough, I led a teaching evening on the subject of assisted dying. I won't rehearse the reason in this blog post, as it was all covered in the presentation. Suffice to say that the UK government is currently debating a private member's motion to legalise assisted dying.
Not everyone could come to the evening, so we produced a video version of the resource. This material may well interest people wider than our church in Scarborough, so I'm sharing it here.
Popular Blog Posts
While Shepherds Watched their Yorkshire Flocks
Several years back I wrote about a discovery that the carol, While Shepherds Watched not only fits to the tune of On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at, the Yorkshire folk tune, but that may even have been the original tune.
How To: Insert New Line / Line Break in Microsoft Word using VBA
In Microsoft Word, there's all the difference in the world between a new paragraph and a new line. To insert a new paragraph, press the Enter key. If you have "show all characters" turned on, you'll see each paragraph break with its "backwards P" icon. Each paragraph in Word has its own properties. It can have extra space above or below, it could be indented from the left / right margins, with the option of different indentation for the first line. To insert a new line, press Shift + Enter.
Which Parish do I live in?
Are you trying to find out which Church of England Parish you live in? Simply visit the link below and put your postcode into the search tool. Note, they've changed their website. You now have to wait after entering your postcode, and select one of the autocomplete entries served by Google maps; only then can you click the arrow button to begin your search. https://www.achurchnearyou.com/
Recent Sermons
Let me ask you a question: Do you need to be good in order to go to heaven? Do you have to do good works, good deeds, to get to heaven? That is a really important question, is it not? Because where you spend eternity really matters. This life we live in now is short; the most any of us will get is probably 100 years, relative to which eternity is a very, very long time. So where you get to… Read more
Well, like almost every grown-up, I have forgotten almost everything they taught me when I studied for my GCSEs. However, when we did GCSE English, we had to read some novels of a 19th-century author called Thomas Hardy. Not to be confused with the present-day actor of the same name.
Thomas Hardy wrote novels that often featured the lives of ordinary people who were just up against the… Read more
Well, I am English, and we English love our sport. But we're not terribly good at it. In fact, that's my story. At school, I was particularly not good at sport. But for those of you who are not English — a good number of us here from a number of nations much better at sport than we are — let me just share with you what it's like to support England in sport.
For a start, we don't often… Read more
Coffee currently on the go
I love my coffee! Hear you can see what I'm drinking at the moment
Current Brew
You'll also find me in a few other places online, such as …
Other Websites
I also maintain a few other websites:
- Mandelbrot ExplorerThis is an easy to use, totally free, fractal explorer — explore the Mandelbrot Set and the Julia Sets, starting with one of 6 inbuilt colour schemes, but with a totally flexible layers-based way to colour your fractals exactly as you wish. There are many other features - visit the website to find out more. Visit mandel.org.uk
- Books by Mary OakleyMy late grandmother compiled 5 little booklets of poems and prayers that helped her at various stages of her life. Visit the website to find out more about these booklets, or to order online. Visit lifetocome.co.uk
- Trinity Church ScarboroughThe church in North Yorkshire where I'm associate minister / pastor. Visit trinityscarborough.org.uk
Social Media
I use social media more to follow others and to keep in touch than I do to post information of my own. Nevertheless, occasionally I'll post things. Find me on:
