NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

Prophets are without honour in their own country.  This saying turns up in all three of the synoptic gospels Matthew 13.57 ' And they took offence at him. But Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour except in their own country and in their own house.’ Mark 6.4 ' And they took offence at him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.’ Luke 4.24   ‘And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town.’ Obviously it was very important to the writers of all of the gospels as they wrote to their own congregations, decades after the death of Jesus. So one could assume that it spoke to something that was very real to them. Were these writers perhaps finding that they were offending the authorities, or a high-profile member of their synagogue?  Whatever the reason was, we can only speculate on it. However it has proven true over the l...

‘ If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.’ ~ Rollo May  [May was an American existential psychologist …The philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich was a close friend who had a significant influence on his work.(Wikipedia)] It must have been a year ago, as I was talking one night on the phone to my friend, that she said these words to me “ I don’t know where you get the ideas for your blog. Perhaps you make the stories up. In any case, you should get this book [the title of which escapes me] and it will give you lots of them!”  I was flabbergasted! I had never imagined that anyone would think I made up the stories that I wrote about in my blog, let alone someone who had known me for 20+ years! After all the name of the blog ‘Nudgings” is based on the premise that we all can experience ‘Nudgings’ from everyday events if we are open to them. And so I talk about the mundane, the trivial...

"Jesus was a whistler-blower" Have you ever thought of this descriptor for Jesus? I hadn't until just lately when I heard it used in a sermon. I was quite familiar with words like a revolutionary, a Jew, a peasant, uneducated, and radical, being used in this way - and have often used them myself. But whistler-blower? NO. The online Oxford dictionary defines a whistle-blower as ‘a person who informs on a person or organization regarded as engaging in an unlawful or immoral activity.’ It doesn’t ask for much of a stretch to apply this definition to the teachings of Jesus. According to the writers of the gospels he was always challenging authority in one way or another! Who are the whistle-blowers of today then? I remember seeing the movie Erin Brockovich, about an unemployed single mother who became a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brought down a California power company accused of polluting a city's water supply. I never equated Erin Brockov...

           “ Your religion is what's important to you.” Last summer I saw a play by J.M.Barrie for the first time. Up until then, I only thought of him as the author of “Peter Pan” and had never realized that he also was a playwright. [It constantly amazes me how little I actually know. ..but that is a theme for another day!] The short play we saw, called ‘The Twelve Pound Look’ is a satire, revolving around the conflicting tensions in the suffragette movement. But what stayed with me after the play and has stayed with me ever since, was not any of the witticisms, but rather this line that came near the end.  This echoes what Thomas Aquinas said in an earlier age,  “The things that we love tell us what we are.”  These men are essentially saying the same thing, one as a secular playwright and the other as a Doctor of the Church. For me, it is something not only to consider once and then to put aside but something that it is important ...