P.S.
PS is an email and web-based blog format issued regularly by Contemporary Christianity. The format provides an online space for writers toexplore issues relating to church, culture and life in Northern Ireland, seeking to understand the times through insights from Scripture, theology, reason and the observations that flow from lived experience.
PS will never claim to have all the answers, but we hope to prompt questions that leave our readers a little closer to the answer at the end of the piece than they were at the beginning.
Our writers range from well-known names in academia and full-time ministry, to professionals with particular subject matter expertise, to lay people with passion for a subject and a gift for writing.
You can get involved in conversations by posting comments in the threads below the blogs, and if you’re interested in writing for us, you can get in touch by emailing info@contemporarychristianity.net.
Formed to Flourish
It is going to be a good harvest of crab apples this year. I know because there was a lot of blossom on the tree in the spring.
Hospitality
They are everywhere… cafés; restaurants; Uber Eats deliveries; takeaways; fast food chains; coffee machines in the local supermarket and garage, and pop up coffee stations. They are there because hospitality is very big business with over 70,000 jobs dependent on it here.
Silence – the good and the bad
I recently attended a moving service at St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, that included times of silence as part of the liturgy. It was arranged by Corrymeela and was entitled “Courage of Lament”.
War in Ukraine
War in Ukraine; more than 125 days. From our Western perspective it is Vladimir Putin’s despicable effort to crush a fledgling democracy, using the full weight of Russia’s armed forces that have established their bombardment methodology in Georgia, Chechnya and Syria.
BLOWING BUBBLES
‘I saw a bubble blow past my window, fat and wobbly and ripening toward that dragonfly blue they turn just before they burst. So I looked down at the yard and there you were, you and your mother blowing bubbles at the cat, such a barrage of them that the poor beast...
At the Party
It happens at social gatherings. First, the (almost) inevitable question: And what do you do for a living? Next, the deep breath followed by the fatal confession: Actually, I’m a Christian Minister, yes, a clergyman, one of those. The reaction varies but quite...
UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES?
Even though I am not a prophet or the son of a prophet (to quote from Amos 7), nor am I like one of the sons of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what the people of God should do in perilous circumstances (I Chronicles 12), I am a committed follower of Jesus...
Emergency Food and the Cost of Living: Moving from Provision to the Prophetic
Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, more people than ever have experienced destitution, unable to afford the essentials, such as food and shelter, that we all need to survive. There are now providers of emergency food in most cities, towns and villages across Northern Ireland, where food bank use is now 40% higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
One Easter story but there aren’t two Jesus-es
When my children were small, two types of toys dominated all others in our home: Lego and Play Mobil. Over the years, what seemed like endless and assorted offerings from each brand came into the house. There were firefighters, hospitals and police officers, both Lego...
Living….in the face of evil
Day after day, night after night cities in Ukraine are being bombed on a huge scale, and are enveloped in distress. And, we are able to watch it in terrible colour on our TV screens, and able to read heart-rending accounts of what is happening to individuals,...
To Live is to Change
In 1845, John Henry Newman, one time Anglican Priest and later Roman Catholic Cardinal wrote ‘To live is to change’. His comments described both the world as he observed it, and life, as he experienced it. Change is all around us in Ireland today. Finton O’Toole gives...
Beyond and Between
Something shifted inside me when I became a dad. I could not put my finger on it until someone offered that to be a parent is forever to have a piece of your heart running around in the world outside of yourself. Little human beings, complete in and of the full span...