Category: Uncategorized
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Borrowdale
I am feeling most blessed after spending a weekend with friends in the peace and beauty of Borrowdale in the Lake District. To share good food, wine and laughter in the company of friends, to appreciate the beauty around us: the bleak fells opening up before us as we climb through a blizzard (yes, nearly…
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2015 Wiley Prize for the best papers published in Child Abuse Review
It is a great pleasure to announce the 2015 Wiley Prize for the best papers published in Child Abuse Review. Jane Appleton and I have selected three papers, published between 2011 and 2014 which we believe are all outstanding papers, reflecting innovative thinking and relevance to practitioners. The quality of papers published in the journal…
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The child at the centre of care
Placing the child at the centre of care requires professionals and organisations to adopt a position that recognises and responds to the child or young person’s best interests (Appleton, Powell and Coombes, 2014, unpublished report to NSPCC). As Munro (2011a, 2011b; p6) stated in her review of child protection, the child protection system needs to…
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Childhood pattern – a book review in the Church Times
The teaching of Jesus shapes who we are. But it’s just as true to say that who we are shapes what we make of the teaching of Jesus. Who Peter Sidebotham is — a loving parent and a paediatrician dealing daily with suffering children — has fashioned his understanding of what it means to be…
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Go simply in your vocation
As we enter the fifth week in Lent, we journey with Jesus’ mother, Mary – with her struggles to understand and stand with her son; in her discovery of her own vocation, perhaps wondering where and what that is; in her growing recognition and acceptance of her son’s vocation. Let us accept the…
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Listening for our heart’s truth
With great skill and energy we have ignored the state of the human heart. With politics and economics we have denied the heart’s needs. With eloquence, wit and reason we have belittled the heart’s wisdom. With sophistication and style with science and technology, we have drowned out the voice of the human soul. The primitive…
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Go simply with your culture
Tomorrow is the start of the fifth week of Lent. Our prayer this week is that we may hear our heart’s truth. Can we live within our culture yet challenge it? Can we learn from Nicodemus, the Pharisee, who came to Jesus in the dead of night? Click here…
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Go simply in your lifestyle
As we enter the fourth week of Lent, we will spend time looking at the Bethany family: Mary, Martha and Lazarus. We will encounter their vulnerability, their love, their hospitality. We will think about our fragile, vulnerable world, and how we can go simply in our lifestyles, combining active care and contemplative devotion, careful stewardship and…
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Go simply with yourself
Tomorrow begins the third week in Lent. During this week we will journey with Mary Magdalene: Mary, the one afflicted by seven demons; Mary, the one set free; Mary, the one whose name Jesus spoke – tenderly, lovingly. We are invited to simply be ourselves, not needing an exciting lifestyle, busy schedules, comfort foods,…
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Go simply with your possessions
Judas, the Betrayer. Not your usual subject for a series of reflections. But perhaps Judas wasn’t so dissimilar to the rest of us. Was he just an enthusiastic radical, looking for something new, longing for justice and liberation? Tomorrow starts the second week in Lent. As we spend this week journeying with Judas, Let’s…